Dirt Talk
What are you talking about in the CDB world? All sorts of things as it happens, bring it on we say.
Tim, you probably won’t remember me, but I was always in and out of your post office on Benfieldside Road, I even came in one day to put an advert in your window selling some C15 SS80 bits and you asked me if they were trials stuff (they weren't, they were from my first legal bike after Bantams and Greeves).
I got my first bike in 1965, from right over the road from your post office, my elder brother bought me it for £2-10 from a man called Harry Arkless, it was a 1948 excelsior 98, high power for an 11-year-old.
About four years later, your grandad took me and John Wheatley to Crawcrook auctions and we bought a 197 Dot trials and he brought it home for us in his van. Anyway, when I was around 16, I persuaded my brother to sell his ex-dave Winfield Bultaco and buy a Hagon Jap grass bike. He blew this into a hundred bits at St Johns Chapel grasstrack, your dad was a spectator at this and quite a few more local grass tracks.
At 17, I bought a Hagon Starfire of my own, well it was a Triumph TR25 but Starfire was easier to pronounce. My brother bought a brand new Jawa motor from Barry Briggs for £260 in 1972 and dropped it in to his Hagon, we raced throughout east Yorks, Lancashire and Lincolnshire and loved every minute of it, winning or not. The Seventies were great for grasstrack and the main reason I am writing to you is to perhaps have a bit more coverage.
Your dad used to follow us in all the local meetings and I was led to believe he lost his eye in a local grass track. Sadly I don’t have much contact with the scene now, as contracting rheumatoid arthritis put an end to my plans to do over 50s grasstrack, though all my kit is still in the attic… green and yellow TT leather race suit and all. Alan Ridley, email Hi Alan, that’s scary, as I was casting about a week or two ago for a barrel for my B40 and the day you came in to sell those engines popped into the conversation! Hadn’t realised they were 250s rather than B40 though. Well, to answer your question about grasstrack, with only four issues of CDB a year and trials, scrambles and enduro in all classes, and on two and three wheels too, there’s always more stuff than space to put it, so it’s not that I’ve something against grasstrack or speedway either for that matter – I’ve just finished a speedway one-off publication for Mortons in fact. However, I do contribute to other titles in our group so perhaps speedway and grass fans should suggest things I should cover… My dad was still keen on motorcycle sport though to my knowledge he never competed after I was born. The accident which cost him an eye was a road one in the Thirties and on the Consett road from Durham just after where the big roundabout is now. No helmets for road riders in those days. Tim