1, Club Night Catering

         Following this years AGM, the cost of the raffle tickets on club nights, which help pay for the food we all enjoy, is raised to £2.

        This decision was made to try to stem the losses which have been made to the catering float following the raising of the donation to the pubs to £40 or £50.

Club Night Catering

All Club Members should be aware of this and the importance of paying towards the food by the purchase of a raffle ticket, unbegrudgingly please; if the members cannot be trusted to pay the £1 on a Monday night, then we will have to treat them as children and sit at the food table and get them to show their raffle tickets. NO TICKET NO FOOD.

       Club Annual Dinner 2009 

This years  annual Club dinner was held on Saturday 7th February 2009, with 164 members and guests attending, all having a good time.

The formal dinner was followed by a speech from our Chairman, Tony Brown, who gave a run down of the years events, a welcome to our guests from our president, Pat Barrett, and a response from the guests.

Tony then presented our annual awards, which are shown below; we followed the formal part of the evening with dancing to the disco.

 

The Speech Makers

The Chairman, Tony Brown
	The Club President, Pat Barrett
Our guest response, the Landlord of the Orange Tree PH

Club Awards

	The Stabilisers Award These are awarded to the club member who cannot stay on his bike; For falling off at least three times the award goes to: Jim Carmichael
The Quiz Champions  awarded to the winning club quiz team this year the award goes to:   "Youth and Age on the Beaulieu River"   (A special prize for anyone who can tell me where this team name came from)
	The Cheese Skittle Championship As the title says this is for the Cheese Skittle championship. The trophy we have was last presented in 1955, it is the Vincent HRD trophy for interdepartmental bowls, a real item of motorcycling history. This years winner is:   Mark Browning
The Dave Kelly TT Trophy This is awarded for a club member who has done something silly on the Clubs annual pilgrimage to the Isle of Man. This years winner is:   Peter Starr
	The Wes Lord Trophy This is awarded to the club member who has done something silly or stupid over the past year. For his behaviour at the BMF show this years winner is:   Stuart Muncey
The Frank Pepper Trophy This is awarded to the club member that got lost on a club event. This years winner is:   Bob Voss
	The Yorkshire Grey Trophy This is awarded for the fastest time at removing and refitting a tyre to a motorcycle wheel using only tyre levers. This years winner is: Ray Savage
The Dave Wiley Photographic Competition Trophy  This is given for the best photograph taken over the past year.     This years winner is: Our President, Pat Barrett
	The Stevenage News Trophy This is presented each year, in the view of the committee to the club member who has achieved the most outstanding performance over the past year.   it goes to: Roger Timms Collected by Mick Taylor on his behalf
The Jeff Humphries Memorial Trophy This trophy has been kindly donated by Cherry Humphries in memory of her late husband Jeff. Jeff, who was a life long member of the club, was always in the background helping out others and the club in their hour of need, an unsung hero.  the award goes to: Dave Price
The Awards From The George Brown Memorial Run
	Best Post War Solo Pat Barrett
The Dave Green Trophy Best entry by a club member Arnold Hoiles
	The Ian Ashwell Trophy Best performance by a club member Gordon Hallett Collected by Dave Price on his behalf
The Don Davies Trophy Best club member riding his own bike Glynn Davies Collected by Phil Hutchins on his behalf
	The George Brown Memorial Trophy For the best Vincent motorcycle   Tony Brown
Last but not least thanks to Hazel for presenting the prizes.
	And also to Theresa and Gail for running the food raffle so successfully over the last year.

Some other pictures from the event

The ladies from the top table are presented with  special bouquets
	Is everyone having a good time?????
Someone stole all the balloons; if you can help identify the guilty culprits please let the committee know, these people have "let themselves down"

Senior Members Of The Club On A Sunday Ride Out !!

         Martin Has Sent this thank you card to all club members:

Club Auction 2008

Another lively club auction night took place at the Crown PH, Aston End, on Monday 8th December.

We raised £293.

Thanks to our Chairman Tony for conducting the Auction, his lovely assistant Stuart for showing of the multitude of goods on offer, and to all those who bid and so help raise this impressive amount.

Some Memories from an old club member:

 I came across your club site by accident and it brought the memories flooding back.  I was a member of the club for a few years in the 60s before I moved away from the area and it was one of the happiest periods of my life. 

I still clearly remember pals such as Arnold, Brian the Geordie, Ted Merrick, Michael Bayles, Les and Chris Ward , Pat and Hazel Barrett were particularly good to me, often feeding me and once providing a floor to sleep on in an emergency.

In those days I had Vincents – a Series C Rapide  and a Comet – but now retired and lost in the middle of rural France, the fastest thing I own is a donkey.

I’ve wonderful recollections of club runs, sprint meetings at Duxford, rubbing shoulders  with gods like George Brown – the beer wasn’t bad, either – but best of all I remember our annual trips to the Isle of Man for the TT Races. 

