So, who is the Chapter newsletter editor?

I’m Chris Jones, a high mileage early ’53 model, born and raised in Hinckley, Leicestershire, home of the rejuvenated Triumph motorcycle company. My first motorcycle experience was on the back of my dad’s autocycle aged five, when I lost much of the skin off my ankle on the spokes of the back wheel. Undaunted, I developed a bit of a taste for pillion riding and was heartbroken when he traded up to a Morris van in the late fifties. My dad wasn’t an enthusiast, riding motorcycles of necessity rather than desire. How frustrated I was in later life to discover that before I came along, he’d owned a Velocette but knew nothing about it. I quizzed him on its model designation, engine size, valve mechanism, but he knew nothing. Could it be that he’d unknowingly owned a cammy Velocette and sold it because of its bad temper?

The Morris van took us on our seaside trips to the coast of Lincolnshire, where the beach was so flat, if you walked to the seashore when the tide was out you could talk to somebody in Amsterdam. Yet the resort town of Skegness had one major attraction. A wall of death. I couldn’t have been much more than nine or ten when I first came face-to-face with a Yankee v-twin. Back then it could have come from the moon for all I knew, because American bikes were as rare as rocking horse poo in the UK back then. What knocked me flat was the unforgettable sound of those motors. Nothing I’d ever heard sounded like it. As I grew older and more inquisitive, wanting to find out what those bikes were, I was mystified to read on the casing of the motor those mystical words ‘Hendee Manufacturing Company, Springfield Mass’. Hendee? Never heard of it! Many years later, I discovered that I’d come face-to-face with red Indians and lived to tell the tale. It turns out that those old bikes, 101 Scouts, the finest wall of death bikes to this day, still exist and are still earning their keep.

A lifelong love of big old American twins was born, the Iron Redskin being number one in my book.

The first motorcycle of sorts that I actually owned, a James, lacked one important feature, an engine. Aged about eleven, I didn’t see it as much of a problem, because I was fascinated by the look of it, with a rigid back end and Webb type girder forks. My friends and I rode it all round the neighbourhood, taking it in turns to provide the motive power and I can confirm that I learnt quite a bit about forks, wheels and brakes from that old rolling chassis. In time I lost interest and graduated to a complete bike, a BSA C11 side valve 250. It didn’t run of course, but a friend of mine’s father helped out and soon a gang of us were thrashing noisily around the local fields, emulating our heroes of the track. I was still only twelve. Two of us really got the bug, though I was the one who provided the cash to finance the continual up-grade of machinery we were to run over the next four years until we could start our road riding careers. Not that I was a rich kid you’ll understand. My dad had a butcher’s shop and I ran his delivery errands, earning tips of sixpence here or a shilling there, in old money. It doesn’t matter now to know the value of the obscure old British money system that was withdrawn in 1971. Suffice it to say that there were two sixpences in a shilling and twenty shillings in a pound. As a kid of 12 – 14, a repairable old bike could be got for anything between two and five pounds, so it took between eighty and two hundred deliveries of meat for me to finance a replacement bike, depending on a) the generosity of my customers and b) whether or not I beat my Uncle Eric, who also helped out with dad’s deliveries, to the best tippers.

I think we managed a goodly selection of old British iron including a Royal Enfield 2-stroke, a Norman moped, several BSA Bantams, a BSA Dandy, a Greeves scrambler (moto-crosser) working our way through others lost in my memory to our pinnacle, an Arial Huntmaster 650cc twin, cloned from BSA’s A10. We bought it as a platform sidecar outfit when we were mature riders of fifteen, in 1968 and that chair was on, then off, then on again for months. It never went back on in alignment though and we were to be seen steering the back lanes with both hands on the twistgrip fighting to keep the plot in a straight line.

By the time I reached the legal age of sixteen to ride on the road in ‘69, most of the British motorcycle industry had been consigned to the dustbin of history. There was still a lot of old stuff around nevertheless and one of the local motorcycle shops still remained almost 100% committed to selling used Vincents. Fourteen years after the last machine rolled out of Stevenage, Ross Motors of Hinckley were still pulling in the punters with anything up to ten of the black beauties on show. As I recall, the going rate in 1968 for a good Series B or C Rapide twin was around £450 and a Shadow could be got for £600, or 24,000 meat deliveries. A tad beyond my reach, but a boy could dream, and many’s the day I would peer wistfully through the plate glass at that golden emblem on a shiny black tank, ‘The Vincent’ HRD. In those days a twenty year old Vinnie still cut a dash at the café, but their time was running out. The new Honda CB750 had made its first devastating appearance and even undercut the price of a new Commando or Triumph/BSA triple.

Where was I in all of this? Saving up for my first road bike, £60-worth of Norton Jubilee 250cc twin, bought on the basis of its big bike looks and the name on the tank.

My story continues in the next issue of ONE VOICE.