FAFs Rejoice and Punch Revealed!

Once again, for those needing the all colour version, click here!

Those who have been following the everyday saga of track folk, as presented in the Blunsdon Blog, will no doubt know, the air fence has been monopolising our work over the past five weeks.

Today I can proudly announce that the blo...dy thing is clean and tidy and safely stored ready for collection by the manufacturers. Gerald, Punch, Mick (from Swindon Pressure Cleaning) and I managed to hook up the final 15 sections in the car park, hose them down, deflate and dry them and then fold and store. So all you FAFs out there – Friends of the Air Fence – will have to make do with just the occasional mention between now and March when we’ll go through the whole rigmorole in reverse when we put the blo..dy thing back again in readiness for press and practice day.

Mind you, I could have parked my car better. By the time that Mick had finished with the fence the once pristine white 205 looked as if it had just completed the old RAC Rally. It really was “Showered in Shale”, to borrow the title from Jeff Scott’s brilliant account of a year in speedway.

While we pack the panels away Gerald ventures out onto the track with the small blade. He’s considered using the big motorway blade again but the shale on the turns is still very wet from where we cut it last week and we’re worried that the whole machine will simply get bogged down. At this stage we need to add some new shale to the old to get it to bind properly. Many of the properties that shale possess help it to stick together and form a firm, hard base but those elements are also the first to be washed away when it rains. Consequently, the shale on the track is weak and needs bolstering up. Sadly our JCB is under repair at the moment so the new shale will have to wait. It’s a real shame because had we been able to mix it in we could them have bladed and then tyre packed (to protect the surface) in readiness for future work.

Punch and I shovel loose material away from the kick boards and the trim up the track down the main straight, cutting away the shale from alongside the white line. Gerald spreads the debris we shower on the track and the whole place looks as if it could stage a meeting by the time that we pack our things up as the light starts to fade.

The lack of new work on the track this week gives me a chance to talk to the longest serving member of the track team at Blunsdon, the one and only Punch.

Rod Ford, known throughout the speedway world as “Punch” is a real character. He got the nickname from being a pretty successful amateur boxer in his younger days, actually appearing on television for one bout. Married, with a large family based in the area, he dotes on his children and grandchildren. If you want to bring a smile to his face, ask him to talk about his grandchildren.

Punch’s father was a farm worker and the family moved about a fair deal during his formative years. He recounts stories of long, long days spent working in the fields as a youngster – character and strength building times that have served him so well in the intervening years.

When I proposed an interview his first comment was, “Write what you f….g well like!” so what follows is taken from odd snippets of conversation with him over the past few weeks.

He saw his first meeting at Swindon in 1949, the very first meeting at the Abbey. He couldn’t remember the opposition or the score. Here I turn to Robert Bam ford’s excellent tome “Homes of British Speedway” (ISBN 0-7524-4004-7 which would make a brilliant Christmas present for any speedway fan!) That first meet was on 23rd July 1949 and the opposition was Oxford. The score … well, the Robins actually lost 39-45, but we’ll gloss over that. He can remember that his Dad and he stood on a block of concrete on the exit of turn two. From that moment on Punch was hooked on the noble sport.

To date Punch has worked at the track for 36 years. He was introduced to the track team by his good friend, the late Ray Morse, who for many years was Clerk of the Course at Swindon right up until his death. Another track man, John Smith, worked alongside Punch under the overall guidance of Ted Nelson, who was in charge of the track at the time.

His first tasks were shovelling the shale and tractor driving. Of course, in those days, speedway at Swindon was a Saturday night affair and this enabled Punch to combine his full time job as a builder with his passion for the shale sport. Watering of the track was via four hose pipes, one on each bend, and Punch spent the first few years hosing down turns three and four.

This was many years before the advent of the air fence. In those days the track was surrounded by a four foot high safety fence and any advertising banners were simply hung over the barrier. Crowds were huge in those halcyon days. Punch recalls having to park his car down near to the Turnpike Roundabout before one international match at the Abbey.

