1948 Gloucester Trial
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This wonderful clip of the Gloucester Trial appeared on You Tube early in September 2007 and generated a lot of interest on the Classical Gas Message Board before Peter Seabrook-Harris made this posting:
"Well chaps I can take credit for this clip and fill in a few gaps as the story is amazing. In the mid 1980s my brother in law (who knows sod all about cars so a Morgan could be a MG etc) told me he'd been off sick and just happened to mention he'd seen a kids programme (Windmill) which featured some funny cars like mine - an early Dellow CAB 282. I got hold of a copy via the back door and sure enough it was this clip of the 48 Gloucester Trial.
Better still it features my Dellow prototype (no 3) CAB 282, an early Austin 7 chassis car owned by Lewis Tracey who later partnered his great rival Ken Rawlings of Buttercup fame on a Monte Carlo rally in a Standard Vanguard. This is the car in the early sequence seen driving away. Other Dellows are Mick Heighway (OP 3834), who was Ron Lowe's (The Low bit of Dellow) dentist, and Eric Penn in a beautifully bodied HAB 245 Dellow and EDE 384 another important car.
CAB & EDE still happily survive! Sadly though this clip came from a whole bunch of 16mm which was consigned to landfill by the BBC apparently and was only saved as random clips to provide some representative material - probably because it featured Kenneth Horne?"
Simon Woodall also contributed the following:
"You might spot also that the "extraordinary car" climbing Ham Mill, and later the 2nd Allard on Nailsworth, is the Geof Imhof car KLD 5 now owned by Roger Ugalde. You can see from this car why the 1/3rd overhang rule was introduced. Roger Ugalde assures me that you can still see the weld marks on the chassis where this extension was added.
The car leaving the start just after the starter has been introduced is the Onslow-Bartlett Mercury Special. The second car attempting Juniper is Ron Lowe in his pre-Dellow special and, to fill in the Dellow link, the Frazer-Nash BMW EMO 174 on Hodgecombe is Ken Dellingpole."
The only information that I can add about the cars is to point out that the Onslow-Bartlett Mercury Special also features as a picture in "More Wheelspin" - it was clearly one of the more memorable specials of the immediate Post War period.
As regards the four sections featured: Ham Mill looks virtually unchanged today, both in the middle section and at the top; you can, of course, read more about Juniper in the Classic Sections pages of this website although I realise that I will need to re-write the Post War History section now that we know it was used for the 1948 Gloucester trial; Hodgecombe continued in use on the route of the Cotswold Clouds into the 1980s but has been "abandoned" for many years and is now designated as a bridleway - if you compete on the modern Cotswold Clouds Trial you pass the top of Hodgecombe, on the right-hand side of the road, immediately after exiting the Crawley section; and it's interesting to note the start to Nailsworth Ladder - approached from the Nailsworth direction (on the wrong side of the road!) with a "180 left" following by the sharp "90 right" into the section proper.