I remember meeting-up with the former owner of 665MTB one morning in 2004 in Tarleton, near Preston when he was accompanied by Tom Riding. They’d brought the Beaver and it’s Four-in-line trailer to W H Hulls who were a bodybuilder of some note - to get the trailer refurbished. At that time, the Beaver was almost ready to be painted in the Smiths livery after having had some superficial bodywork repairs, so Martin (the then owner) wanted to get the ball rolling with the trailer. What happened at Tarleton was quite odd. Once in Hull’s compound which was at Plox Mill - next to the Rufford Canal - the arrangements for the trailer literally fell apart in front of us. They basically said they didn’t want to be bothered with the job and told Martin to leave - much to everyone’s bemusement. We retreated to the ■■■■ & Bottle pub for food and ale and a discussion which didn’t really reach a positive conclusion.
A few months later, I was travelling back down the M6 from working on a project at Carlisle Mail Centre and as I was approaching Penrith,with snow starting to fall on us, and I spotted Martin in the Beaver heading north. It puzzled me as to why he would be so far away from home, apparently on his own, but I didn’t linger on the puzzlement for long and forgot about it. A matter of weeks later as I was heading north to close down the same project at Carlisle, who did I see approaching in the opposite direction? Martin in a resplendant Smiths of Eccles unit & trailer combination. Hull’s loss was very definitely another firm’s gain…