Mark Gilbert Ken Hine John Haynes John Wills

In late November a small group of Gwent Greater Distance Club members, namely Ray Strawbridge, Ted Garwood, Jimmy Bullock and myself made the 150 mile journey up the M4 to visit some of the best long distance fanciers in southern England including Mark Gilbert, John Haynes, John Wills and Ken Hine. The journey up was undertaken in surprisingly good weather given the amount of rain that had fallen on the British Isles in the previous month. As a result we were soon knocking on Mark Gilbert’s door, or more accurately should I say, ringing the intercom to have the electric gates on Mark’s drive opened for us to enter! Once inside we were treated to an absolute feast of long distance classic race winning pigeons.

As many will no doubt be aware, Mark along with Brian Sheppard of Trowbridge, is one of only two British [English] fanciers to have won 1st Open International. This amazing feat was achieved in 2004 when Mark’s Blue cock won 1st Open NFC and 1st Open International Dax. Many races have been won before and since that time by the Gilbert pigeons, but the International win must rank as the best win to date in a very long list of top performances. I won’t go into great detail with regard to the pigeons and methods used by this remarkably successful fancier in this report, as these aspects will be covered in depth in a later article that I intend to write. Suffice to say that the birds, lofts and environment at Southfield were a credit to Mark and father Geoff who helps Mark with the day to day management of the birds. I think the photographs that accompany this report adequately demonstrate the impressive range of lofts that house the Gilbert pigeons. The pigeons themselves were equally impressive and Mark has left no stone unturned in his relentless pursuit of obtaining the “best from the best”.

The mainstays of the loft at the present time are the Deweerdts obtained from source in Belgium. These were mostly dark chequers, smokey chequers and reds with some being on the large side but all possessed superb feathering and strongly coloured eyes. During our visit we handled the winner of 1st BICC Pau and 1st BBC Messac and both these cocks contained the Deweerdt bloodlines. Also handled was the blue cock winner of 1st NFC and 1st International Dax. This one was of Van Elsacker bloodlines and handled like a dream as did all of his brothers and sisters that came to hand.

Mark’s most recent introductions are a team of latebreds bred directly from the International winning pigeons of German long distance ace Hans Peter Brockamp. These were very young at the time of our visit but they were certainly old enough to show their class and I feel that they will be a useful addition to the Southfield stud in the years to come. We also handled a terrific stock cock, a double grand son of “Invincible Spirit” which is churning out top class channel pigeons when mated to a Deweerdt hen. As I mentioned earlier, I will go into greater depth about the birds and methods used in a subsequent article.

All the lofts are Petron built and all incorporate automatic cleaning facilities in both the nest boxes and perches. The floors in each section were fitted with hard wood grills so that the daily loft cleaning is no more than a five minute job.

In my humble opinion, Mark Gilbert is at the present time, one of the best fanciers in England, and, unless I am very much mistaken, will in time, become one of the all time greats of the British pigeon racing scene. Oh, and he’s also a pleasant, self effacing and modest chap with no “side” or sense of superiority despite all his many wins. The future of the sport depends on men like Mark to take it forward with progressive ideas. Congratulations Mark on some superb pigeon flying.

After enjoying a lovely breakfast kindly provided by Mark’s wife we then moved on to view the lofts and birds of Mark’s good friend and drinking partner John Haynes of nearby Fifield. John’s name will be familiar to fanciers who study the results of the BICC and NFC as the name of Haynes can usually be found on the results of the long distance races organised by both these clubs. Possibly the highlight of John’s racing career to date came a few years back when he clocked his Deweerdt widower to win the BICC Pau International race. The Deweerdt influence is again strong here as John has travelled to Belgium on many occasions and has been fortunate to obtain the very best of the Deweerdts from source including two direct sons of “Emiel” the winner of 1st International Bordeaux in 1992 with 9,493 birds competing. Some of the red hens - daughters of the aforementioned two cocks, were absolute gems and if John doesn’t race them as old birds, he is not only doing himself, but also the birds and the Deweerdt family a great disservice. They were truly fantastic specimens. John also has a family of Van Elsackers closely related to Mark Gilbert’s Dax International winner. These were mostly blues, well muscled, shallow keeled and with predominantly pearl eyes. One of the loft’s best racers emanates from this family and he has 2 x 1sts Fed to his credit.

In recent years, due to working long and unpredictable hours in the film industry, John has concentrated on racing widowhood cocks which halves the work load. A team of 50 or so cocks are raced through the programme and compete when fit, in the NFC, BICC and other classic competitions. The widowers and stock birds are mated in late January and some of the stock birds’ first round eggs are floated under the racers for them to rear. Once the youngsters are away the cocks are on widowhood and receive a few short training spins prior to the first race. Home exercise occurs when John is home from work which can be erratic because of his work in the film industry. Some 20 pairs of stock birds are housed in a separate loft with aviaries to the rear of the main racing loft and a team of around 100 youngsters are reared annually from these and the best of the race team. The youngsters are put on the darkness system from the time of weaning and are vaccinated against paramyxo and paratyphoid. They were all on their ninth flights when we visited and all were in excellent condition having enjoyed a good second moult. Most years the young bird team are extensively trained before racing but this was not the case in 2009 and the youngsters suffered as a result. John assured us that this won’t happen again!! The photographs that accompany this article show the L-shaped loft set up for old birds and youngsters.

