The Bermuda Motorcycle Racing Club is threatening direct action unless a permanent home can be found for the booming sport.

The club has just been hit with the bombshell that it will have to vacate its present home -- the Southside Raceway in St. Davids -- by the middle of next month to make way for development work.

And organisers say if they are not found a new -- and more importantly, permanent -- home, the time may come to take their protest to the roads.

The Bermuda Land Development Company, on whose land the bikers have been racing, has offered the club an alternative site at Clearwater Beach, but organisers say it is unacceptable.

BMRC vice-president Grant Goudge said the club had bent over backwards to make sure it met all the demands made by the BLDC and Bermuda Government -- including making provisions for becoming a limited company, instigating drug tests and establishing a unified motorsports body -- and this was just a slap in the face.

He said he had reacted with "dismay'' when told the club would have to move by mid-November. "That doesn't leave us any time -- it's about one more race and it comes after we have just spent $5,000 on the place as well,'' he said.

Of the newly proposed site at Clearwater, he said: "It's a lot smaller than what we have got and it's a car park. There's all sorts of issues arising from it.

"It has loads of holes in it where poles have been sunk at some point, which is no good to us. How are we going to fence it off? Can we use the road? No, because people will be going to the beach apparently in December. So how can we charge an entrance fee if we can't discriminate between beachgoers and race goers? "It's going to need work again, it will need fences erecting and banking put up and things like that when we have spent that kind of money on where we are.

Why should we go and spend another $10,000 to $15,000 and four months down the line have them say `we're sorry something else is happening there' or `we are having something on the beach and you can't race today'?'' Goudge said talk of Southside being developed had been discussed, but the club had been assured it would be found somewhere just as good as an alternative.

Clearwater was not the answer. Goudge said he couldn't understand the apparent opposition to a permanent home for the club.

"It's booming. The numbers are growing, we are getting new racers every day,'' he said.

While he would like to have further dialogue with Government to bring about a satisfactory solution, if that didn't materialise Goudge said the time may come for direct action.

"I'd like to seek more talks but if it doesn't happen and we look like we are out of a track, instead of having a track to play on we'll have to play on the roads on a Sunday,'' he said.

"We'll have to get in our cars and on our bikes and drive round the Island at 20mph and bring traffic to a halt. We have to get heard somehow.'' No-one was available for comment at BLDC yesterday.

Speed king: BMRC president David Jones in action.