Classical Gas - For Trials Enthusiasts

Is it Brian Colman driving the Yeller Dutton at The Strid on the 2010 Ilkley Classic trial?

Event- Bristol motor club Naish Hillclimb?

Dyram Park Hillclimb?

Backwell Hill Climb?

My first clue. The picture was taken after WW2. I don't believe Backwell was used after the war. http://website.lineone.net/~pete.stowe/pete_bristol.htm I am not sure about Burrington Combe as a hillclimb for cars but I can tell you the pictures was taken a fair few miles away.

Perhaps you should concentrate a little more on the driver and the car. Will another picyure help?

The track in the first photo - Is it Curborough?

Getting close on the car Josh, just a little more. Frankly I don't think you will get the place the picture was taken unless you move around 100 miles east but not as far north as Curborough Simon.

I have to say the driver may be getting frustrated he isn't recognised!

Not sure Sterling ever drove a trials car. Although he did a lot our man didn't get to that level in the sport.

Sterling trialed Cannons. ive got some photos of mike cannon and sterling in the workshop with sterling sat in a cannon chassis.

Here is another clue. Our man is in this picture, along with Brian Lister and Don Moore of Lister Cars. We believe Archie Scott-Brown was at the function as well. Perhaps they discussed the dangers of motor racing compared to trialling.

John alley?

Huge thank you to Robin Barlow for the pictures, information and the idea for the question.

Picture 1 - John Aley himself says "That's a picture that takes me back to the autumn of 1952 when the 50 CC organised a hill climb at Heydon in the Royston area. We called it a Colonial Hillclimb as it was on a gravel surfaced farm road. Not much of a course with an S bend soon after the start and then a straight climb to the finish. It was well supported though and I think you will find that some of the collection of pictures your sent me a short time ago were taken there.

I had earlier that summer been running an old and unreliable MG NA Magnette which I changed for this Ford Special that was state of the art for its type. It didn't have an 1172 engine but an eight with an overhead inlet valve conversion. I recall winning - easily - the 50 Club sporting trial that November and may have run it at the club's Bottisham Speed Trial at about that time.

Then with little notice the RAC changed the rules for trials cars making us have the engine much further forward and no seats over the axle with which this little car certainly couldn't comply so over the winter I rebuilt it with a standard Ford chassis after which I recall running it at the CUAC Bedwell Hey speed trial that as usual opened the season in early March. The Bedwell Hey track which the CUAC had used a year or two before was actually the roads around the former bomb dump at Witchford aerodrome - a scene of lots of unofficial motor sport at that time.

How I survived using that open car everyday on the road for nearly a year I don't know. It had no creature comforts at all and its lack of doors regularly brought the staff of my wife's office in Brooklands Avenue to the window to see her dismounting in her fashionably short, tight skirt"

Picture 2 - Robin Barlow tells me - "It was taken in 1952 and is labelled 'JRA Climbs Again'. I think it was taken probably at Bedwell Hey a farm track on the A10 Ely Road."