Scooter Racing
By Marten Holdway
The first track events were for time trials
round Mallory Park. Les Rafferty's Wildcats were entered in
them the legend goes that the Hampshire Union guys got fed up
of checking times and opened up there throttles and Scooter
Racing was born.
The Solent City members were not really
into racing, so Dave And I used to go with the Hampshire
Union guys to the meetings, by then I was working for
Rafferty Newman in the Workshops and then the Stores with my
friend and Solent City member Kenny Erridge, Happy days.
We used to hire a dodgy van from Danny
Gormans in Titchfield cram it full of bikes and bodies and off
we went. There are many tales to tell of the journeys which I
will start telling when time permits.
One trip comes to mind, we were off to
Mallory Park, this was just after the isle of Wight rally and
my massive pile up, and my leg was still very stiff. I cadged a
lift in Dudley's little green Morris 1000 van, Dudley
was a really nice bloke, but a bit strange, one day I
remember first thing in the morning, a Suzuki 50 came past the
rear doors of the workshop with no rider, swiftly followed by
two barrels worth of Dudly's 410 shotgun, he had bought the gun
in to shoot the rats, but the bike had played him up on the way
in to work so he executed it.
So off we set, also in the Van was Geoff
Stevens. We were well on our way to Mallory and the dusk was
setting in, Dudley saw a pheasant walking up the verge suddenly
he gave chase mounting the verge he chased the pheasant across
the fields, the startled bird flew off so no pheasant for tea.
I was lying in the back of the van and was bumped around and
ended up in a heap. We got to Mallory and decamped to the
Bar, we were going to sleep in George's Removal Van around 20
people crammed in the old van very friendly. The next morning
we went down to the track, you had to enter the track area
through the hairpin and to my horror it was like glass covered
in ice, boy was I glad I wasn't racing that day.
All in all the race meetings were great fun
for us young Scooterists, we could have a weekend away with our
mates, catch a bit of excitement racing round the tracks, come
home knakered but fulfilled.
The History of UK Scooter Racing
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