Royal enfield 500 bullet: Acquiring

There’s a new arrival in the Bike fleet as Mikearmitage takes over his dad’s Enfield – with more than a little emotion

DMike Armitage and Jason Critchell o you want my bike?’ Asks my dad, Les. The answer is what they call a no-brainer. I’ve got a perverse attraction to single-cylinder machinery and also a soft spot for the simple charms of Royal Enfield’s archaic thumpers. But more than that it’s my dad’s bike, so of course I want to take it over. ‘If you don’t want it then it will just sit in the garden and go rusty,’ adds my mum, Hazel. ‘We don’t want it going anywhere else.’ It’s a done deal.

The old man’s always had bikes, including a BSA B40 and a glinting white Triumph Tiger 90 (3339RA is still on the DVLA system, though is now attached to a black Triumph 650 that’s not been taxed since 1989). When my parents got married and moved into their house he got a Lambretta GT200 which was, ‘really fast from the lights,’ and was my first contact with a powered two-wheeler. There are photos of me looking dashing in dungarees, perched on its two-tone seat. There then followed a quartet of MZS – a TS250, Supa 5 and two ETZS – that provided reliable transport until dad retired. This is when he bought the Royal Enfield, a pampered press test bike from the then importers Watsonian Squire. That was 12 years ago. Having reached the decision that he’s now unlikely to ride it anymore and should pass it on to me, it will be the first time in 50 years that there hasn’t been a bike parked outside the house. ‘It’ll be ages before I stop thinking someone has nicked my bike,’ he smiles.

It’s a Royal Enfield Bullet Electra X from 2006, the year of the model’s introduction. It was the first to feature a new fangled front disc brake, with an alloy barrel instead of iron and electric start as standard (this whizzbang tech had previously only been an extravagant extra). The model was only around for a couple of years before being replaced by the Electra EFI with the fuel-injected unit construction engine they’ve used ever since, but I prefer the aesthetics of this earlier motor with its separate gearbox and external oil lines. The 20-odd mile ride home is a sense-teasing medley of thudding exhaust note, bobbing ride and armchair-like seat. It’s all as expected, though the 499cc, 25bhp air-cooled single feels more willing than I recall the modern emissionmeeting Bullet being (if ‘willing’ and ‘modern’ are words you can use when describing an Enfield). Dad’s also given me a brand-new rack he got with the bike but never fitted, so I’m going to attach it along with a modest handlebar screen for laid-back commutes to Bike’s leaky Portakabin. But what I’m really looking forward to are sunny evening trundles to the pub with Mrs A smiling on the back (and whistling the Heartbeat theme) and afternoons lost down lanes with youngest son Lyle, who’s more excited by the arrival of granddad’s bike than by any hot-poop new machinery. I don’t expect that we’ll ever stop referring to my latest acquisition as ‘granddad’s bike’.