There was a carnival presence in the air in Cowdenbeath last Saturday night as the track celebrated the 50th anniversary of the opening stock car meeting at Central Park and there were Scottish Legends on hand to join in the festivities, writes Jim Turner.

There was also a good bunch of spectators there to look at the static cars on show and as the afternoon progressed the rows swelled considerably no doubt helped by the drivers participating in timed production car laps. Whilst the drivers were supposed to behave themselves during the timed trials there somehow appeared to be quite a bit of contact, a few cars spun –some self inflicted – whilst Ronnie Ford had to return to the pits with the front bumper and grille trailing on the ground.

Amongst those who enjoyed himself was Eddie Aldous, who so often wrecked the Scottish drivers dreams of success. He told me, “I last raced here in the early 90’s. I enjoyed my racing here it was hard and you never expected to get a quarter from anyone and by the same token you never gave one.

“All the people I raced against then are now good friends.

“I remember the British Championship here in 1980, I should have won that race but a plug lead came off and that let Keith Jarman through to win.

“We used to come up here with the English flag – sometimes it was a sheet with a red cross painted on it just to get the crowds going.

“The racing was hard and I remember after one very heavy shunt being helped into the van and struggled to get out of the van when we got back home.

“Mind you the bonus were the pies, if you could catch them! We used to get them, and a few other things, thrown at us after a race was finished and we were parked on the pit bend!” Eddie was to have a busy time of it being interviewed, running in the production times trials, then leading the International team to victory in the speedway event.

In the bar area Les Clark and Tommy Wallace reminisced about the early years when they could go to the ‘scrappies’ to get parts for their cars.

Les was quick to point out, “It wasn’t always the quickest car that won. The car that handled better then the others was the one to watch and that was what I generally concentrated on”.

Les and Tennant Douglas were only two of the drivers who raced at the inaugural meeting in 1965!

Jim “Jimbo” Riddell, from Crimond, told me, “I have raced bangers for 48 years and I hope to reach my target of 50 years.

“I quite often do a few races down south but now it’s the World Cup at the Racewall that is my biggest race of the year. Jim was also involved in the speedway but true to form he managed to get part of the back end of the car stoved in”.

Another driver with happy memories of Cowdenbeath was Robert George, who brought up the Georgie Boult Jnr saloon car to race. Robert won the National Championship in 1982 and he brought with him plenty of photos and magazines from his racing days.

One driver who as usual played to the crowd was Pete McVay who played to the crowd as he raced around the track on a motorised disabled scooter!

Kenny Stewart enjoyed his time in the speedway but reckoned the others had bigger engines than he did whilst Alan McHattie had to fend off George and Aldous to win his speedway heat.

The superstox replica of the Gordon McDougall World Championship winning car looked and sounded good as it was driven around by Alan Harwood and Stu Blyth whilst the classic hot rods certainly were popular with the fans.

When the cars of Mick “Duffy” Collard and Malky Chesher took to the track there were a lot of memories of hot rod racing in the past whilst the cars of Graham McCabe and Graeme Allister remained in the pits.

All in all it was a cracking day for the Scottish Legends and their English counterparts. The whole day was well organised by both GMP and the Legends organisers and hopefully one to be repeated next year.