Welsh Journals

It was a tragic finish to a brilliant man who had bought a 400 horse power, 12 cylinder Liberty engine, which had seen service in the 1914-18 war, for C125 and converted it. into a world beater at a cost of £ 800. Jules Foresti, an Italian driver, had a miraculous escape from death on Pendine Sands a few years later when his 400 horse power car, in which he was attacking world records for the standing and flying starts of the kilometre and mile, somersaulted several times with its driver inside. But a rueful Foresti climbed out of his driving seat with no worse than a few broken bones! On these sands George Eyston broke the small car world record in his M G in 1932, and in the late 'thirties he paid further visits to the beach with his 12 cylinder Flying Spray in connection with the diesel engine world speed record. But by this time, world record seeking had shifted across the other side of the globe, to Daytona, to Bonneville Salt Beds, to reach the staggering speed of nearly 400 miles per hour. However, the pioneering work had been achieved on Pendine Sands, where the Mollisons set out in 1933 on their Trans-Atlantic quest for the record in Seafarer. These days of high speeds were recalled in 1950 when the motor racing 'shots' for the Anglo-American film, 'Pandora and the Flying Dutchman' were filmed on the beach. TWO BODIES (Freely adapted from a poem of Octavio Paz) Two confronted bodies Are sometimes waves And night the sea. Two confronted bodies Are sometimes stones And night the desert. Two confronted bodies Are sometimes knives And night strikes a light. Two confronted bodies Are falling stars In a vacant sky. lain Forbes White