Welsh Journals

Pendine-Record Breaking Sands GRIFFITH WILLIAMS THE MOTOR CYCLIST came roaring along the beach, the exhaust wide open, the wind singing through the spokes of his machine. It was just a rider practising, but the man on the seafront lifted his head at the sound, a light of remembrance entering his eyes. 'That puts me back a bit,' he said, seeing the past giants of speed through a haze of cigarette smoke. 'You remember Pendine Sands in the old days?' 'Yeah. The cars that broke world records here and the men behind the wheel-Campbell, Parry Thomas, and all the rest of 'em. Then there used to be three days' motor cycle races here, with the big event, the hundred mile, on the last day. There used to be some wonderful riding. Then it dropped to one day's meeting, run by the Carmarthen Motor Cycle and Light Car Club. Now it's finished altogether. Pity. It was good sport while it lasted.' He sighed and stared pensively at the long stretch of yellow sands which ran for miles before they disappeared in a 'dog's leg' round into the Laughame estuary. There are seven miles of beautiful sands- I clocked nine on my speedometer, from one end of the beach to the other,' declared a motorist once-starting alongside the salt marshes of Laughame and ending near the cliffs at Pendine. This was where the beach for racing finished, but the sands run westward to Amroth, four miles away, and around the rocky indentations of the Pembrokeshire coast. It was Sir Malcolm Campbell (Captain, in those days) who first put Pendine on the speed map when, in 1924, he set up a speed of 146 miles per hour for the flying kilometre on its sands. This fulfilled his ambition -a world record in a British car on British soil. In the blazing summer of the following year he brought his 350 horse power Sunbeam car Bluebird to Pendine and smashed the world flying