Nostalgia
begins at Holme...

Kendal Classic Motorcycle Club’s annual Nostalgia Weekend just gets bigger and better, with the fun taking place at Holme Farm, near Sedbergh on 16-17 August.

Life, so they say, is full of surprises – and that was certainly the case at the recent Nostalgia Weekend at Holme Farm. For a start, the sun shone with almost Mediterranean ferocity for the duration of Saturday’s pre-65 and twinshock trial and then, at Sunday’s headlining scramble, crowd favourite Terry Challinor stunned the assembled crowds by not winning the pre-65 over 350cc class after suffering machine failure in his first of three outings! Mind you, it wasn’t for want of trying. TC’s main rival, big Tim Manton, still had his work cut out to take the overall class honours, holding off the flying Tim Dalloway (who was adjudged man of the meeting) and Davy Cooper – as well as that man Challinor, who was really going for it in races two and three.

All that drama was in the future though, as a full house entry set off for three laps of a revised Holme Farm course for Saturday’s trial. With some of last year’s land lost to the trial for environmental considerations, riders headed up into the hills for a fresh challenge on brand new sections plotted high above Holme Farm.

Even on the hard route, the trial was always going to be won on a low score. Unit class winner Tony Calvert got the closest of the hard route pre-65 riders to perfection, guiding his Holmes Cub round for the loss of just one. But there were two cleans in the twinshock class, where Honda jockeys Mark Barrow and Michael Irving had to be split by the ‘oldest rider’ rule.

Mick Grant headed an Ariel clean sweep in the pre-unit class on three, while Chris Gascoigne led the James domination of the two-stroke class – also on three. On the easier route, guest of honour Eric Boocock helped himself to the unit class win, bringing his beautiful C15 home having dabbed just the once. Harry Stanistreet just shaded the rigid class, Andrew Collins topped the pre-unit entry and Craig Hunter matched Booey’s single dab ride to finish top two-stroke. And in the twinshocks, another dead heat on three marks was resolved in favour of Honda mounted Paul Pattison. All that remained was for the riders to gather at the signing off tent to swap tall tales of near misses and spectacular cleans as they enjoyed a free bottle of Bluebird Bitter courtesy of the Coniston Brewing Co, Bliss.

So, the scene was set for Sunday’s scramble and heavy rain during the night had failed to deter either spectators or competitors. And there was plenty of action for all to enjoy – quite apart from the Challinor/Manton duel.

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