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[mp025004]

When I first joined my local motorbike club, Derby Phoenix, we organised trials and scrambles, as well as road racing.

My most notable scrambling memory is of the 1974 Bass Sidecar Scramble at Kniveton near Asbourne. Along with a few friends we would go along to marshal, travelling in style in my ex-Post Office Anglia van, and camp at the circuit. On this occasion I had borrowed a tent from Austin Hockley who made me promise not to damage it as he wanted to sell it.

Whilst at the meeting I got talking to Dave Bickers and his passenger. Dave told me why he had given up drinking, something to do with riding on top of a car in France I think. But the upshot was that I sold Dave the tent as he was struggling to bed his crew down in the back of a big american van.

He bought the tent without looking at it, I often wonder if he was happy with the deal, Austin was.