Your letters and fab first bikes
Good to read Simon Weir’s piece on Hardknott Pass and Wrynose Pass. Amazingly, I had just been over them the night before MCN arrived through the letterbox. Simon got it spot on – there’s no margin for error, no safety barriers, and most of the tourists that drive it in their ridiculous gas-guzzling 4x4s haven’t a clue. They don’t know the width of their vehicles, couldn’t reverse in a wide open deserted car park. I first rode it on my 16th birthday on the old D175 BSA Bantam. Today, 52 years later, I’m on my beautiful Triumph Tiger 800 XCX and it is probably the best motorcycle in the world.
Bill Birkett, email
Just enjoy the ride
If there’s one thing the last year or so has taught me it is the simple pleasure that I get out of having a bike – just to be able to get out and ride it. I’ve spent a lot of money adding extras and looking for the best fitting gear. Essentially, however, most of it is not necessary. If you want to spend on your bike, it’s tyres and suspension every time. Let birthdays and Christmas presents cover the other stuff. Any spare cash spend on training!
Ken Dagless, email
Was it built in the dark? There is something of the night about the latest Honda CBR1000R (MCN, April 28), in the darkness they’ve fitted the wrong bodywork and they left some of it off.
Richard Holmes, email
Half a million miles later This little gem was taken just off Victoria Hill, Swindon, one Sunday outside the gym where I trained to improve my boxing. The bike took my new wife and me all over the south of England during the first year of marriage before we moved on to a fabulous Velocette Venom Clubman, until we needed a sidecar in 1964 after a massive accident. We were living in Taunton and having arrived back from the Elephant Rally (it was held at the Ring then), I was up early to ride up to Bristol to work but a farmer came out of a lane without lights to cross the road into a field. The result was 12 months off work, a lot of broken bones down my right hand side and the nerves snapped in my right shoulder and the arm paralysed. We have done over half a million miles on outfits since then. We are now 80-plus great grandparents and after a stroke my wife can no longer get in the sidecar so we have four wheels and sadly the outfits have to go. Colin and Anita Bembridge, email
Bikers are the best people
A big thank you to the two fellows from Leeds who stopped to help my daughter last Sunday. I was proud but also a bit fearful when my daughter told me she wanted to get a bike. She passed her CBT and having covered a few hundred miles on her CBF, I thought we could go out to a local bike café near Bridgnorth. Looking in my mirrors my heart nearly jumped out of my chest as I saw her clip the outside of a roundabout a couple of miles from our destination. I turned round and as I approached I was relieved to see she had picked the bike up and before I got there two proper hard looking bikers had stopped to help. Turns out the CBF crashes fairly well and the only damage was to the gear change pedal. They parked up and produced a toolkit for a repair. Long
and the short of it, we made it to the café just in time for a cuppa and my faith in humanity and my pride in the biking community is yet again restored. Bikers really are the best!
Samuel Rickman, email
Wings are for planes
I read with some horror Aleix Espargaro’s confession that he found following other bikes difficult on his be-winged Aprilia. Formula 1 motor racing has been ruined as a spectacle by its dependence on aerodynamics in car design – it is fine in clean air or a wind tunnel, not so good in traffic. Please Dorna, stop this slide into oblivion while there is still time. Wings are for planes not motorcycles!
Neil Fraser, email
Doing it for the kids
I’ve enjoyed reading about Michael Laverty’s racing academy, and the fact that the people are helping youngsters to go racing possibly to GP level is fantastic news for us Brits. Now we can produce top-level riders as they do in Spain and Italy.
Andy Parker, email
Our roads are shocking
I am old enough to remember when we used to pay a ‘Road Fund Licence’ – money to pay for the roads. Governments have not only increased the amount we pay for the privilege to ride, but have changed the name of that payment to get them off the hook. The state of many roads is downright dangerous. I wonder if any ministers have ever been on a bike.
John Bailey, email