Podcast: Peterborough Bikers Face the Army Assault Course

A winter ride remembered as Peterborough bikers tackle the Army’s snow‑covered assault course, sharing their story in this new podcast episode

Podcast: Peterborough Bikers Tackle the Army Assault Course

Pip: Peterborough Wide Horizons, where the stories are local, the memories are vivid, and apparently the snow is still very much a factor even in June.

Mara: Today we’re following kyreniacommentator into the world of Peterborough’s biking history, a story about youth, motorcycles, and one very unforgiving ditch. Let’s start with the Soke Motor Cycling Club’s unforgettable trip north.

Peterborough Bikers vs. the Army’s Assault Course

Pip: The question here is what it actually meant to be a young biker in early 1960s Peterborough, the clubs, the rides, the culture, and whether any of it still echoes today.

Mara: The post opens with a letter from Nobby Etherington, who was there, and he sets the scene directly: “It was a great ride up to Catterick, even though I was soaked from head to foot by the time we arrived. In the photo, you’ll see me wearing an army jacket, they loaned it to me while my leather gear dried out in the Mess Hall.”

Pip: So no waterproofs, a borrowed army jacket, and leather gear steaming in a Mess Hall — that’s the gap between ambition and preparation, right there.

Mara: It gets better. The Royal Signals Motorcycle Team had an assault course, and the club got to ride it on old BSA M20 500cc singles. Nobby was given clear advice by the sergeant: slow down at the bottom of the long hill, where a ditch was buried under a foot of snow.

Nobby was warned!

Pip: He did not slow down.

Mara: He did not. His words: “I hit it at speed, went straight over the handlebars, and the sergeant was highly amused, as were all my mates.” The date was around November 1963, and the Evening Telegraph covered the trip — so there may be a record out there somewhere.

Pip: What makes the letter land is the texture around the edges, the kids and grandkids competing for spare time, the names that have slipped away with the years.

Mara: And the coda. Nobby mentions he still sees Eric Parker regularly, and adds, almost in passing, that like him, Eric is still riding at eighty-one. The Soke Motor Cycling Club’s old clubhouse behind the bus park on Bridge Street is long gone, replaced by the new courthouse, but the people are still out there.

Pip: The ditch got him once. Hasn’t stopped him yet.

Pip: A blizzard, a borrowed jacket, and a story that took sixty years to write down, that’s what community memory looks like when someone finally asks.

Pip: More of that next time, no doubt.