60 Years A Biker – The Golden 1960s
We’ve previously heard from John Edwards regarding his six decades on motorcycles and when OBM last left him in July 2020, he had just become a single man again. Once more he takes up the story.
At the end of my last Reader’s Tale published in OBM, I told how, early in 1962, I had divested myself of the hindrance of my current girlfriend. I had decided that Kathleen had gone off motorcycles since she had started banging on about getting a car. But, before I tell you about the 1960s, I have a confession.
The way I’d ‘dumped’ Kathleen back then was mean and, looking back, I can see I was a bit of an arse at the time. When we rode together on my big A10 BSA, Kathy never complained about my riding and she never seemed to mind what the weather threw at us. She was even tolerant about the BSA’s successor, the slightly unreliable little Excelsior Talisman. But she seemed to dislike our next bike, the Ariel Arrow, and it was then that she started to moan about my riding.
Looking back, why wouldn’t she?
The stand on an Arrow hangs too loose. When cornering two-up on bumpy bends it tends to scrape on the road. It wasn’t actually dangerous and to me it was just part of the fun. However, with hindsight, it must have been seriously unnerving for Kathy.
Selfishly, I took her new and (to me) unwarranted complaining – forever telling me to slow down – as an attempt to spoil my fun and thus a way of nagging me into buying a car.
Eventually, she had occasion to phone me one January evening to say: “I thought you were coming over tonight?” It was a cold, wet night and I replied: “No, I already told you, I’ve got homework.” (At the time, I was on a “sandwich course” apprenticeship, working in the summer and studying at college full time during the winter.)
There was a silence; long seconds elapsed. Then she said: “If you can’t make it tonight don’t bother to come round again.” My reply was immediate, brief and callous. “Okay,” I replied.
Perhaps, in those circumstances, that curt reply might have seemed excusable. It wasn’t. However, we had different aspirations for the future. By threatening to dump me if I didn’t come to heel, Kathy had handed me a ‘Get-out-of-Jail-Free’ card. She had spared me the dreaded tearful angst of a face-to-face parting.
Anyway, it was the end of the conversation and the end of our twoyear relationship. I had gained the freedom I’d been wanting and could look forward to an unencumbered biking future. And, boy, for me the 60s certainly did turn out to be a fabulous decade. Cher’s words in her song Life after Love were destined to come true…
Ironically, the Ariel Arrow didn’t escape being sold on just because the girl who disliked her was out of the picture. In no time at all, I was booking up to go to the TT races the following June with some of my mates. A new bike would be required for the trip, one that steered as well as the Arrow but had more horses.
Within a couple of months, the first buds of spring determined that it was time to get the new bike. The Norton Dominators were the benchmark for steering prowess and, in March of 1962, I discovered a nice, green, wideline 500cc ‘88-SS’ model at the showrooms of local dealers Gray, Rowsell and
Baker at Shoreham-by-Sea.
Finding true love
A few days later I took the Arrow along to negotiate a part-exchange deal. The Dommie was still in the showroom looking as smart and desirable as I’d remembered. I was sitting on it and feeling well pleased with my choice when another model caught my eye just along the line-up. It looked rather special and demanded a closer look.
The bike was a 1961 650cc Matchless G12CSR and it was absolutely beautiful. With its massive burgundy and chrome fuel tank sitting above that magnificent engine and with those sweeping, siamesed exhaust pipes and purposeful alloy mudguards sitting clear of its 19-inch wheels, the big Matchless looked the absolute business, the ultimate go-anywhere bike. The moment I sat on it, I was in love. As smart as it was, the green Norton never even got an apologetic backward glance.
A big bonus was that the Matchless was practically brand new and, with only 1300 miles on the speedometer, had merely completed its running-in mileage. At £210 it was £30 more than the price of the Norton, yet over £100 less than it had cost when new.
A chat with the salesman revealed that the CSR’s previous owner hadn’t really wanted to sell it. He had been obliged to part exchange it because his wife had finally refused to ride pillion on it any more. She rated the rear of its dual seat as only marginally more comfortable than her ironing board. To be fair, she had a point. The seat was short and the padding on the rear end really was a bit meagre. In fact, I recalled that in the original road test in the weekly Motor Cycling magazine the tester had described the bike’s dual seat as comfortable though not designed for two, calling it “a seat of rather generous proportions for one”.
I had also read that, during one of the top speed tests, the rider had accidently clipped one of the conical runway lights at more than 80mph. He had been very impressed when the big Matchless merely shook its head and maintained its course without drama. He attributed this to the highly regarded duplex motocross frame which the company had used for all the CSR sports twins, both AJS and Matchless variants. The magazine had gone so far as to describe the bike as “a connoisseur’s mount”.