I’ve written a nostalgic article about one such voyage and if you think members would be interested in following me down memory lane I’d be pleased to send it on to you, though I’m not a club member (I suppose if you twisted my arm I could rejoin; do I get a discount for returning like the prodigal son?)

Meanwhile, here’s a photo from way back featuring a couple of young veterans which might amuse your members.

Best Regards

                  Tony Davis

Some more memories from an old club member:

(club member 1964-72)

[Disclaimer: nostalgia is a fickle mistress and, with advancing age, one tends to remember events but not necessarily the order in which they happened. I therefore present no excuses for inaccuracies, merely crave indulgence for any defects of memory. It was a long time ago, after all, and I hope at least this account is true in spirit.]

History tells us that the 1967 Isle of Man Diamond Jubilee TT Races fully lived up to the reputation of the event and provided what was to be one of the greatest of all scraps: Hailwood -v- Agostini in the Senior race.

Less well-documented is the adventure that began at an unearthly hour of a grey, damp June morning, when a group of intrepid club members met on the green outside the Yorkshire Grey before setting off on an epic journey to watch the event. A motley bunch on a variety of machinery, the cast was as follows:

- Tim ‘Hooly’ Hatton with a 1922 Triumph sidecar outfit (with pukka vintage sidecar);

- Pat Barrett on an early-30s Norton single;

- Eric ‘Geg’ Gray on a post-war BSA twin;

- Don (friend of Geg’s) on a Norton ES2 outfit with a long wooden box

resembling a coffin attached to the sidecar chassis;

- Eric Hodkinson, 22 stone, dwarfing the BSA B31 350cc single which he

Bleary-eyed (especially Eric, Chris and I, as we’d already travelled 40 miles from central Essex), we set off at a steady pace and after picking up the A5 at Dunstable (first fag and pee-stop) made stately progress north-westwards.

Tim was persuaded, reluctantly, to take the lead on the grounds that his outfit was the slowest and most liable to break down, a slur at which he took umbrage in that inimitable Hatton style.

At that time of the morning traffic was light and the only danger came from Don, who, having filled the pockets of his trench-coat with hard-boiled duck eggs to stave off hunger, cast the empty shells indiscriminately over his shoulder leaving those of us behind him to avoid them (I nearly said duck) as best we could.

The early dismal weather did not augur well for the week ahead, but in fact the clouds soon cleared and apart from the fusillade of eggshells we had a largely uneventful ride until elevenses, which, in order not to break the habits of a lifetime, were partaken in a public house.

By the time we were back on the road again the day had turned appreciably warmer and near Tamworth, young Chris, no doubt suffering from the effects of his half-pint of shandy, dozed off and it was only thanks to quick thinking by Eric that he narrowly missed being the losing contestant in an argument with a lorry. An emergency halt was called and it was decided that for safety’s sake Chris’s bike should be put in Don’s coffin and he continue on the pillion of my Vincent. The motion was carried by a vote of 6 to1, Don’s being the sole dissenting voice.

We stopped for lunch at a pub in Hinstock. O.K., today on your Honda Fireblade or whatever you could probably do Stevenage to Liverpool in a couple of hours, but don’t forget that roads in those days were narrow and crowded – the M.1 was still considered a novelty, for heaven’s sake – and nursing vintage bikes (and a Bantam) we were plodding along at a steady 30 mph – and that’s maximum speed, not average!

The stop had been pre-planned as we wanted to book bed and board for the return journey, wishing to avoid repetition of an unfortunate incident that had occurred the previous year.

After the 1966 TT, anxious to cut short travelling time, we had unwisely taken the night ferry from Douglas to Liverpool, arriving Scouse-side at four in the morning, and immediately set off southwards. An hour into the journey a lorry driver pulled alongside me and flagged me down. "Your mate’s fallen off," he yelled through his half-open window, and looking behind I saw a Barrett-sized void where Pat should have been. Hastily retracing our steps, we found a dazed companion standing bemused in the middle of a transport café car park, his bike on its side some twenty yards off. He had fallen asleep and swerved across the road, miraculously missing the continuous line of early-morning lorries, and skidded off on the gravel of the car-park, at which point he suddenly woke up. A few yards before or after and he could have hit a tree or gone into a ditch; the consequences didn’t bear thinking about. I was always fond of Pat but at that moment, seeing him on his feet and largely undamaged, I was so relieved that I could have thrown my arms around him and kissed him.

So, determined not to be caught out a second time, we mixed business with pleasure and reserved our accommodation for a week hence, ate a leisurely lunch and for the sake of appearances downed a couple of pints (Shropshire beer isn’t all that bad after the first glass.)

