We've stumbled across some old photographs of the 1987 East Anglian Road Run so, to accompany them, we had a trawl through the archive and dug out the original run report that was published in the Summer 1987 edition of Buzzing.
This year's East Anglian Road Run was the best yet. Seventeen machines were gathered together at the starting point. There were five Cyclemasters, three Mini-Motors, a Cucciolo, a Rex, a Winged Wheel, a Firefly and a Wall Auto-Wheel. Autocycles were represented by a Francis Barnett, a New Hudson and a Raynal (or was it an Excelsior?) The only moped was a Di Blasi. In addition to these, there were somw larger motor cycles present, including Andrew Roddham's BSA A65 combination, which acted as recovery vehicle for the day. The car park being used as the styarting point presented a chaotic scene with participants busy unloading, refuelling, making last minute adjustments, trading spare parts and judging the machines.
Four of the machines did not take part in the actual road run, so the remaining thirteen set off to wind through the Suffolk countryside to Debenham. The journey out was in fine weather with a following wind and nobody had any trouble getting to the lunch stop.
After lunch, the sky had become more overcast and there was a slight head wind to cope with but the journey back to Stowmarket was completed in the dry and with no breakdowns.
On arrival at the Museum of East Anglian Life the machines were put on display and the riders adjourned to the Education Centre for coffee & biscuits, and the AGM. It was a closely-fought contest for the Cyclemotor Award with only ten points seperating the top four machines. The winner was Dean Rayner's Mini-Motor with 102 points. The other high-scoring machines were:
| Second | Maurice Bean's Wall Auto-wheel | 99 points |
| Third | Roger Worton's Trojan Mini-Motor | 97 points |
| Fourth | Richard Rosenthal's Cyclemaster | 92 points |
The Autocycle Award went to Andrew Pattle's New Hudson; this was the only autocycle that actually went out on the run. As there were no mopeds over 25 years old on the run, the Moped Award went to the best machine under this age, which was the Di Blasi folding moped ridden by Simon Farrier.
After the meeting, the weather took a turn for the worse but nearly everyone had loaded up their machines and were on their way home before the raion started to pour down.
Perhaps a few words of explanation about the awards are in order. There were awards for the best Cyclemotor, Autocycle and Moped at the event - only machines over 25 years old qualified for the awards; additionally, the machines had to have taken part in the road run to qualify. The awards were decided by the riders themselves, who were asked to give each machine marks out of ten.
As the contemporary report says, rain was threatening during the day and finaly broke just after the event was over. However, not everyone escaped it as a story in the Moped Archive relates.
Now the photos: a few of these were published alongside the report in Buzzing; another selection appeared in the Autumn 1987 edition; the others have not been published before.
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