I was lucky to find the Geoff Charles collection whilst browsing the National Library for Wales Online Photo Collection where I also found these images.

The following Biography of Percy Abery is from the NLW website

P B Abery, the son of a grocer and one of 13 children, originated from Folkestone, in Kent. He came to live in Builth Wells in 1898. When he was only 21 he bought a small photography business, and in 1911 he moved to larger premises, the West End Studio, where he remained until his death in 1948.

During the summer, P B Abery would make his living by taking photographs of the people who came to visit the Wells. The photographs would be displayed outside the shop the next morning, where crowds of people would gather to look for pictures of themselves.

P B Abery also loved the outdoors, and enjoyed nothing better than roaming the countryside taking photographs of views and rural life around Breconshire, Radnorshire and the Border Counties. When the Birmingham Water Works began construction work on the Elan Valley dams, he was appointed the official photographer for the project. In December 1947, shortly before his death, an exhibition of P B Abery’s photographs of the dams was held at the Birmingham Civic Centre.

A number of his photographs feature Motorcycle racing and although the event is not listed and we hope to find out which events they are it is most likely they are either the Pre WW2 International Six Day Trials or the Welsh Three / Two Day International Trial which is still held every year in Llandrindod Wells.

P B Abery was also a regular contributor to the national daily newspapers, and the sporting and agricultural weeklies.

P B Abery’s photographic collection can be searched further through the NLW e-Resources page.

There is a project being co-ordinated by the National Library of Wales called ‘The People’s Collection‘ which is attempting to gather the memories and stories of the peoples history of Wales.

Speedtracktales has created a collection so as to be able to save copies of original material we acquire about the International Six Days in Wales or of its riders at home and abroad for the future to protect this valuable information. We would encourage any owners of the material we are sharing to do the same, creating your own account to do so then sharing those images and files with the ISDT group I have set up that can eb visited with this URL http://www.peoplescollectionwales.co.uk/Groups/Group/125

One of the great finds whilst checking out the images already on the People’s Collection site was to find one of the very pictures I was searching for when I first stumbled on Taff’s web site ‘ Speedtracktales’. I had been looking for pictures of the ISDT on the Allt y Badi in Llangollen before the second World War. This image comes from a collection of photos at the Llangollen Museum.

Unfotunately the picture, which is titled as being the Allt y Badi in the 1930’s featuring a trials bike possibly in competition, is not the ISDT so I still hope a photo has survived the ages since the event was held.

I hope more of the photos of Percy Abery and other image takers of the Welsh ISDT events emerge