So what have been the major changes in his time at Blunsdon? Tracks were deeper in those days. The old two stroke Jawas and Japs coped with the deep stuff and times were not that far off what is seen nowadays. “It’s just that these four strokes are so powerful and the back wheels spin so much, I suppose the riders would find it difficult to turn the bikes enough.” He doesn’t have much time for today’s penchant for slick tracks. “It just seems as if everything is about speed, just brute speed. I don’t think you can say that the riders of old were more skilful than today but perhaps the better riders shone more and those with less talent had to work that much harder for success.”

Of course, the machinery used to prepare a track now is much more sophisticated than it was in the distant days pre the 4 stroke revolution. “Yes, but one major advantage those old bikes has was that they spread oil over the surface of the track and oil helps bind a shale surface better than anything else. By the end of a meeting virtually the entire track had been dusted with a thin film of engine oil and we just had to grade it and let the oil do the rest. Nowadays all we get is water from the dog track and that destroys the binding qualities of the surface and results in bumps and holes.”

The banking at The Abbey was steeper than it is now. “John Hector tried to blade it down so that it was like Poole’s track,” he comments. “But it’s built up a bit since then. We had to raise the safety fence to its present height (about 6 foot) for safety reasons – the lighting masts weren’t far enough away from the track fence so the Control Board made us raise them. It wasn’t popular with the fans but we had to do it for safety reasons.”

Rider safety is paramount when it comes to track preparation and Punch is under no illusions that the introduction of the air fence has been a good thing for speedway riders and fans alike. “It’s given riders more confidence to try different lines and in so doing has improved the quality of the racing.”

Blunsdon is one of the last big tracks in Britain and it is well known for the speeds that the riders achieve, yet the number of serious accidents at The Abbey is considerably less than at most tracks. Punch thinks he knows why. “It’s a big and open track. If a rider gets into trouble there’s usually plenty of space for him to try to correct himself. The banking also helps because it pushes the rider into the inside of the track and away from the fence. Our air fence has worked well this year. One referee (I’d better not mention any names) tried to claim that a rider had slipped under the fence during one incident but fortunately we had a photographer on hand who was able to show that the fence stopped him before he could slide under. The last nasty accident we had here was when Billy Hamill was injured here over a year ago. And that was because his engine seized mid corner and the rider behind him couldn’t get his bike down in time.”

When you’ve been as integral to the sport as Punch has been for such a long time it’s inevitable that you have favourite riders, and not so favourite riders!

“My favourite rider for sheer speed was Erik Gundersen, although Jan O Pedersen wasn’t far behind him. The most stylish was the late, and great Tommy Jansson. He was a beautiful rider to watch and the sport took a real blow when he was killed in a World Championship meeting in Sweden. Of our own boys I’d say Martin Ashby was one I always enjoyed watching. Of the visiting riders I liked Ilya Teromaa and John Boulger and I thought that the late Kenny Carter was perhaps the most exciting British rider of his time. It’s difficult comparing riders from different decades – the sport has moved on and developed and styles come and go. One rider who could hold the white line better than anyone else I ever saw at Blunsdon was Steen Mastrup in the early eighties. He was a much better rider than many think – good balance and control of the throttle. A safe and stylish rider.

Anders Michanek and Ove Fundin were hard riders but I always got on well with them. The best team manager I ever worked with was Dick Bradley, who used to own a garage in Cricklade. He was a great bloke to work for, but then I’ve worked for so many over the years. I’ve seen them all come and go,” he chuckles.

Of the modern day riders, who really impresses Punch. “I’d have to say that the most skilful rider I’ve seen here, in fact anywhere, is Leigh Adams. He has such skill and never looks in trouble. The most aggressive is Jason Crump. He is aggressive on the track and also off it. He really drives himself and deserves to be World Champion. If Leigh Adams had a little bit of Jason’s competitiveness he’d be World Champion. But Leigh’s a top bloke –really nice. This year especially, he’s made the effort to have a chat with track staff as often as possible and we really appreciate it. If Cumpy is Mr Aggressive then Mr Nice Guy is Mark Loram. “He is one of the fairest racers I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t give up until the race has finished and he never closes the door on a rider. I’ve seen a few who would as soon put you in the fence as let you past. That’s not Mark’s way and I respect him for that.”

