'The finest natural speedway imaginable' is how The Motor Cycle describes Pendine Sands in 1920. Edwardian gentry raced 'motors' on the beach; cars driven by their chauffeurs, motorcycles jockeyed by hired men. After the Great War, the motor cycle races grew into a major sporting and social event in Wales, attracting, so it is said, larger crowds than a rugby international. When Malcolm Campbell and J Godfrey Parry Thomas successively broke the World Land Speed Record on its breathtaking beach, Pendine was, for a glorious while, world famous.
The Welsh TT, staged over the August Bank Holiday from 1922, was an exuberant, three-day event. It put the 'roar' into the Roaring Twenties for the thousands who made the trek on foot, by bicycle, train and charabanc, to this remote, south-western corner of Carmarthenshire. They came to see Brooklands and Isle of Man stars George Dance, H R Davies, Freddie Dixon, Tommy Spann, Jack Carr and, latterly, Fred Rist. These racing idols rode Sunbeam, Brough Superior, Scott, Douglas, AJS, Norton and BSA 'works' racing machines and met stern opposition from local heroes, Handel Davies, Dr A Lindsay, Morris Isaac, L F Griffiths, L V Thomas, R J D Burnie and Eddie Stephens who, very often, gave them more than a run for their money.
Pendine Races relives the glory days and records an episode in our sporting and social history in ganger of being lost.
Lynn Hughes grew up to tales of the Glory Days on Pendine. His father, who raced a 'Big-port' AJS in the twenties, took him to his first race there in 1946 when, bizarrely, on the last lap of the Championship race, an aeroplane came out of the low cloud and flew with the leaders to take the chequered flag.
To obtain a copy of this book, chronicling this most unique of sporting venues, send £28.32 (UK), £29.84 (Europe) or £32.79 (Rest of the World) to:
J D Lewis & Sons Ltd
Gomer Press
Llandysul
Ceredigion
British Isles, SA44 4QL