Motorcycle and car racing on runways at the former RAF Abingdon base is making life a misery for villagers, writes Michael Hambleton.

As neighbours besieged a telephone hotline for environmental complaints at the Vale of White Horse District Council, many people living in areas such as Cothill, Dry Sandford and Wootton took to their cars to escape the ear-shattering noise of high-performance engines at the weekend.

Cothill resident Wendy Rossiter, said: "I feel it is a great shame. The peace and quiet of our village is shattered time and again by events on the airfield."

She was so incensed as riders began practising on Saturday for Sunday's motorcycle road-racing championship at Dalton Barracks that she delivered letters to neighbours urging them to join her in complaining to district council environmental officers.

"The noise was intolerable and unbearable," Mrs Rossiter, of Cothill Lane, Cothill, said. Ian Treacy and his wife Christina said they supported Mrs Rossiter's complaints about the "constant roar" of the racing only a few hundred yards from their home in Dry Sandford.

Like Mrs Rossiter and other villagers, Mr and Mrs Treacy said the noise was a problem most weekends when the airfield was used for motor sport and other events.

Jeff Clarke of Honeybottom Lane, Cothill, said that as a tree surgeon using power saws, he was well used to loud noise. He had grown up in the area with the sound of aircraft from the former RAF base, now the home of the Army's Royal Logistics Corps. But the level of noise we experience at weekends is beyond what people should have to put up with," he said.

"On Saturday, it was a continuous loud whine which was ear-shattering." The motorcycle road racing was organised by the North Gloucestershire Motorcycle Club and the RAF Motor Sports Association.

Deputy clerk of the course Nino Pezzini said they had received complaints though he insisted that organisers themselves monitored sound levels on and off the airfield. "We adhere to levels laid down by the sport's governing body the Auto Cycle Union and we apologise to people who have complained," he said.

He acknowledged that it was an unfortunate coincidence that motorcar racing the Southern Area Grass Track meeting was also taking place at Dalton Barracks over the weekend.