Norton heads north
Despite (or maybe due to!) the social disarray caused by the Covid-19 crisis, many of our readers are finding time to reminisce about past adventures – including Derek Manders, who took a trip north of the border no less than 50 years ago...
It’s now the middle of April 2020, I’m well into my fourth week of voluntary isolation brought on by the dreaded coronavirus pandemic and I have just realised that it will very shortly be 50 years since my mate Dave and I did our Scotland trip on Dave’s 16H Norton. So I thought that as I have a bit of spare time on my hands I would pen a few words about it and share them with you.
Just in case you were wondering, I am not wasting my isolation period, I am using the time wisely and getting stuck into the restoration of my 1955 James Cadet bought about a year ago, but that’s a story for another day.
Right then, here goes. May 1970 saw me celebrating my 18th birthday and my mate Dave Wells, who was about a year younger (and, funnily enough, still is!) deciding that we fancied a bit of a motorcycle adventure, eventually coming up with a plan – a very loose plan, I must add – for a trip to Scotland.
The idea was to take the early
1940s (1944 I think) Norton 16H,
HAL 797, that Dave had recently bought, fit a body on to the sidecar chassis attached to it and head north. See – I said it was a very loose plan!
The sidecar chassis previously had a double adult body on it, but we wanted something a bit more sporty looking. Yes I know a 16H Norton and sporting are not words often seen linked together, but somewhere along the line we acquired a Garrard body which fitted the bill nicely, but it didn’t fit the chassis nicely! So we had to adapt (bodge) and make do, as most folks with motorbikes and low wages in those days did.
We sat the body on to the chassis, put a couple of pieces of wood on the inside of the body and a plank of wood under the chassis, positioned so that it fitted under both the front and rear of the chassis, then nailed the two pieces inside the body to this plank. Fortunately the nails were very long so we bent them over underneath to make it more secure!
We then moved the battery from the bike into the sidecar boot, which was a trifle rusty and very thin in places. Job done, now for a road test.
I can’t remember for certain who was driving, but I think it must have been Dave. We went out for a test run to see how things would hang together and, fortunately, all was good with the outfit handling well and everything holding together nicely, until we went up Millman Road! Those of you who know Lincoln will know this is a steep hill connecting Monks Road with the hospital. Well, about two-thirds of the way up there was a bit of a clatter and we looked behind us to see the battery rolling down the hill! It probably didn’t fancy the prospect of riding to Scotland with us, so decided to abandon ship. So from then on we used the bike without a battery, as the cost of a new one would eat into our holiday money too much.
Departure day dawned and all was loaded up; we took my tent which I had bought the previous year from Wakefields Army Store. An ex-army desert tent, The Sandfly was complete with mosquito nets at each end and cost me 30 bob, £1 10/- or £1.50 in today’s money. Dave’s twin burner camping gas stove and various cooking utensils that we managed to acquire were also taken, along with sleeping bags, a few spare clothes etc. and a heavy rubber ground sheet, which doubled up as weather protection for the items that were strapped on to the nose of the sidecar.
As I said previously, this trip was very loosely planned, we had no idea where in Scotland we were going, only that it was Scotland. So off we went, firstly heading south to pick up the A1 at Newark about 20 miles from home, knowing that the A1 headed north. Shortly before Newark on the A46 the back brake started to get very hot, so we slackened off the adjuster a few turns and all was well.
On to the A1 and a steady ride at 40-45mph turning off for Harrogate, after a fuel stop, en route for our first night, which was also Dave’s first ever night’s camping.
Next morning it was back to the A1 heading north for Scotch Corner, stop for a rest then hit the A66 and aim for Gretna Green. We made Gretna for our second night and found time for a look round, seeing the original old blacksmiths shop (both of them!) where weddings were conducted.
I can’t remember exactly where we went from Gretna, but I do know that we went cross-country towards
Edinburgh, possibly stopping off for a night en route. I do remember riding through Edinburgh and the bike got that hot it refused to move until it had cooled down. Over the Forth Bridge for a night in Burntisland, on a site with nice views over the Firth of Forth.
From there we went to Dundee, then on to Perth where we saw a lot of army vehicles in desert colours (matching our tent) moving about.
From there to the lovely town of Pitlochry, followed by Aviemore – the Scottish ski resort which looked like it was still being built at the time. We stayed for a few days on the campsite at Glenmore, which is about six miles outside Aviemore, enjoying a trip up the mountain in the ski lift one day, surprised to see one lone reindeer and that there was still some snow up there in a very hot early June.
Another day we went swimming (well, more like playing in the water) in Loch Morlich which was adjacent to the campsite. A trip into Aviemore one evening to have a go at ice skating (not very successfully), a bag of Scottish chips with salt and white vinegar and in white paper! We were at that time still used to getting our chips back home in newspaper with brown vinegar. Then a real treat, a couple of pints of heavy, followed by a singsong on the ride back to camp in the dark. Yes, the lights worked okay, directly off the dynamo fortunately. While we were there
(it was during Isle of Man TT week) the weather was scorching hot, apparently it was the hottest place in Europe, no wonder the bike needed a rest in Edinburgh…
Next stop, Inverness. Another nice place where we had an evening roller skating (more successful than the ice skating) followed by torrential rain! Apparently it was the worst thunderstorm in living memory, and it lasted about 18 hours. Not good in a tent designed for a desert! We spent most of the rainy night sheltering in the toilet block watching the lightning, which at one point struck and lit up all of the light bulbs (which were turned off ) in the block!
From there it was one of those rides never to be forgotten. We broke camp quite early in the morning and set off down the west side of Loch Ness. It was a very damp and misty morning, albeit not raining, and the sight of Urquhart Castle appearing out of the morning mist was something really special. We had a couple of stops on the way down (monster spotting) but didn’t do any good before riding through Fort William and crossing Loch Leven on the Ballachulish ferry.
Next stop was just down the road at Glencoe for a night. The highlight of this stop was the van that came round the following morning selling milk and other essentials; I bought some bread buns off him and they were fantastic, like nothing I had tasted before, or since!
The next destination was Oban for a look, then if memory serves me correctly we wild camped by the roadside, just inside a wood on the road to the Trossachs and
Loch Lomond.
From there it was down to the Firth of Clyde where we crossed on the Erskine ferry and camped for a night on a site by the Clyde, not far off where the new Erskine Bridge was being built. Quite something to watch the men adding another section to it. Repeated only when I saw the Humber Bridge under construction some years later.
From there, I can’t for the life of me remember which route we took on our journey back down to Lincoln but I think we took fairly main roads back on to the A1 and home.
All in all, a very enjoyable
10-day adventure in which we experienced exceptional amounts of hot sunshine and thunderstorms, we did just under a thousand miles, trouble free apart from the overheating in Edinburgh, in the region of 45mpg at 40 to 45mph and spent less than £20 each in total! And the nails holding the sidecar body on didn’t fail, happy days!