Memories of The Motor Cycle

Pete Kelly’s column about The Motor Cycle of the early 1960s brought back memories of my first interest in motorcycles when I was 12 years old.

I delivered papers and one of the houses had The Motor Cycle every week. I use to sneak a look at the magazine on my round and then I started ordering my own and became hooked on bikes. I enjoyed the column of John Ebbrell called Twistgrip and Spanners and also On The Four Winds by ‘Nitor’ (who was Nitor?).

I still have all those mags until it went to a newspaper in 1967. Those were too large to keep so they were binned every month.

In 1964 I bought my first motorcycle, a Royal Enfield 250 Crusader. At the Motorcycle Show in 1965 at, I think, Earls Court, I met John Ebbrell on The Motor Cycle stand and told him I was doing my first long journey in the summer of 1966 from Bristol to my sister’s in Sandwich, Kent. He showed me how to write out a route to put on the tank and gave me some useful tips on loading my bike, etc. He was a very nice bloke and sadly not with us now. The Motor Cycle came back as a magazine in the late 70s I think, but I never saved those. I often look at those I have and read some of the articles, it makes very interesting reading. John Woodruff