Mansfield Maun Motor Cycle Club lost a really true stalwart of trialling with the passing, at 6.00 am on Thursday morning, of Lynda Crabtree. Her daughter and son, Karen and Tony were by her side in the Kingsmill Hospital, Mansfield, at the time. Lynda was sixty four and had fought lung cancer since diagnosed on October 14 –2009. Last Monday Lynda was taken to Scarborough with husband Terry, daughter Karen and grandson Joel for week’s holiday but it was deemed necessary to return home, and straight to the Kingsmill Hospital on Tuesday. Amazingly Lynda was secretary of the Castrol Ladies Trial at Bracken Rocks on June 5 and also the Doncaster Cup Trial British sidecar championship trial on June 12 when she also penned the Trials+Motocross News event report. She had a keen interest in sidecar trials going back to 1971 when Mike Rapley and Mannix Devlin experienced her comments.
Known nationally as ‘The Dragon’ and renamed by the writer early June as the ‘Countess of Bracken Rocks’, Lynda Crabtree did anything and everything the right way, and with forty years membership of Mansfield Maun, and twenty years on trials secretary what she said and did, she meant. Not only did Lynda run the trials documentation but she rode passenger with Terry to take a Manx Newcomer award in 2007 riding passenger on their 321 Gas Gas outfit and was East Midland Centre sidecar champion passenger on 2006 and 2009. She was also a frequent speedway supporter and could be heard, if not seen, at Owlerton Stadium, Sheffield. Originally employed in a knitwear factory in Mansfield, Lynda retired after the birth of her son Tony in 1973. One year older than Terry, they were married for forty years, Lynda walked Terry home from school, when he was five and she just six. They have been together for fifty nine years. Lynda leaves two grandchildren, Joel, Karen’s son and Jennifer and Tony’s baby Charlie. Anyone involved in motor cycle trials sport, on two and three wheels will know just what Lynda Crabtree put into the sport.
The funeral details are: Wednesday 13th July at 1.00 pm at Mansfield Crematorium
Family Flowers only please but donations welcome to the MacMillan Cancer Nurses.