Braintree & District Motorcycle Club www.braintree-mcc.co.uk

TAIL LIGHT February 2018

OFFICERS OF THE CLUB FOR 2017 Chairman: Steve Butcher 01376 516051 stephenbutcher1376@tiscali.co.uk

Secretary: John Yearley johnyearley11@aol.com Treasurer: Chris Cook 01376 328602

Auditor: Andrew Thain Membership & EC Gazette Secretary: Stuart Penfold stuart.penfold@ymail.com

Competitions Recorder: Wes Butcher 07949 031343

Tail Light Editor: Wes Butcher wesley.butcher@atrium-uw.com EC Board Reps: Eddie Wass and Chris Cook

Committee: Andrew Thain 01376 339226, James Yearley 07734 801066, Wes Butcher, Adrian Parker 01371 850508, Allen Collier 01371 850609,

Chris Cook, Sam Cook 0777087643, Phil Read, John Yearley Trustees of the Club: Dave Clark, John Yearley, Eddie Wass Bob Maiden

DIARY

AGM – Thursday 8th March @ Braintree Liberal Club (Croft Close, Coggeshall Rd CM7 9ES) 8.00 Prompt Start. Please try and come along to support your club! Your voice counts so some along and get involved.

We are very keen to get some fresh faces on the committee so if you fancy helping out in any aspect of the club then please let us know.

Annual Award Evening – Saturday 24th February @ Horse & Groom, Rayne Road, Braintree. 7.30 start.

Free buffet for all members as previous few years. There is car parking at the rear or alternatively use Sainsbury’s car park which is very close. Again please come along and support your club and have a fun

evening with your fellow club members. Would all award winners please make an extra effort to get there and pick up their gleaming trophies!

Spansey Wood Trial / Academy trial – Sunday 11th March. 10.30 start.

Happy New Year... Welcome to the first edition of the year! Another busy festive period for the club members which resulted in two fantastic trials and two Academy Dates for the youngsters. Thanks to everyone that sent me some news to include in this edition. Enjoy the read and hope to see you all out there riding or getting involved in running the events soon. May I remind people that you can get regular up to date information about the clubs activities by following us on Facebook. I realise that some of you may not use it or find the thought of it a bit daunting but I’m sure that if the Chairman and an evergreen John Boyd come to mention it can use it then it demonstrates that it’s a great resource for even the most un-tech savy of us! Just ask a friend or relative to download it on your phone or computer and find “Braintree and District MCC” on it. We post lots of good news, reports, photos etc!

Philip Miller Thanks to Mark Hughes for sending me this… I recently saw Mrs Gladys Miller, Philips wife and she gave me these photos of early days of the club. I’m sure you are aware Philip was one of the founding members of the club. There isn’t much detail with them as they were from the late 40’s. Philip sold his matchless to buy Gladys an engagement ring, he always told me that it was a tossup between a ring or a JAP racing engine. Anyway thought it was something for the Taillight. Other members might know who some of the characters are.

Check out the BDMCC race shirt worn by Philip here…

Below – Do you recognise any of these?!

Gladys told me that in the early days of the club due to fuel rationing and not enough to go round that events were often held using bicycles. I bet they never thought that one day we would be running events

with electric motor cycles!

Junior Academy We have two events coming up: On Saturday 4th we have a youth only academy day at Beazley End. Youths with their own electric bikes are most welcome and we will have a suitable for all abilities course set up. Next up we will be running an academy alongside the Adult trial on Sunday 11th March at Spansey Wood. As you can imagine the running of these events is a lot of work by certain club members and we would appreciate as much help as is on offer. It’s super rewarding watching the kids progress so please help out if you can. Just contact me before hand or find me on the day if you are able to help. Thanks.

Thumpers 2017 Yours truly had a fun ride out at the 37th running of the Thumpers back in November. In past years Ace Parker has taken great pleasure in watching me haul the huge 500cc rigid Ariel round the event but this year he took pity on the “puney bomb” and leant me his excellent and somewhat easier to ride (!!) Bantam for the day. Now this was nice... Bike arrived all prepared and unloaded for me. At the end of the trial team manager Ace even loaded it back up and off it went to the jet washers! The trial itself was fairly undramatic because of the dry weather. Thorrington really does require a bit more watering to make things interesting but it’s a nice long ride round the lap nevertheless. In days gone by riders would be finishing in the dark having had a really tough day in the office. This year I was all finished by 12.15 having thoroughly enjoyed myself getting the little Bantam on the stop and sideways for the duration of the morning in my very own enduro (I had a Sunday roast to get to!). 3rd place was my rewards which was ok considering 5 of my 11 marks was through a silly over the bars incident! The only other club member riding was Roy who aced them all on the easy route to take the win in the Unit class on 7 marks – well done Roy! Roy seems to be taking an awful lot of banter about dropping down to the easier route at recent events but it has to be said he still rides that well and at least he’s still getting out on a Sunday which is a lot more than can be said of some others! Thank you to Sarah Pateman for these very good photos.

