cityrebel

despite the early season problems, belle vue have shown what can be done with a blank canvas. The NSS is a superb race track with wide bends and numerous racing lines. I'm already looking forward to my second visit!

Geographically the best three in one day I went to was long eaton, scunthorpe and Halifax in 1982. I've also done Exeter, weymouth and swindon, peterborough, king's Lynn and Boston, reading, rye house and Wimbledon, king's Lynn, ipswich and hackney.

I was there last Saturday for the lakeside match and the crowd looked very poor. No doubt the result at purfleet on Friday put a few off.

I was surprised to see Jon Cook address the leicester fans at the end of the meeting. I thought it was the job of the home promoter to rally the troops!

and those of us that are regulars at rye house!

i totally agree with you. I often wonder how belle vue managed to overcome the loss of Peter craven in 1963.

Karger's win over masters reminded me of Preben Rosenkilde beating ole olsen at west ham in 1971. The crowd went wild on that occasion as well!

1971 was a golden year for me as a nipper. Four top flight tracks in london, speedway heaven!

according to the speedway researcher website, he also rode at Cowdenbeath in 1965.

When there were no tracks left in london!

The crowd was decent considering the awful weather forecast. There was a fair bit of dirt down for a change, can some be sent over to rye house in time for Saturday's meeting!

Yet another ultra slick track last night. The shape looks fine, just a bit more dirt please!

Jon Stevens is organising the dons reunion. Jon has put in a lot of work trying to contact ex riders in the hope they will attend. He will also have a collection of Wimbledon memorabilia on display which I contributed to!

I always enjoyed my visits to Carmarthen speedway, in fact my in laws still live there. Crowds were never good at the showground, running on the same day as Newport couldn't have helped. Good luck with your attempts at a revival.

I have good memories of both tilehurst and smallmead. Both were pretty sparse stadiums and both attracted really big crowds in the boom time of the 1970's. Smallmead was the better shaped track, tilehurst was too flat for my liking, although it did have a great chip shop opposite the stadium. I wonder if it's still there!

That is modern speedway for you. For that reason I never travel long distance if there is any threat of rain

I never got to Sunderland, but I did see the gladiators ride at rye house in 1974!

i've seen all of those plus woffinden.

indeed it is. I was there that night, a very sad occasion for me personally.

Sad to say shads I have to agree with you. The crowds in the islands last NL season were poor, with a lot of mainlanders boosting the numbers. Two years on and the state of british speedway is worse than it was in 2013. Hopefully all the hard work that has been put in will be rewarded with more support from the locals.

I was at eastbourne on Saturday and rye house on Sunday. Both meetings had very poor crowds, I doubt if there was much more than 500 at both tracks combined. Freezing cold weather with a threat of rain is enough to put most people off.

that hole was still on the first bend last Wednesday!

The track looked overwatered to me last night, considering the freezing conditions it was never going to dry out quickly. This led to a few nasty crashes in the early heats, but there was some decent racing once the track dried out. The crowd was poor, but this was understandable due to the Artic weather!

I'm not too impressed with the 6pm start time for these sunday meetings. Not very family friendly for kids with school on monday mornings, or for the likes of me who has to be up at 5am for work!.

Well run meetings are what I want. I can tolerate a poor match as long as there are not too many delays. You can't legislate for crashes and medical issues, it's the extended intervals and multiple tractor breaks that annoy me.