Since the first issue of Classic Dirt Bike came out, I’ve been flat out. I don’t know where the last few months of 2006 went, but at least Jill and I got a few days over Christmas and the new year to catch our breath. I might be a bit old fashioned, but I always look on the autumn and winter as the trials season but one of the high spots of the autumn took place in rather warmer climes than we’re used to at home in Derbyshire.
The Viejas Glorias Canarias may not mean much to most British classic fans, but it’s a great little event that celebrates all sides of the classic bike scene in the Canaries.

As I mentioned in the last issue of CDB, the organisers had asked me if I could get my old mate Kevin Schwantz to go along as guest of honour and he was only too happy to join in the fun.
After a couple of beers, Kevin agreed to ride in the trial and we sorted him out with a Bultaco, but he couldn’t get on with the right-foot gear change, so he swapped it for a Fantic. Anyway, in 80-degree heat, Kevin did his bit, only declining the hardest section – a five-foot drop into a dry river bed.

While I was over there, somebody asked me how I’d got involved with Yamaha in the first place (I was riding a Yam in the trial). Well, Ossa had sent me over to the US in 1972 on a promotional tour. One night, I was in a restaurant at Los Angeles Airport, waiting for a flight when an announcement came over the tannoy asking if there was a Mick Andrews in the building. I assumed it must have been someone from the Ossa set-up, but when I got to the phone, it was road racer Rod Gould.

Rod got to the point pretty quickly. “Are you interested in going to Japan to develop a trials bike for Yamaha?” he asked. To this day, I have no idea how he found me, but he must have known that Ossa were in trouble by then. When we got home, I phoned Yamaha and we did a deal – simple as that. When I went over to Japan, Yamaha had already built a bike. They had bought an Ossa to get some ideas and gone from there. It wasn’t a bad effort actually and I was really impressed by their commitment to the project – we did base the bike on the Ossa, but we had to make loads of modifications to get it right.

Reading the piece in the last issue about the little TY175 set me thinking about how that all came about too. I was looking at a little Yamaha at the factory one day and the idea of using the engine for a kid’s trials bike (the TY80) came to me. Then I started thinking about a budget, lightweight trials bike using parts from some of the trail bikes Yamaha already made – effectively the TY175/125.

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