World Champion @ Frys !

1979 World Champion Bernie Schreiber visited our local practice area this week to spend the day with an invited group of mainly SWM riders to share his experiences and riding skills.

Martin Matthews, known by many as the boss of motoSWM.com, organised the day when it become apparent that some of the UK SWM riders missed out on an entry to the Alvie 2 day up in Scotland but wanted the chance to meet the legend that is Bernie in the flesh.

Riding tips and advice from Bernie in the woods

Martin was still on the way back from the trial in Scotland on the Tuesday so I was asked to collect Bernie from Bristol airport and hopefully keep him occupied for a few hours. Wasn’t an invitation I needed to think about for too long as you can imagine. Bernie and I have been having some banter and fun online for a while now and had been in personal message contact but we had never actually met, so now was my chance!
To be exact I had met and seen him many years ago, back just before he was World Champion, as my dad used to take me into Bultaco importers Comerfords and he was working there at the time !

We had a good day, popped into Thatchers cider’s Railway Inn for lunch and a chat and then down to cheddar where he was staying. Bernie is a total gent, a top guy. Chatted openly and freely on all subjects not just trials and we had a good laugh about a few things and a serious chat about the present state of the world rounds etc.

I won’t go into Bernie’s life story etc here as you can catch up with much of the detail in the new excellent Classic Trial Magazine (issue 29) and you can no doubt see the posts on various facebook pages about how bad the weather was on the day but how enjoyable the experience was for us all … i just leave you with a gallery of photos i took. Very heavy rain throughout the day didn’t help in getting good quality images, but what i got are here ..

A quick thanks to Bob Hill who spent a few hours with me in the rain a few days before, setting out some section areas for Bernie to use for teaching. And also Paul Lennon who came along with his camera but ended up being a bit of a pack-horse for our section markers etc 🙂 .. cheers chaps

motoSWM.com Schreiber day