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Page 1 of 2 Hawkstone Classic 2007 – Sunday 15th July 2007
Where as Narrogin is the capitol of VMX in Australia, Hawkstone Park is the Mecca of VMX in Britain with a rich and long history. Our own patron Jeff Smith having ridden there many times in the 50’s. Hawkstone Park is located about 30 miles west of Birmingham close to the picturesque village of Hodnet. A single lane road takes you to the track which is surrounded by lush trees and paddocks.
When we arrived on the Saturday afternoon the pits area was quite full already. Well set out with plenty of toilets, a few trade stalls were already setting up shop. Quite a good selection of accessories for sale from Amal jets to complete frames, a private seller had a BSA B50 for sale for ₤2000 (about $5000!) and another had a good clean Triumph Metisse for ₤2800 (about $6500!).
As we all know Britain has a huge selection of classic scramblers on offer, so it was great to see them all in the flesh. By the looks of some of the bikes there were some very serious riders here. Scrutineering and sign were carried out Saturday afternoon, after this it was time to walk the famous track and climb the famous ‘hill’. The track was beautifully prepared, it was like walking on brown sugar. At a rough guess I would say the track would be about 2.5 km in length and each race was to be four rounds. The famous ‘hill’ was hard enough to climb on foot left along on a bike with about 1 in 3 (33%) incline!!
The Salop Motor Club had organized a marquee with live music which went on to the small hours. Well it had to happen and as all the locals had predicted the heavens opened on Sunday morning and turned the otherwise perfect track into something suitable for mud wrestling!
With an alien timetable practice started at 10am and went through to 11.30am and racing commenced at 12 noon! By the time practice had finished it was obvious that it was more a case of staying on your bike than racing to win. A mouth watering order of racing was on offer with the following classes:-
British Classic Scrambles Championship, Pre 1974 over 250, Pre 1960 unlimited, Pre 1968 up to 350, Pre 1974 up to 350, Metisse Only and the Pre 1968 over 350.
Unfortunately after the fourth race the officials decided that racing would finish after the first round which was a real shame, but the only option as it was now quite dangerous. My brother Paul who used to be a member of our club lent me a Rickman Metisse with a Villiers Starmaker engine and a Husky 450, both bikes I thoroughly enjoyed and dare I say it the Husky didn’t miss a beat in all that mud.
So with just under a week to go to the next meet it will be straight into the garage to prepare to bikes and try and clean off all that Hawkstone mud!!
Next page... a Welsh Greeves up to his axle in mud 
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