Blog

I’m the editor of Freewheel, the bi-monthly magazine of the Rover Sports Register, a non-profit-making club that covers all Rover products from cycles to motorcycles and cars right up to the last 2005 models. One of our members has alerted me to the item about the Roamer, built around a 1920s 8hp Rover flat-twin engine,…

Continue reading »

I read the article about Andrew Powell’s MZ collection (OBM February) with great interest as I’m a fan of Eastern European two-strokes. My first motorcycle was a DKW RT200VS that I bought from Pride & Clarke’s in 1960, and I passed my test on it that summer. I sold it six years later when I…

Continue reading »

After reading Andy Hanlon’s letter about Glasgow motorcycle dealers (OBM February), I am attaching a 1960s’ flyer issued by Ross Motors, who had a small motorcycle shop on Great Western Road and sold service parts downstairs. Of more interest, a few hundred yards away in North Woodside Road, they had garage premises and also owned…

Continue reading »

The cover picture of last month’s OBM showed a motorcyclist riding to the summit of Great Dun Fell in Cumbria, where the ‘giant golf ball’ is situated. The photograph shows the Eden Valley below, with the British Gypsum Factory at Kirkby Thore clearly visible. May I remind would-be riders that this road is privately owned…

Continue reading »

It was interesting to read the article in August’s OBM regarding Des Heckle’s Yamaha sprinter and the reference to Des selling his rolling chassis “to someone who wanted to use it as a basis for a drag race bike”. Well I was that person, and remember one evening after work driving up from Buckinghamshire to…

Continue reading »

I was delighted to see the photo and article from Arran Marshall about his Ariel ‘racer’. During the 1980s the bike was owned by a good friend of mine, Claude Mackenzie, who lived at Tornagrain, near Inverness and sadly died about 10 years ago. He was a brilliant self-taught engineer with a penchant for challenging…

Continue reading »