But what about other tracks? Which ones, from the vast number that he’s visited, does he remember most fondly. “The old Edinburgh track was a pretty one and I do like the one at Somerset now. Tracks like the old circuit at Knowle in Bristol used to produce good racing.”

So what makes a good track? Punch’s views may not be in vogue with many promoters but his experience is vast and should not be ignored. “The secret, if there is one, is in the preparation. You can’t take short cuts with preparing a good track. The weather gets in the way and you have to find a way around that but it comes down to good old hard work. I like tracks to have lots of grip – I just can’t get on with these tracks that have been tyre packed to death. Watering is also vital. Too little and you’ve got a dust bowl, too much and the racing becomes processional. It’s a fine line but a good track man has to know his track and its surface so well. You can’t just pitch up on race day and run the grader around and hope for the best. You’ve got to work on it throughout the year. Build up the surface layer by layer and then read it like a book from week to week.”

As we look to the coming season and British riders once again find themselves only seeded through to the Grand Prix series, what does Punch believe is missing from our set up in the UK? “Simple. We need more training tracks and more ex riders and riders to run them. The Scandinavian and Polish riders have so much more opportunity to learn their skills when they are young. Our youngsters are pitched in with a “sink or swim” attitude. They don’t get a chance to work on their riding in a non pressurised manner.”

Somewhere over the rainbow…

First of all, a service announcement … “Mick, click here for the all singing, all colour version of the Blunsdon Blog.”

The weather forecast was awful but the day started well with beautiful clear blue skies. The rain arrived later before the sun re-appeared and a glorious rainbow lit up the sky. Did the end of the rainbow lie somewhere near to the site for the proposed new stadium? Was it a portent of things to come?

Work continued on the safety fence this week and featured another of the backroom boys whose work is often overlooked but whose contributions are invaluable.

Mick, from Swindon Pressure Cleaning Ltd, is the man who blasts away the dirt from the air fences each week. During the season Mick is always at the track first thing on a Thursday (race day) morning, to pressure wash the air bags and the advertising hoardings. Mick is a great speedway fan and has a wealth of stories and anecdotes about speedway at Blunsdon. When the air fence was first introduced at Blunsdon it seems that it was cleaned with buckets of water and brushes – a daunting task. Mick has been cleaning the fence for the past two years and does a marvellous job.

Our major task for the day is to clean as many of the fence panels from turns three and four before the rain comes. The entire air fence has to be sent back to the manufacturers for a service over the close season and they have a history of rejecting air fences that have not been cleaned properly. We link up the air fence panels in the car park and Mick begins the task of clearing the shale and slime. As if the mud on the outside of the panels was not bad enough, much of it has found its way inside the panels and has clogged up the Velcro fastenings.

Gerald, Punch and Mick continue with the cleaning while I drill out the rivets from the remaining kick boards. We are still having to rely upon our own tools after last week’s break in. There is little chance of us being able to get the stolen tools back so until replacements have been found we have to rely upon our own personal kit.

The sun stays out and helps to dry the cleaned panels. Out on the track Gerald has begun the massive task of blading some of the shale back from the kick boards. The result is a slushy surface and there is little we can do until the sun begins to dry some of it out.

Mick finishes the panels and then passes the pressure washer over our cars. I can’t remember seeing my white Peugeot looking so smart.

By the afternoon the surface of the track has been sufficiently dried to allow us to venture out with big motorway blade. Punch and Gerald are of the opinion that the surface is perfect for blading. The dampness in the surface has made its way down to the sub layers and the shale should cut evenly and easily. If the track is too dry the blade skims the surface but makes little real impact. The one drawback with our present planning is that the storm clouds are massing and its clear that rain on the bladed material will turn the whole surface into a morass.

Gerald starts work on the back straight entering turn three and the blade cuts down two or three inches. He pushes the material into turn three and returns to cut more away to even the back straight. As the season progresses more and more shale is graded away from the corners and down onto the main straights. This is unavoidable and happens mostly during grading mid meeting when the surface on the corners is cut as the back tyres struggle to grip. The excess is then collected by the graders and gradually builds up on the straights.