Remembering these tributes, and with the sheer beauty of the beast standing before me, I didn’t need to think twice. I did a part-exchange deal on the Ariel Arrow and the Matchless was mine. It was a decision I never regretted. The big CSR became one of the best-loved bikes of my biking life and one that I kept for many years.
Coffee bar cowboys
By this time, I and several of my bike-loving fellow apprentices were already meeting up at weekends to ride out together, visiting Brands Hatch regularly, Crystal Palace on bank holidays or otherwise
heading for scrambles meetings. Sometimes we would visit other seaside resorts rather than
Brighton, such as Littlehampton or Hastings. These, of course, were the days of confrontation between Mods and Rockers on Brighton seafront. However, although we rated ourselves as ‘Rockers’ and frequented the coffee bars in and around Brighton, we weren’t interested in such pointless aggression and never got involved. I never knew of any local guys that did.
Over the following months and into 1963, our group of enthusiasts steadily grew, as friends and friends of friends joined us to meet at the coffee bars in and around Brighton and ride out at weekends. Eventually, one of our lot, Johnny Rich, who was a toolmaking apprentice at our firm and ran a Norton Jubilee, heard that one of his neighbours was the last member of an ACU affiliated club and was about to close it down unless we would like to take it on. It seemed like a really good plan and soon we were all members of the Southern Observers MCC.
As I recall, it was Johnny Rich who became club secretary; I think Derek Burt, another one of our apprentices who at that time ran an Ariel Golden Arrow, became treasurer. Ted
Oliver, who was a milkman and ran a standard 650cc Matchless twin, became chairman. I believe I was the membership secretary.
I had by then already become a member of the Sunbeam MCC in order to compete in proper trials events on my self-converted Francis Barnett rather than just messing about in the local woods.
Spurred on by our official title, it was pretty easy for me to get several of our members to volunteer as observers at Sunbeam Club trials, in addition to assisting at the annual Pioneer Run. While observing at one of the larger Sunbeam national trials I had an interesting mimed conversation with the great
Sammy Miller.
Sammy had a teensy little dab at the start of my section and another little one right at the far end. He stopped beyond and put up one finger to suggest he’d lost only one point. I shook my head and put up three fingers. He reacted by putting up two reversed fingers before riding away without argument. I’m pretty sure he won the trial by a big margin, anyway.
Despite actually being observers from time to time, I have to confess that it wasn’t long before the bulk of our members were unofficially styling ourselves as the ‘Southern Burners.’ We were, after all, still essentially coffee bar cowboys.
Soon most of our members had progressed from bikes such as Ariel Arrows, Tiger Cubs and Norton Jubilees to bigger machines like
Dominators, Bonnevilles and Gold Stars, etc., while I already had the big CSR Matchless. This was the beginning of our ‘naughty’ period. We were on the cusp of being genuine ‘ton-up kids.’
One of our favoured coffee bar haunts was in Lewes, around eight miles along the A27 from Brighton. It became a regular thing on a Friday evening to travel independently to this establishment, meeting up to have a good time, play the juke box and drink espressos before all leaving together to whizz back to Brighton.
“No racing tonight, okay?” Every single evening, as we strolled to the line of bikes outside, we would all agree: “No racing tonight, okay?”
At that moment, I believe we always meant it. But, once we had toddled at a sensible pace through the streets of Lewes to the traffic lights by Lewes Prison, everything changed. The traffic lights became our start line. If the lead rider caught a green light he was effectively on ‘pole position’ and the race was on. Everyone else was further down the grid. Those unlucky to cop a ‘red’ were handicapped by a bad start. None of this was in any way taken seriously.
Sometimes I look back with some horror at what we got up to in those days. Back then the large double lane dual carriageways now linking Lewes and Brighton and merging into the Brighton bypass had never even been imagined. In the 1960s the A27 was a narrow road of fairly straight sections connecting fast sweeping bends and no double white lines to hinder overtaking.
I can relive it in my mind’s eye as I type. It would be dark, of course. Traffic might be sparse or it might be quite busy. It made no difference. Often there would be chains of cars to be overtaken and chains of headlights coming the other way. The quickest bikes would have got at least near to the ton on the initial straight, somewhat slower on the bends and back to high speed whenever possible.
Even though in those days there were no blanket speed limits, it must have been a pretty alarming experience for the car drivers on the straights to have a high-speed string of motorcycles roaring between them at 70 or 80mph only inches away, navigating along little more than a yard or so of the available tarmac.