The afternoon was a doddle. We were on the road again with plenty of time to spare to catch the ferry – except that Tim’s Triumph played up. That is to say, the owner of Tim’s Triumph played up. On the pretext of wishing to avoid a seizure, Hooly (short for ‘hooligan’ – what else?) rode as slowly as possible to put our timetable in jeopardy. Fortunately, Pat realised the danger and went in front at Tarporley to up the pace and we arrived at Pier Head with a good ten minutes in hand.

The crossing was unadventurous, the Irish Sea failing for once to live up to its reputation, and on disembarking we made our way along the front at Douglas to claim our chalets at a campsite known popularly as Fletcher’s Belsen. The site had in fact been an internment camp during the war. Mr.Fletcher, the owner, was no doubt as honest as one could expect in such an enterprise, but faced with an invasion of beer-swilling Hertfordshire motor-cyclists he was onto a loser from the start and was the butt of all our childish humour.

Breakfast the following day was the occasion for setting out the ground-rules. Geg (being the oldest and wisest) slipped our waitress a fiver, with the promise of another at the end of our stay, if she ‘looked after us’ – i.e. brought us the largest portions plus any leftovers. Actually, the grub was pretty awful, but we felt we had to make the point anyway. She was a comely red-haired Irish wench (whom I totally failed to get off with) and did us proud during the week.

Geg firmly refused to drink the half-pint mug of milky tea from the lukewarm pot that appeared on the table after meals: "It currdles in yure stomach," he claimed in his gentle Hertfordshire burr, and drank water instead. We promised not to tell anyone.

On race days, which at that epoch were Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we were entitled to packed lunches (spam sandwiches and a winy apple) and I was elected to order them (‘as many as you can get away with’). On the Monday I managed to kid the whey-faced blonde at the reception desk that we needed ten – and succeeded – but when I tried the same trick again on the Wednesday, Mr. Fletcher overheard my somewhat ambitious order for fourteen and came darting out from his office to counter the proposal. I made some lame excuse about thinking it was for Friday as well, but he was sharp enough where money was concerned to know when someone was trying it on. The whole game was farcical since the packed lunches were well-nigh inedible and we invariably ended up throwing them away and buying steak pies at a pub. What counted, though, was the principle of trying to get more than our money’s-worth.

By a strange coincidence, all the places we chose to watch practice and races – Parliament Square, Ballacraine, Glen Helen and so on – were all within easy reach of establishments licensed to sell alcoholic beverages. It was during the 250cc race at Ginger Hall that the first serious breakaway of the week occurred, with Don getting in a ringer while we were still only on our third pint. That set the pattern for the week: drink up or miss out. On the day of the junior race, which we watched from Glen Helen, the weather was unusually hot and records were broken – Steve Spencer set up the first ‘ton’ lap for a single-cylinder 350cc machine, we succeeded in getting in a round while Don’s back was turned – and then we decided to be the first motorcycle club to cross the stream via stepping stones. We lost the wager: Pat missed his footing halfway across, I tried to save him and we both pitched into the icy water come straight from Snaefell. The only remedy was, of course, another round of beer.

Certain cynical readers may have formed the impression that our visit was in fact a gigantic pub-crawl, away from the reach of our wives and girlfriends. Nothing could be further from the truth. It cannot be denied that we did drink beer from time to time – it was one of the hottest TTs on record, after all – and on occasions the heat caused us to stagger. And so warm was it in the evenings that we felt duty-bound to hike to the Groudle Glen to see how well-stocked the pub was in mild ale, and it is with all due modesty that I can report that on the Thursday we did in fact attain our objective by drinking it dry 15 minutes before closing time.

Having been out of the country for so long I don’t know what things are like these days, but I imagine that TT week is probably full of various activities that keep one concentrated on motorcycle racing. In the past there were fewer organised events laid on and on non-race days one had to scratch around for other pursuits. One of these was the concours d’élégance for vintage motorbikes, the occasion of much bitching about entrants who bought old bikes already ‘done up’ and hid them away, to be unwrapped only for the judging; they didn’t ride them. Nevertheless, as a point of honour, Tim and Pat, plus a few other ruffians of their acquaintance, entered their well-used machines just to take the opportunity to mock the aforementioned ponces. In the evening the real enthusiasts flocked to a pub in the vicinity of Crosby to drown their sorrows and do a bit more sneering. One character, Ron Cresswell, used to make a great show of pissing into his carbide lamp – to prime it, he claimed – before venturing into the gloom of the Manx night.

One evening, hoping to offer a break from the obligation of beer-drinking, I proposed a visit to the Douglas cinema to watch George Formby in No Limit. This idea was firmly rejected by the majority on the grounds that they had all seen it umpteen times. So what? It’s part of the TT tradition. In the end only young Chris came with me, and found himself sitting next to Stuart Graham, Mike Hailwood’s Honda team-mate. See what you missed, you others!