Punch follows Gerald with a tractor to distribute the shale more evenly and also to begin to pack down the loose material. Everything is going smoothly and then the rain starts to fall. The temperature drops dramatically and the whole scene becomes dark and gloomy. We work on for as long as we can but are soon soaked to the skin. By the time that we get the blade and the tractor off the track the surface is riven with rivulets from the dog track.

It seems that we will continue working each week up until Christmas. Plans are afoot to finish the fence panels and get them shipped off to AirTeck and a small digger is ordered so that we can dig a trench across turn one to carry a drainage pipe from the dog track to the main drain on the in field. Hopefully this will end the problems that we have suffered on turn 1.

Talk turns to the plans for the new stadium. At this stage it appears that speedway is to be included after the remarkable support campaign at the tale end of last season when the whole future of the sport in the Swindon area was thrown into doubt. Certainly the track will be smaller than the present one. The consensus amongst the three of us is that we’d like a track similar to Somerset’s but with slightly longer straights. One thing that we are in complete agreement upon is the need to build in drainage right from the start. Too many tracks have been constructed in the middle of stadia with no consideration as to how to get excess water away from the surface and out of the stadium. We must make sure that an efficient drainage system is put in place between greyhound and speedway tracks.

By the time that we are finished putting away all of the machinery the sun has come out and a beautiful rainbow has appeared. Gerald breaks into song – he claims its from the Wizard of Oz. Punch and I are unconvinced. We contemplate telling him to stick to track preparation and to forget about a career in musicals, but he’s happy with what’s been done so we leave him to his howlings!

An air of despondency ...

An air of despondency

Before I start this espistle, remember that the all colour blog can be found here together with much more speedway related material.

It’s raining again … it rained yesterday and now it’s raining again as I make my way along the A419 towards Blunsdon. Rain such as this will certainly curtail our activities this week but I was in for a shock!

The place was deserted .. all it needed was the ball of dry grass to blow across the car park as in western films of yesteryear.

When Gerald and Punch appear it is clear that not all is well. Infact, it’s a disaster.

Not only is it drenchingly wet, but we have suffered at the hands of thieves and robbers – the locks have been broken and a mass of equipment has gone.

As if the job wasn’t hard enough as it is, we now have to cope with the loss of an air pressure pump, a jet washer unit, a rechageable drill and two batteries, two generators, numerous bits and bobs and, most sadly of all, Punch’s entire tool kit. The tractors have had their diesel siphoned off and the door to our workroom is broken, the lock shattered.

We sit down for a cup of coffee. At least Gerald had a good holiday. He regales us with stories of his adventures in an attempt to keep up our spirits but we are a sad threesome.

First task for the day is to empty the water tanker. We used the suction facility to suck up hundreds of gallons of sludge from turns 1, 2 and 3 prior to the last meeting of the year. All of that muck now has to be vented out before its sets in the tanker.

Having filled the tanker with water we vent the water and sludge out at the top of the car park. A brown lake laps at the wheels of the tanker. “It might drain away by next March,” quips Gerald. Punch and I doubt it!

We refill the tanks of all the diesel vehicles and make sure that the engines haven’t been bled dry. Fortunately, after much coaxing and cursing, each engine splutters into life amidst a vast grey, swirling cloud of fumes – so much for “global warming.”

Some kind soul has donated an old freezer unit. It sits in the middle of the yard. Closer inspection reveals that it contains some unmentionable fluid, the smell of which makes us gag! Gerald wanders off to seek out anyone who might knows its origin. Punch and I keep our distance and continue filling tanks.

Brian Cox arrives to dismantle the centre green advertising hoardings. He is his usual affable self, always looking on the bright side of life. The gloom is lifted temporarily.

Gerald discovers that the freezer unit has “walked” into our yard from the greyhound operation. He assures us that it is soon to be reunited with its owners.

We venture out onto the track to inspect the damage done by the rain. The drains have done a good job – there is little surface water apart from at the very edges of the track where the air fence once stood. We consider getting the big blade out to make a start on shifting some of the dirt from the straights to the corners. As the season has progressed the two straights have developed cambers, a definite rising in the middle of the track. This will need to be shaved down, the resulting materials being spread around the four bends where the shale is very thin over the cinder base. However, rain starts to fall and wipes out any chance of blading.

