VELO SET-UP
SEEING THE pictures of Anthony Godin’s Velocette Thruxton and reading the Geoff Dodkin feature brought memories of my mate Coles’ Velo flooding back.
Coles was one of our village gang. I’ve got it in my head that he rode a Crusader Sports before passing his test, but I’m can’t be 100% sure. It’s his Velo that I recall quite vividly.
He worked on a pig farm – and, like the rest of our gang, was a scruffy long-hair. I think he washed more than most of us, due to his job!
Coles though was absolutely meticulous when it came to his Velo. I don’t recall it as a stock Venom, because it seemed that he spent hours, days, weeks, months turning it into a really cool-looking café racer which looked almost exactly like Godin’s Thruxton.
He lived in the nearby town, but he started work at the crack of dawn so it was more convenient to stay at his nan’s place in the village – and that’s where he worked on the Velo, in a tiny outhouse that was probably used to store coal in a previous life.
It was so tight for space, he used to squat in the doorway to work on the bike, spending most of his time either spitting out mouthfuls of his long hair which threatened to break his concentration or having his lips tightly clamped around the skinniest of roll-ups.
At the time, I had a pretty tidy C15 SS80, but was in awe of this Velo – which we all considered a real hardcore biker’s bike. That beautiful heart-shaped timing chest, the glorious big, black tank with perfect gold pinstriping, and that big, shiny fishtail. It wasn’t so impressive when we all had to sit with our motors running, waiting for him to perform the starting drill!
He was still learning his bike’s idiosyncrasies, just like the rest of us were with ours – but trying to kick his high-comp motor in his stockman’s wellies probably didn’t help.
When it was running, that motor made a wonderful sound, its gentle bark intensifying into a glorious staccato rhythm as it got into its stride. Sadly, it almost came to a sticky end at Land’s End when he managed to put it through the wall and into a field. That cut our holiday short – it was my very first day on my brand new 650 Triumph, too.
We sorted a car and trailer to get the wrecked bike home and then hired a mini-bus to get up to Coles’ regular haunt – Dodkin’s shop on Richmond Road. Mini-bus? Yeah, we couldn’t carry the stash of parts on bikes and none of us drove cars back then. Besides, a trip to Dodkin’s was a good day out, especially as it always meant stopping off for beers on the way home...
Coles fixed the damage... and then, in what seemed no time at all, swapped it for a brand new Commando Interstate – great bike, but never as iconic as that Velo.
Enjoy the issue.