I said it was hot, and on the Thursday morning someone mooted the idea of scrambling down the cliff behind Fletcher’s to cool off by going skinny-dipping. The approach was hazardous, rather like one of those mountain screes where once you start sliding you can’t stop, and when we arrived in a sunless, windswept cove the plan seemed less attractive. Though Pat plunged in, one toe in the icy water was enough to convince the rest of us that the almighty had not created the Irish Sea for bathing. Finally persuading Pat that the only consequence of such foolhardiness would be cramp, chilblains and pneumonia, we turned to go back and met Big Eric, who had painstakingly eased his enormous bulk down the precipice and now had to go back up without the benefit of a rest. We worked in relays, pulling or pushing, and eventually restored him to terra firma. Hauling a mammoth out of a pit would have been easier, but all he could say in gratitude was, "You’ve just taken ten years off my life."

Swimming being out of favour, we ventured southwards in the afternoon, the idea being to visit the nautical museum at Castletown, but somehow got waylaid and spent rather longer in the pub in Port St. Mary than we intended. After all, it was a very hot week. At three o’clock in the afternoon we decided to abort the museum visit and made our way back to Fletcher’s for a well-deserved nap before facing the rigours of the evening’s binge at the Groudle Glen.

Along the route we crossed the Fairy Bridge and instead of greeting the little folk as custom demands I made the mistake of uttering an obscene remark. Retribution was swift: shortly afterwards, on hairpin bend, I stalled my Comet and in a gesture of over-confidence not unconnected with the consumption of several pints of beer, attempted to kick-start the bike while freewheeling downhill. The engine backfired, the kick-start lever jerked upwards and I performed a graceful arc over the handlebars. The Vincent veered off the road and crashed into a rock but fortunately I avoided serious injury by landing on my head.

For Friday’s Senior event we made an ill-considered decision to watch the race from over a wall between Ramsey hairpin and the Gooseneck. In retrospect, our defence would be that we didn’t know that this was to be one of the greatest ever TT battles, and one certainly not to be watched far from the reach of a place of refreshment. In, fact, the lack of beer was probably largely responsible for Geg being caught short and having to empty his bowels over a cliff while hanging precariously from a scraggy bush. I hope there weren’t any hikers passing below.

After the excitement of our holiday week the homeward journey was relatively uneventful. Shortly before our scheduled stop in Hinstock we encountered a swarm of midges – never pleasant in the days before modern, enclosed helmets – and on arrival Geg regaled us, over an inaugural pint, how he was "roidin’ one-glove-’anded, pugglin’ bleddy floys out me ear."

The evening was a pleasant and restful interlude. The landlord did us proud with a slap-up meal and we wound down by playing cribbage with him, he being always glad of company since his wife left him. (‘She never could cope with the loss of trade after they opened the by-pass’.) The only minor fly in the ointment (fly? elephant, more like) was that there were only six beds. I nobly agreed to share with Big Eric, and discovered that it is possible to have a reasonable night’s sleep precariously balanced on the very rim of a metal-framed bed. No doubt several pints of bitter helped in this appraisal.

In the morning we woke to a superb English breakfast served up by mine host: eggs and bacon, pints of coffee, toast and Oxford marmalade, after which, everything else was an anti-climax: an accident-free return to Stevenage, sad farewells to pals with whom we’d shared yet another splendid holiday, and home, with only the prospect of a return to work the following day.

Although I did not know it at the time, that was to be my last visit to The Island as a spectator. The following year, 1968, I was there as a competitor, riding passenger for TT sidecar regular Mick Potter. We were using BSA engine for the first time (unwisely in my opinion) instead of our faithful Triumph and blew up at Gooseneck on the second lap while lying fifth. With Chris Vincent’s retirement and Peter Brown slowing on the last lap with a misfire we might have made the podium. But life is full of ‘what-might-have-beens’ and I was so disconsolate afterwards at the traditional booze-up at the Groudle Glen pub that not even Les Ward could make me laugh – and that’s saying something. Thanks for trying anyway, Les: you’re one of the funniest guys I know (and take that how you will!)

Two New Club Vice Presidents for 2008

The Committee was moved to approach two longstanding and worthy members of the club and offer them the honorary  post of Vice President.

I am delighted to report that they have both accepted.

They are:

         Les Ward And  Arnold Hoiles  

Both Les and Arnold Have served the club with distinction over the years, Les you may recall was the Club Treasurer for many years, and Arnold is one of the founder members of the club.

They have both written to the Club Secretary, I append the letters below.

Please make an effort to chat to both these members, you will learn a lot about the Club and Motorcycling in general.

This article appeared in the Stevenage Comet Newspaper on Thursday 13th December 2007.

Tony has given me this interesting newspaper article, and even better picture from 1982.

Here's a close up:

A tyre company has researched the bendiest roads in Britain; we shall have to see how many we can try out in the coming season!

The full top ten list is:

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