The blade will cut through a wet surface, even a damp one, very efficiently, but the fact is that the resulting mass of bladed material will very soon clump together and make subsequent blading and grading very difficult.

By the time we make it down to turn 1 the extent of our problems with the now infamous “Blunsdon abyss” become clear. At the very place where the bikes are revving at their highest, where the riders throw the back end of their machines sideways to start the turn, rivulets of water have etched out mini canyons across the track. Each rivulet emanates from the greyhound track and flows under the kickboards. As it flows it brings with it small deposits of sand, a material guaranteed to stop a track surface binding properly. The areas of weakness are clear. Just how we are going to cope with them is not so clear. Gerald makes a suggestion, which could not possibly be broadcast, about “dogs”.

We “trudge through sludge” as Wilfred Owen put it in “Dulce et Decorum Est” back to the workroom and set about repairing the damage to the door.

Punch keeps up our spirits with stories of track exploits and disasters from the past. Of the brand new water tanker being driven onto the track for the first time only to be steered directly over an abandoned and up turned rake, the back tyres being punctured and the machine subsiding slowly on its way back to the pits. Of wheels falling off various tractors, trailers etc at embarrassing times (in front of a packed grandstand prior to a meeting.)

He also retells the story of when the man known as the “Main Dane”, Mr Hans Nielsen, mislaid his sense of humour at the starting gate. Well known for being a rather particular starter, Mr Nielsen spent a considerable amount of time one meeting preparing or, as it is termed, “gardening” at the gate. Punch, who had meticulously prepared a deep track to thwart Nielsen’s chances, was so infuriated with the fuss that was being made that he marched onto the track and presented Nielsen with shovel. “If you’re going to be doing the …….. gardening so thoroughly you might as well do it with the right ……. tool!”

There is nothing left to do. At least the thieves didn’t take our TV. We rig up an old aerial that Punch has found. While Gerald tries to tune it, I wander around the work room with said aerial in hand looking like the Statue of Liberty. We get a picture but no sound. Punch and I try to lip read but it doesn’t work well.

We pack up our things and depart. Next week it will be better. It has to be better. I just hope that the diesel those b……ds took will seize their engines and that the jet washer kicks back and knocks out their teeth when they try to start it. I also hope that the freezer and its macabre contents are gone by next week.

Time for some serious research

Remember to visit the Blunsdon Blog web site for the full colour version and lots, lots more speedway related materials.

It’s a quiet week at the track this week and a chance to get some serious research done and dusted. Gerald will be back next week so it’s unlikely that I’ll get another chance before Christmas – rumour has it that he has a number of little projects for Punch and me to work on. My back is going into spasm just thinking about it.

Anyway, back to musings on the past with an emphasis upon the tracks themselves rather than riders, stadia and promotions.

As has been recorded in many other forums, the first British speedway meeting was held at High Beech on an old and largely neglected cycle track somewhere behind the King’s Oak public house near Epping Forest in Essex. Historians lead us to believe that it was a Cambridge undergraduate, one Lionel Wills, who came up with the concept having witnessed speedway and dirt track racing in Australia two years before.

In front of an estimated 20,000 crowd, most of whom were penned in behind a sturdy rope barrier on the centre green, the first racers were an assortment of road and trials bike riders together with two Australians, who had sampled the fledgling sport in their own back yard in the two years previous.

A programme of 50 races and 40 riders guaranteed a spectacle for the crowd. The originally planned 5 lap races were cut, after a break for luncheon, to 3 lap sprints so that the entire event could be completed before darkness fell.

The bikes were a real mixture of stripped down road bikes including a 490cc Norton, a 344cc Coventry Eagle and a 493cc Sunbeam. Many riders had simply resorted to removing mudguards and headlamps – anything to reduce weight and increase speed.

The first rider to officially complain about the track surface appears to have been one of the Australians (the xenophobe in me is tempted to add “what a surprise”). Billy Galloway complained that the hard cinder track was simply too hard for proper “broadsliding” and that what was needed was a “looser dirt surface” like the ones he’d raced on at home.

