The ACTC was founded in 1981 and the Championship was started in 1984. Since then it has run every year, although awards were not made for 2001 (as the number of events was reduced by the Foot and Mouth crisis) nor for 2020 (as most events were cancelled due to the Coronavirus crisis). This page…
The MCC Spring Trial
The MCC Spring Trial is, as Simon Woodall says below, “a little scrap of forgotten MCC history”. In October 2007 Simon Woodall sent me the Results for the 1980 event, with these comments: This is a little scrap of forgotten MCC history. The Spring Trial ran for two years, 1980 and 1981. The Clerk of…
Really Classic Sections
Back in December 2012 I prepared a list of the ten trials sections in longest continuous (or almost continuous) use for major trials, intending it to be used as one of Michael Leete’s Classical Gas Christmas Quiz questions. As it turned out, Michael found some better questions, but I thought people might be interested in…
Famous Test Hills
Climbing steep hills has held a fascination for the motorist since the very early days, as shown by these articles from motoring magazines of the 1920s and 1930s. The links all open new windows with the articles as PDF files. Some Noted British Test Hills Article from The Autocar for December 11th, 1920. This makes…
About Page updated
I’ve just added a third paragraph to the History section of the About this site Page, noting the background to the recent Website changes. The more observant will also notice that the website strapline has changed from “The When and Where of Classic Trials” to “Classic Trials History”, to reflect the latest re-focus.
The Guitings unravelled
The area around Guiting Power and Temple Guiting, on the Cotswold Hills between Cheltenham and Stow-on-the-Wold, was criss-crossed by the three main trials that used the North Cotswolds – the SUNBAC Colmore and NWLMC Gloucester Trials pre-war, and the Falcon Guy Fawkes Trial in the 1950s to 1970s. After discovering Kineton, my attention turned to…
Classic Sections – Kineton
The Woodalls, Bertie (driving in the cap) and Victor (passengering in the fedora), in Victor’s Wolseley Ford special at the start of ‘New Kineton’ on the 1939 Colmore Trial. With many thanks to Simon Woodall for providing both the original photographs. Although Juniper might be considered a very obvious candidate for the first in this…
Classic Sections – Juniper
From an illustration in ‘Wheelspin’ by C.A.N.May. Before the War, Juniper was the most feared of all the hills in the Cotswolds and rates more entries (18) in the index of Austen May’s Wheelspin than any other section. It was also the one about which I’d received more “Do you know where it is?” requests…
Classic Trials Magazines
In January 2016 I started trying to unravel the dates when the various ACTC magazines were published. Then, less than a month later, I was lucky enough to acquire, from MCC member Martin Webb, a veritable treasure trove of old trials magazines which not only filled lots of gaps in my own collection but also…
Website changes
You may have noticed that the menus in the header have been removed, and lists of the Post Categories and Pages have been added to the sidebar. I have also removed a number of pages which I now consider to be redundant. These changes are the first step in another re-focusing of this website, and…