Scrambles spirit

As the 350cc Matchless scrambles special fired into life, I was transported back to my childhood and my first visit to Matchems Park in March 1964, where my love of big four-stroke off-road singles started. The event was the Good Friday Hants Grand National and the line-up on that cold, early spring day was a high-quality one, with the works BSA team of Jeff Smith, John Burton and Arthur Lampkin, the Rickman brothers on their pair of gleaming white Metisses and the AMC quartet of Dave Nicoll, Vic Eastwood, Chris Horsfield and four times British champion Dave Curtis on their factory Matchlesses all present and correct. At the time, a picture of Curtis broadsiding his bike to victory in a muddy wintertime TV scramble was one of my most treasured possessions in my motorcycle scrapbook, but now here he was, just a matter of feet away, blasting stones and dust over the huge, enthusiastic crowd in pursuit of race winner Smith and runner-up Derek Rickman on his Matchless-powered Metisse.

This month’s test bike doesn’t have the provenance of being