Sideways on

Just a quick email to congratulate you on the Broadslide publication, a very good volume of work. Covering personal and technical articles, Broadslide should become part of every Speedway fan’s magazine collection.

Thanks too for the article on our WSRA (World Speedway Riders’ Association) National Speedway Museum at Paradise Wildlife Park, very well done and let’s hope that it will encourage some more visitors to come along as it is the only pure speedway museum open to the public all year round. There are many other museums and private collections which feature speedway but they usually feature other motorcycles too or they are not accessible to the general public.

Lots of interesting photographs in the four-page article on the museum, plus Eric Boocock’s two-valve Jawa, but you missed my last 4-valve Jawa, tartan TT Leathers and various tartan-painted Bell helmets but that’s okay, you did a good job of bringing the museum to life.

You may already be aware that next year, February 2018, will be the 90th anniversary of when speedway, (or dirt track racing as it was then called) began at High Beech in Epping Forest, not far from where our museum is situated.

Every February, we have the annual, “Celebration of Speedway” exhibition at Paradise Wildlife Park to mark the occasion and this year, we had over 1,500 people attending on the Sunday. We use the car park for booths with bikes, leathers, memorabilia and some speedway teams come along to promote their new season.

The museum is open (obviously!) and we also have the big events marquee where we have stalls selling old programmes, photos, books, DVDS, etc and we have a stage for rider interviews throughout the day.

There is also a pit area outside and on the hour, every hour, we start up some of the older unsilenced Douglas, Rudge and Jap machines and that wonderful smell of Castrol ‘R’ fills the air.

Next year, being the 90th anniversary, we are working on some ideas to try to make the event even more special, so if you put the date, Sunday, February 18, 2018 in your diary, you may want to come along and enjoy the day.

Bert Harkins WSRA Committee Member. Former WSRA President Former International Rider and…….

Former Sole UK Importer for Scott Goggles and Acerbis (Italy) Plastics! (End of Personal Plugs!) Email

Praise indeed Bert, thank you for the compliments on Broadslide. I hope to get along to the 90th anniversary celebrations, though the speedway event often clashes with the Classic Dirt Bike Show at Telford. TB