How to get to the front of a bus queue

Any mention of motorbike sidecar transport takes me back to my early days of scrambling in 1955, prior to which we rode the bike to events. Once this was with my dad on pillion riding home from the Peterborough club’s wellknown track at Wansford, having broken the front downtube of my BSA. We just had to get on with it, Dad with the toolbox across his legs behind me and petrol can in one hand. Off we went home with some strange looks from spectators in cars leaving at the same time as us. About halfway home, opposite Woolfox airfield, I took both hands off the handlebars and shouted to my dad: “Look, no hands!” He shouted back: “You daft b*gger, get hold of the bars.” Back home in Grantham, I ordered the next day a replacement from David Tye Motorcycles at Cromford (David had become very helpful to me) and my scrambling continued.

With my late brother Dennis, I attended and rode in the Derby and Pathfinders scramble at Turnditch in Derbyshire, a super track that was always fun to ride. However, after completing one very late autumn race there, we made our way home to Grantham on my Norton 16H with sidecar platform for the scrambles bike. By the time we were motoring in the near dark of the evening towards Nottingham, down the Ilkeston Road at about 35/40mph, there was a crashing, grinding sound. That told us that the sidecar wheel mudguard had come loose, done a half circle turn and sparks were flying everywhere from the – by now upside down – mudguard, which promptly wore away the sidelamp as you can imagine.

As all this was happening, I quickly pulled into the side of the road which turned out to be a bus stop with, as it turned out, some 20-odd folk awaiting the bus. With the racket going on and the sparks a-flying, the bus queue flew in all directions. We came to a stop in the bus stop, off the bike we got, up with the sidecar wheel, grabbed the mudguard, wrenched it into its upright position, which seemed okay, jumped back on the bike and continued our way home to Grantham.

I can’t remember much more about the rest of the trip home, but I guess it was okay. I sold the Norton shortly after that and got a pick-up, as I had a new girlfriend who was to become my wife. The last I remember of the Norton was when the purchaser rode off on it and, a hundred or so yards down the road, didn’t make the right-hand turn and drove into the hedge. He dragged it out and went on his way, now, of course, re-equipped with the double adult chair. What fun!

I also noticed in OBM a letter from Dick Clears who is a member of the Dabbers Motorcycle Club in the Cambridgeshire area which does a fine job of putting on super events where my son Andrew and grandsons James and Fraser often ride and who supply me with reports of the events as soon as they get home, in which they tell me that yet again it had been a fun event. Thanks Dick and your helpers, I think I did observe once when down in Norfolk visiting for the weekend.