Remembering David

It was with great sadness I heard about David Stokes’ recent passing.

I first came across David in the 1970s, we were both in the bakery business. David had this fantastic roll plant in his family bakery in Wotton-under-edge. He kindly allowed us to come and visit and, apart from being very impressed with his bakery skills in the following years, he became a legend in his Ford Escort.

I met with him over the following years when I started to co-drive for Pentti Airikkala, usually at some stage start or service area, there was this larger-than-life character.

As the years passed, we both turned our attention back to the bakery business. David did it with the Draycott firm and I started up a business Cuisine de France. We would meet at bakery shows and I ended up employing one of his former salesmen, who kept me up to date on David’s business and then hugely successful return to rallying.

I often wondered where he could have got to had he kept rallying.

Anyway, David you have some great company to compete with in that stage in the sky: Pentti, Henry Winston and loads of other wonderful characters. May the road rise before him.