Below – Chairman looking after my very own fan club…

Below – Roy aced them all on the easy route

Turkey Trot 2017 The Turkey Trot held at Beazley End on the 17th December went well despite awful weather conditions. The day started in a blanket of frost and frozen ground and finished with driving cold rain. Stuart did a sterling job taking all the day entries and getting the results turned out so quickly. So quickly in fact that by the time I got back in after collecting markers out on the course the prizes had been given and everyone had left! Hence I’ve got no photos of the awards given out this year unfortunately. Big thanks to JY, Stuart, Pete and Adrian and all those involved.

Below – Sam rushed round after helping run the academy in the morning narrowly missed out on pipping Chairman to the Inter Championship

Below – James tackling a horrible log on Adrian’s section

Below – Here is Chris Ryland on the same section. Just check out his bike! It’s a complete bitsa with a largely Oset frame housing a 4-Stroke Honda MX lump – absolute animal and looks the nuts!

NYE Trial 2017 The now well established NYE trial took place at Twinstead Woods. Unfortunately our resident chef and chief BBQ’er Roy was struck down with illness leading up to the event so the BBQ in the woods the day before for those setting out wasn’t possible. A solid entry of over 60 was just about right to make sure there was room to park the vans and the trial flowed nicely. The scores seemed to reflect the section severity being about spot on with Julian Harvey winning the hard route on 6 down to the last finisher on the easy route being on 102. Some of the sections did get a bit too muddy but if we don’t use these bits of the wood we struggle to make 10 sections. Hopefully everyone enjoyed the blast through the mud anyhow. Sgsin big thanks to all those who helped (you know who you are!) including CofC Steve and Adrian for organising the land.

Below – Ben enjoyed a good ride round at a trial and finished 5th overall.

Below – John Yearley watches cloesly as Pete takes his turn on his new Mont.

Below- Graham shows just how deep the water is!

Below – Rising star youung Alf Eaves got his Oset all the way round the trial and to the finish completing all sections in the prcess – what an effort! Well done Alf!

Below – Our Youth champion Jack takes a break to get a photo with Dad.

CLUB TRIALS CHAMPIONSHIP 2017 The club championships were settled at the final round – the Turkey Trot. You can read about all the action above. Despite Chairman not riding due to running the Academy Sammy could only finish in 7th place which meant he finished short of the points target needed to overhaul the old man. So yet another piece of silverware goes to the Chairman. This surely must go down as the most successful year ever on a motorcycle for the now over 60! In the novices it was all too agonising for Graham – with Paul a non-starter it looked as though the championship could be going his way but he could only finish down in 8th place and therefore fall just 8 measly marks off of Paul – come on Graham you must have your name on that trophy next year! The final tables are below. Congratulations to all the winners highlighted in yellow. Please come to the annual awards evening to pick up your trophies. We would like to make special mention to our 2 youth riders who have made superb strides forwards this past year. Jack Holmes collects the huge youth trophy for his endeavours and it will be great to see this trophy being handed out again having been kept on the shelf for several years now. Finally young Finn Penny gets the award for the most improved rider in 2017 and again will have a big trophy waiting for him at our annual awards evening. Well done all.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

BRAINTREE COLCHESTER CHELMSFORD BRAINTREE BRAINTREE COLCHESTER BRAINTREE SPANSEY WOOD THORINGTON BEAZLEY END SNAQUE PIT

PURLS HILL ALPHAMSTONE BEAZLEY END

13/03/2016 23/04/2017 13/05/2017 22/07/2017 10/09/2017 08/10/2017 17/12/2017

Position at Beazley End

Total Points

Expert A James Yearley 11 22 Expert B Wes Butcher 3 107 Graham Palmer 5 59 Inter Stephen Butcher N/A 54 Richard Penfold N/A 13 Sam Cook 7 39 Kevin Palmer 3 42 Roy Palmer N/A 10 Inter B Chris Cook N/A 14 Martin Baker N/A 0 Barry Harber N/A 9 Novice Paul Jefferies N/A 50 Graham Corker 8 42 Mark Hale 18 10 Paul French n/a 14 Pre 70 Allen Collier n/a 25 Phil Read n/a 20 Roy Palmer n/a Twinshock Graham Palmer n/a 44 Allen Collier n/a 39 Kevin Palmer n/a Martin Baker n/a 9 Roy Palmer n/a 34 Youth Finn Penny 2 37 Jack Holmes 1 50

Moving on to the 2018 championship and we have cut a couple of dates off the calendar as we had very small turn outs at some of the events and collecting all the scores is a time consuming task. We will now just have 5 events with your best 4 out of the 5 counting towards the final tables. Please try and ride at these events to create some good competition.

1 2 3 4 5

BRAINTREE COLCHESTER BRAINTREE BRAINTREE BRAINTREE SPANSEY WOOD THORINGTON SNAQUE PIT

PURLS HILL BEAZLEY END

13/03/2016 23/04/2017 22/07/2017 10/09/2017 17/12/2017