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Will it never end? No... not while Captain Pete's living the life of a Greeves factory rider and wanting to rub our noses in it.
A week can be a hellish long time between Race Meetings, but it was decided that we would cancel our trip to Devon due to the wettest British Summer for 60 years!!!
Instead we planned a trip close to home in the county of Essex, at a small village called East Hanningfield for the Pre 65 Motorcross Club Best of British Scramble.
Arriving early at the track gave us plenty of time to walk the track. To my horror the track was very sticky, a bit like walking on toffee. An absolute picture, perfect natural terrain track, set amongst gentle rolling hills, no artificial berms, table top jumps, or frame shattering sets of bumps. This track is set in a time warp, not a modern track re hashed. The question was, would the rain hold off and let the track dry out?
The start was at the bottom of a gentle grassy hill a distance of about 200m before the 1st corner. Starting was with the green flags and false starters going to the back of the line after two warnings.
An absolute mouth watering program was on offer with the following race classes - British 2 Stoke Championship, Pre '60 Percy Tawn Trophy, Greeves Championship, Clubman Class/Four Stroke only, 1966-1974 Racing, unlimited cc and the Pre '65 up to 350cc, how good is that!
Racing of course was fast and furious with only a couple of minor crashes. You know these Pommes are spoilt, what could beat a starting line up of 30+ Greeves riders for the Greeves Championship?
Plus all those Pre'75 bikes to perve on they take their racing very serious over there with some very nice examples every chapter of British Scrambling History.
The Pre 65 Motorcross Club that held the event are very similar to our club, family orientated and everybody helping each other out, great to see.
Their website is worth a look, very well laid out it can be found on www.pre65.com.
I even had the pleasure of being lent a Greeves Griffon 380 QUB for the meet by a chap named Brian Farmer and what an absolute stoking machine that was, thanks once again Brian.
It turned out to be a perfect day as the rain did hold back. There was even a bit of dust floating around. After 9 races of 4 laps each, I was totally knackered, so it was nice to drop into the local pub on the way home for a nice of warm beer!!! |
