Pete Chatburn tells us about his start in motorcycling (and that’s how he titled his letter – we’re not being rude!) and wonders whether might be buried treasure on a local airfield.
It all started for me in 1965 when I found my Granpa’s abandoned 1959 Raleigh RM1C moped in the shed behind his tailor’s shop. He had parked it there the previous year when he bought a posh new blue Mobylette, so I asked if I could have it. He said yes, so I pushed it home.
Much to his chagrin I got it going (I bought another in bits for well under a pound and used that engine), painted it and polished the chrome. I then had to wait six months until my 16th birthday to ride it officially. So I let my Mum use it until then.
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That Raleigh moped, MEE 377, still sits in my garage and is taken out for a trot occasionally when I feel brave enough to take on modern motorists on it!
My next bike was a collection of parts left over from when one of my older brother’s school friends had rebuilt his Tiger Cub. Bought for 17s 6d, it was a 1956 plunger frame with most of its bits and the remains of a broken 1959 motor. GJV 572 was rebuilt, painted like a Tiger 90 in white and red with gold pinstripes and used for daily (if unreliable) transport.
In early 1967 my parents celebrated their silver wedding anniversary and among the guests was their best man. I sat talking to him and he mentioned there was an old motorbike in his garage that his son had left there, and that I could have it if I wanted.
A few days later I turned up at his lockup to find a blue and yellow painted ex-WD Triumph 3HW in a very sorry state, which was duly pushed home.
I stripped the engine, cleaned out the black jelly-like oil residue and went to pester our local bike breaker, the famed Barry Ladlow, for parts.
Another of my brother’s mates had just built a Triton and he had a Triumph 6T rolling chassis going spare, so that too was pushed home. My teenage plan was to fit the 350 3HW engine and box into the 6T frame.
All this was accumulating, together with my brother’s pair of Bantams and a ‘customised’ James Cadet he’d got from a neighbour, in our father’s single garage.
Father was not a fan of motorbikes, having once owned a prewar side valve 250 BSA that wouldn’t keep its tappets tight. On the basis of that experience he had decided all motorbikes were unreliable rubbish. His view was compounded when Granpa gave him the tired Cyclemaster that preceded the Raleigh.
To say he was unhappy that he couldn’t get his Rover into his own garage was something of an understatement, so he put his foot down. While I was out he called the aforementioned Mr Ladlow and instructed him to remove the 6T, no payment required. He then informed his two sons that they both must dispose of one bike – so we did. I
hadn’t passed my test, but my brother had; he could ride the 350cc 3HW and the James was a 98cc which I could ride, so we swapped. I can’t remember father’s reaction!
The 3HW was completed, painted blue and white this time, and pressed into service. My brother used it for a while before selling it on to a mate at college, who set about restoring it. Years later I found out that he too had parental issues, resulting in the poor old Triumph being sawn in half so it fitted in the back of an A40. It was then dumped in the corner of our local abandoned airfield.
I now live in a village at the end of one of its runways and when I am looking after my daughter’s dog I can be found wandering around that very same airfield, fantasising that I will stumble across the remains of that bike.
There is a curved metal tube peeking out of the ground near the peritrack that I would like to think is the frame, so should I take some tools and dig it out? Or was the bike found by a fellow enthusiast back in the 1960s and saved for posterity, and that tube is just part of a gate? I shall never know.
I am still an active and enthusiastic rider, either on my 1953 Sunbeam S8 or my superb 2019 Royal Enfield Interceptor and hope to continue for some years yet.
