Newark Show 2024 by Roy W
Martyn and I have been coming to this Classic Bike Guide Winter Show for many years now, with Martyn now living near Weston Super Mare he has further to travel than he did from his last home. He had a good run up and arrived with me by 8:45, so we had a cup of coffee before heading off to the Newark Showground and arrived there at 9:30. Already there were loads of cars parked up, my blue badge comes in very useful and we could park near the entrance. The show is held over the first weekend in January and what a great way to start the new year off, it blows away any Christmas cobwebs that you have left.
This was one of the first bike that caught our eye, it turned out it would win best in show.
We buy advanced tickets, this saves you queueing, so we were straight in, turned right and headed into the George Stephenson Hall. This is one of several halls with several club stands, private bike entries and trade stands. I met up with Dean and Carole of All Things Diversion; very good to deal with especially when I had my Diversion Outfit. They had a Diversion 900 up for sale with only 5000 miles on the clock, everything had been checked, serviced and, if needed, replaced.
It looked as if it had just come out of the showroom and as the day it left the factory, price under £4000, Martyn said he was pretty sure it would sell well before the day was out. The private entries on display were excellent, one of the bikes was like my first motorbike, which was a James 98cc with a whopping 2 gears and the heady power of 2.8 horses! It looked so small now, it had hand change gears (all 2 of them) and what was called brakes, didn’t look any better than on the James I had.
Walking around the hall, we bumped into several friends, one of them being Joss Bourne, he usually runs the motorcycle section at the Swaton Show, apparently not this year, as something is awry between him and the show organisers, which is a shame as he has been organising it for several years.
Martyn first thought he was back at the Peterborough Show when they started to let in anyone selling anything that was nothing to do with bikes, but then realised that most here spend more time cleaning than riding.
Martyn was happy with all the trade stands, checking over all the various bits and bobs for sale. The BSA Goldstar Club, again, had a really good stand just by the entrance, in fact there were several excellent club stands. We spent an hour or so in the hall and during this time loads more people turned up and the place was buzzing.
We wandered outside and headed for the large, I mean large, marquee which had lots of trade and autojumble, needless to say Martyn had a good time here. Then onto the next hall, loads more bikes and club stands plus loads of riding kit at very good prices. You find in this hall a stage; this is where Steve Plater was going to interview / talk with Trevor Nation and Brian Crighton of Norton Rotary Racing fame. These guys were booked to be on stage twice a day over the weekend.
We had a short walk to the last hall, which is actually 3 halls in one. Loads more bikes, club stands and all the scooters, plus at the far end of one of the halls was a live fire up section and some of the bikes were quite noisy, I think the clean air zone was well out of the window. These three halls again were very busy, in fact the whole show seemed to us far better attended than the last year.
Marion Sinclair had one of her sidecar hearses on display, talking of sidecars we spotted 5 in all which was better than last year. Talking to other visitors, they thought and felt the show was much busier than before. One of my scooter clubs (Horncastle Generations S/C) had a good display.
On another display we saw a Watsonian Avon outfit with a sticker of a rally attended in East Essex in 1977. We drifted around these halls twice and took a closer look at the BMW K100 racing outfit, note no subframe as such, basically bolted onto the bottom of the engine;
Martyn said that his adopted pensioner had designed something very similar for mounting a sidecar on a K100. Martyn mentioned if it is good enough to take the stress of racing one would think it would possibly be fine for road. Certainly, makes one question the fact that some subframes may be overkill in some cases.
Luckily, the weather was dry this year and there were lots more outside traders than previous years, the sun was actually warm for January. I sat down and made some notes while Martyn studied the nuts and bolts among other things.
We finally ended up in the first hall we visited and Martyn purchased a few items and I spotted something I needed on the same trade stand so job done.
It was an excellent show this year, I would like to see the attendance figures but I’m certain they were well up on last year, also loads more bikes, scooters and stands and was well worth a visit, your pre-paid ticket can be used either day if you wish. As usual Martyn and I said we would go again next year.
Here is a good video on You Tube taken at the show.