Next loft on our weekend itinerary was that of long distance legend, John Wills of Frimley. John Wills has won 1st Open BICC on six occasions and all from race points deep in the south west of France. The Wills team are also regular visitors to the top of the result sheets of the NFC and London & SECFC especially when the race is long and the conditions “trying”. I had long anticipated handling the Wills long distance pathfinders and I can tell you now that I was not disappointed. They were quite simply the finest FAMILY of pigeons that I have seen and handled after more than 37 years visiting and reporting on some of the best lofts in the U.K. and Belgium. These pigeons had it all – terrific looks, superb feather, fantastic eyesign allied to marvellous handling properties and top class racing results, the complete long distance racing pigeon. Admittedly they won’t tear up any trees on their way home from the shorter races but give them a dirty day at 4,5, 6 and 700 miles, when they have to stick at it and slog it out and they will rarely, if ever, let you down.

The family characteristics are bold intelligent heads, with extensive wattle development. Indeed, some of the hens would be mistaken for cocks if put alongside some of the modern day continental sprint/middle distance imports. All had strong backs with one feather width tails and incredible skeletal structure, fine boned but feeling like spring steel. I last handled pigeons like these in the Swansea lofts of Charlie Bradshaw Senior and Junior and the Bradshaws were also invariably near the top of the result in difficult long distance races.

Once again I won’t go into great detail in this report as I intend to compile a more comprehensive loft profile at a later date. However, I will simply say that John is a bean feeder who flies his birds on the natural system, races the birds sparingly and is not afraid of jumping his pigeons from training points on the south coast into 600 and 700 miles races. In fact some of his best long distance performers have been entered in little more than half a dozen races in their lives before undertaking “the acid test” at 700 miles. Nor is John afraid of housing young birds that return after weeks away having made a mistake. These are the birds that have developed “self sufficiency” and become street wise having learned to rely on their own ability to get home after being separated from the pack. A great deal of thought is put into preparing the Wills pigeons for their long distance trials and every attempt is made to have the birds in the peak of condition, both mentally and physically at the time of the target race. Working with a family of pigeons that he has developed over more than forty years helps enormously as John knows their little idiosyncrasies and constantly watches the birds for signs of on coming form. The family has been line bred and in bred for more than forty years and is based largely on birds obtained from Ian Benstead who had the best of the A.E. Sheppard multi combine winning family of long distance racers. Two of John’s greatest passions are his family, both domestic and avian, as well as the BICC, to which he is devoted and which he has done as much as anyone to promote.

View of John Wills' loft

Right, that should be enough to have whetted your appetites – more on John Wills and his pigeons in the very near future. After more than two hours of handling some of the finest specimens I can recall we were invited into the house for a lovely buffet and a bottle of wine for me and John. It was then off to the local club to watch the Wales v Australia rugby match. The least said about hat the better –thankfully, it was the only low point of the weekend! Nevertheless, Mark, and the two John’s being the gentlemen they are didn’t try to extract the urine – well not too much anyway. We were then off to the Lion Brewery at Ash owned by top class fancier Mike Armitage where we were to enjoy a good old chin wag into the small hours - most of this time spent by the two John’s arguing.

Next morning we were up bright and early and after a cracking “full English” cooked by Mike and a quick look at Mike’s impressive set up, we were soon off to Mark Gilbert’s who was to take us to see the birds of Palamos ace Ken Hine of Hayes.

It was good to see Jeff Byles again when we arrived at Ken’s set up. Jeff and I have a mutual friend in Bob Bolitho of Helston ,Cornwall. Ken was saying that Jeff is a great help to him around the lofts as he visits most days and cleans the lofts right through. Whilst at Ken’s we handled more than a dozen pigeons that had flown Tarbes, Palamos and Barcelona, many on three or more occasions. The bloodlines housed are a mixture of the late Peter Titmuss family plus birds from the late Stan Biss, Fear Brothers and also some Deweerdts from Mark Gilbert. Ken’s Palamos winner was a big blue cock, perfectly balanced with feathering like silk. Probably the pick of a very good crop for my mind, was a magnificent 11 year old chequer cock bequeathed to Ken in Peter Titmuss’s will. This one had flown Palamos and Barcelona a number of times for Peter and he really was something special, handling like a four year old.

Ken races his birds on round about and widowhood and likes to give them plenty of single up tosses right from the young bird stage. Although the lofts were extensive there didn’t seem to be many birds in them and perhaps that is one of the secrets of Ken’s success – no overcrowding. Before turning his sights on south road racing, Ken was an extremely successful fancier on the North road winning consistently through to Lerwick and Thurso.

The Merry Men of England and Wales - back row Mark Gilbert, Ted Garwood, Jimmy Bullock. Front John Haynes, John Wills, Gareth Watkins, Ray Strawbridge

Luckily for us the weather held up pretty well during the weekend and we were able to handle many top class pigeons at the four lofts we visited. However the journey home was a nightmare with torrential rain and high winds all the way back to Wales. Nevertheless it was a great weekend and I hope we have made a number of new friends. Hopefully we’ll see most of them at the BICC dinner in Bournemouth in February. Many thanks once again to Mark and the two John’s not forgetting Mike and Ken. It really was a pleasure visiting you all.