Records show that a “dirt track” meeting had been held near Manchester in 1927 on a 440 yard circuit covered with cinders purloined from the local power station. From the records that remain of that meet it would seem that the cinders were, again, packed too hard to allow any form of sliding.

But High Beech had sown the seeds and tracks appeared throughout 1928. Audenshaw near Manchester held a meeting on 3rd March followed by White City, who opened their 440 yard track on 16th June. On 4th August 1928 the fledgling Swindon Club opened its circuit at the Swindon Autodrome, on land near Gorse Hill in Swindon. Under the watchful eye of Mr W J Roper, the 356 yard cinder track provided a base in the town for racing for two years before closing down.

In the period between 1928 and 1949 (an auspicious year in the history of speedway – trust me) a number of different surfaces were tried to try to encourage “broadsliding” as the Aussies had it. Cinders were found to be very difficult to handle – too much packing and the track became like a road racing circuit – too little packing and the riders found it impossible to slide. The fans had cause to complain when tracks were too loose – they ended up wearing the track after the first couple of races!

Oxford opened their track in 1939 on a “sandy soil surface”. Alf Elliott, a rider, was charged with the laying of the new track. A concrete starting area was laid during the period that the track closed (between June 1941 and April 1949). This “development” had painful repercussions for the captain of the 1950 Oxford team, Harry Saunders. Whilst practising for the forthcoming season, Saunders “looped” on the concrete whilst attempting a “start” and sustained significant back injuries, sufficient to rule him out for some time.

In 1949 the Abbey Stadium was built atop Blunsdon Hill on the outskirts of Swindon. It featured a 410 yard cinder track and opened its doors to racing on 23rd July 1949 when some 8000 spectators witnessed the first meeting, against the old foe from down the road in Oxford. Whilst the spectacle was impressive, the track surface was swiftly changed to shale in time for a meeting on 27th August, the same year. Swindon legend Bob Jones set the lap record of 77.6 seconds.

Whilst the track surface remained largely unaffected for a number of years the addition of floodlights drew great interest. 10,000 people crammed into the Abbey Stadium for the first floodlit speedway match in the town in 1950.

That the first rained off fixture was on 11th August 1951, a full 65 meetings after the first night, is either a testament to the marvellous drainage at the surface or an indication of divine intervention (perhaps there really is a God, and perhaps he really is a Swindon Robins fan) – “thou shalt not rain on a Saturday night in Swindon.”

But all good things come to an end and the stadium authorities realised the Blunsdon bowl could be used for more than just speedway purposes. The first “midget car” meeting was held on the track on 11th October 1952. Greyhound racing (bite your tongue – don’t think it, speak it or write about it) started on 1st November of the same year whilst Stock Cars, the scourge of the speedway track, made their presence felt on 25th September 1954.

Bob Jones’s track record had been gradually eroded by the time that Barry Briggs reduced it to 72 seconds in 1959. This was no mean time, especially since the track was larger than it is today. During the winter of 1959 the Swindon track was altered, reducing its size from 410 yards to the present day 395 yards (363 metres).

The first sub 70 second track record was set by Swede Christer Lofqvist on 30th June 1973, his 69.8 time equalled by the great Anders Michanek during the second half of the same meeting.

Phil Crump set a new standard in a meeting on 22nd July 1979 and, during a season that boasted an astonishing 37 home meetings on the Blunsdon shale, ex British World Champion Peter Collins equalled it. Erik Gundersen smashed the lap record on the 26th August 1985, taking it to 65.2 seconds before the “Main Dane”, Hans Nielsen recorded the first sub 65 second lap in September 1990.

Somewhat surprisingly it was Swindon’s New Zealander Gary Allan who would take the time still lower and there it stayed until the Aussies took over again, Ryan Sullivan lowering it still further in a benefit meeting before Leigh Adams and, this year, Jason Crump, sliced further fractions of a second away.

But the fastest man around the pacey Blunsdon circuit was New Zealander Bruce Cribb. He took seconds off the existing time, but he did have an advantage – he was riding an exhibition race on an ice racing bike, equipped with the ferocious spikes on both front and back tyres – fabulous grip allied to awesome acceleration.