At the village of Falmer, just near to where Brighton and Hove Albion’s football stadium now sits, there used to be a dangerous crossroads, where two relatively minor roads met the main carriageway. When traffic was light, most of the quick guys would take this hazard flat out at around the ton. I was more ‘sensible,’ always slowing to about 90.
Ironically, these burn-ups, having started at a prison, then finished in a lay-by beside a police box at the side of the main road near the Brighton boundary. This, I recall, was around 70 yards beyond the 30 limit signs, by which point we were already slowing down.
Even slowing fractionally at the Falmer crossroads, I could still arrive at the finish first as often as any of them. The big Matchless, despite by then being fitted with braced, off-road-style handlebars, was proving to be as good as its road test had suggested – a match in speed and handling against all the others, even machines equipped with clip-ons and rearsets (maybe with the possible exception of a well-ridden Goldie).
We would usually linger at the police box lay-by for a while, teasing and boasting on a tide of adrenaline. Occasionally, on a quieter night for traffic, we would swap bikes and roar back to the outskirts of Lewes and back just for the hell of it. It was on one of these runs on Johnny Thompson’s remarkably quick 500cc Norton Dominator (his dad just happened to be Gordon Thompson, a well-known local tuning guru) that I first got to hear my own bike at speed. It tore past in the opposite direction, absolutely flat out and ridden by one of our mob, Pete Sinden, who, incidentally, hadn’t asked my permission – no worries, it was all part of the fun. My ears thrilled to that brief blast of the uniquely beautiful exhaust note of the CSR, ripping at high speed through the night air. It matched exactly the description in that road test in Motor Cycling magazine.
The sound really was “like a giant tearing calico”.
It all does end in tears
As I said, we were all being very naughty, very often. The phrase
“It’ll all end in tears” has to come to mind. Sure enough, it eventually came true. One Friday night, there was a huge smash on the way back from Lewes.
Fortunately – and I honestly do believe that at momentous moments Lady Luck (my guardian angel?) really is watching out for me – I wasn’t there on that night. I had no solid reason not to go to Lewes as usual, I just couldn’t be bothered to go out on that particular Friday.
Another coffee bar cowboy, a guy I didn’t know awfully well and who wasn’t at Lewes regularly, nor even a member of our club, was responsible for the whole debacle. He rode a Triumph Bonneville
– one of the earlier bikes, not equipped with a sensibly braced swinging arm pivot. Back then, there was a real fast left-hander taking you on to the straight leading up to Falmer village. On a decent handling bike you could take it at well over 90mph, no problem. The Bonneville wasn’t up to it and it all went disastrously wrong. The rider collided with the side of a Mini coming the other way and broke more or less every bone on the right side of his body in an instant. The impact careered the Mini sideways across the road, right into the path of the pursuing pack.
Several other bikes ploughed straight into the carnage. Joe Milne on his Norton Dominator had slammed into the car and gone straight over the top, his windpipe catching on the rain gutter as he went. Another one of our guys (whose name I forget) clipped the car on his green A7SS sports BSA twin and escaped with a broken ankle and various abrasions. I believe Johnny Thompson came off his quick 500cc Norton and was also lucky to escape with minor injuries, despite the fact that he nearly always wore wellies rather than the stronger, leather boots most of us had. More than that I can’t be sure – I learned it all second-hand and it was a long time ago now.
The really lucky one of ours was Joe. With his windpipe fractured, he couldn’t breathe and, to make it even worse, he also had some broken ribs. Happily an off-duty copper was soon on the scene and acted quickly, doing an emergency tracheostomy on the spot with a penknife.
In the event, Joe wasn’t hospitalised for all that long and overall our guys got off pretty lightly. Of course, it made me stop and think and I often look back as the years roll by. How would I have fared that night had I also been there?
There is an ironic sequel to this story. When the Bonneville guy eventually faced the wrath of the law, rumour had it that his father pleaded with the authorities to ban him for the maximum period of three years – because he wanted him to stay alive. His father got his wish and, once the ban was lifted, he’d succeeded in getting him on to four wheels. Sadly, a few months after this, we heard that he had crashed the car – again apparently cornering too fast – and, tragically, this time he was killed. It’s terrible when the price to be paid for a moment of overenthusiasm is so high.
Most of the rest of us (sadly, not all) were so much luckier. We were able to continue enjoying the golden days of the 1960s, including going off to the TT races for that memorable first time in 1962. I’ll write about this and lots more in future tales.