I fought the fence ... and the fence won!

Our second post season working day is complete and the aches have yet to appear, but a black eye is well on the way. While trying to disentangle two pieces of the fence one of the hard plastic pipes caught me under the eye with a real whack - should look pretty good in the morning!

A beautiful, if rather chilly day contrasted with last week's leaden skies and blustery showers.

This time there was only four of us to take down the air fences on turns three and four. Because the track at Blunsdon is on a slope, turns 3 and 4 are always drier than 1 and 2.

On hand today is Brian "no problem" Cox. Brian was awarded a special prize at this year's End of Season Bash. If a job needs doing, Brian is always there. He is certainly one of the "unsung heroes" at Blunsdon. During the season we put up the centre green banners first thing on a race day.

Later Brian reappears to act as host to the special guests and patrons. Speedway needs more people like Brian Cox. Each track will have its own "Brian" working away in the background making sure that everything works smoothly.

Track Curator, Gerald Richter is away on a well earned holiday so his number two Rod "Punch" Ford is the man in charge this week. Punch, to his friends, has been working at the Blunsdon track for 36 years and for much of that time has been one of the curators of the track.

When I first started helping out on a regular basis at the track I was warned not to try to match Punch in work load. I'm sure he wont mind, but he is in his 60's yet works with the effort of a 40 year old. A wealth of experiences built up over the years ensures that his opinion is one that you dismiss at your peril. A great bloke whose contribution to Swindon Speedway is more than significant!

Shirley is an invaluable member of the track crew at Blunsdon. During the season she can be found brushing out the pits and making sure that the changing rooms and showers are in tip top condition for the riders. In addition Shirley looks after the track staff, making sure that we are provided with tea and coffee.

At times, she must pull out her hair in frustration - whenever the kettle has boiled and the tea made, we are always to be found at the other end of the stadium. Too often we appear when the tea is cold. Despite this, Shirley always maintains a happy and bright countenance.

The first task is to detach the air fence from the safety fence. This is done relatively easily - at least the catches aren't buried under inches of slime as they were on turns 1 and 2.

Sadly, our euphoria is soon rocked - the kick boards themselves are deep in slime.

Once we've located the kick board (made of thick rubber) we have to find the rivet and then use a drill to drill it out. Trying to move the air fence with the kick board attached is simply too much and there is a danger that the weight of slime on the kick board will be sufficient to tear the bottom of the air bag.

The air fences for turns 3 and 4 have yet to be cleaned so they are "stored" at the back of the pits prior to being washed down.

It takes two, sometimes three of us to manhandle the sections into the bucket of a JCB so that they can be carried off the track.

Lunch is taken early - the job is taking longer than we anticipated.

The rivets on the kick boards have rusted and fused and the drills are making hard work of removing them. Every so often we come across a hasty repair job, nearly always using a strong cable tie. These are a joy to remove - so much easier and quicker.

As we leave our staff room we march through the pits, past the piles of washed fence sections from the week before. Even though they were carefully jet washed down they will still need to be cleaned again to remove the last vestiges of mud and slime before they can be sent back to the manufacturers for close season maintenence.

The fence has actually been sitting lower than the edge of the track surface and the trough is now collecting water as it seeps from the greyhound track.

It's too wet to try to spread the saturated shale although we know that this must be done soon before the really cold weather comes and it binds into hard lumps that are of little use to man nor beast!

Punch takes the tractor out, pulling a harrow, attached by a length of chain to the blade. This will help to even out the surface of the track and break up any clumps of shale that have been disturbed as we have been working. The edge of the track will have to wait - it's far too wet to do anything with.

We have completed our work for the day. The entire fence has been removed and transported to the pits.

It still needs to be jet washed thoroughly before it can be sent away for repair / overhaul, and that will be a long, wet and, probably, cold task.

A trip to turn one shows us another cold, wet and dirty job for the future. The main drain is clogged with clay. The pipe, and all the surrounding gravel in the soak away, will have to be dug out and cleaned. I can hardly wait.