Features

Stan Bates visited northern Italy to check out the Moto Guzzi museum. The Lombardy region of Northern Italy is no stranger to either tourists or motorcycles, given its proximity to Milan and the stunning vistas over Lake Como, but there’s more than magnificent views and impeccably twisting tarmac to tease the interest of avid two-wheelers.…

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Mick Payne looks back fondly on the years of Charnwood Classic Restorations of Hugglescote, Leicestershire – once known as the ‘one-stop sidecar shop’. Last month I mentioned those sidecar makes that didn’t make it into Geoff Brazendale’s The Sidecar, a History. This was never meant to be a slight on the book but rather to…

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With many anniversaries of significant Japanese motorcycles coming up, Steve Cooper looks at one we almost completely forgot last year – the golden anniversary of Yamaha’s ground-breaking YR1 350cc two-stroke twin. The marking of special occasions comes under the umbrella title of ‘anniversary’ or, to use the dictionary definition, the date on which an event…

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Dave Manning heads to the Yorkshire Wolds for an eye-opening look at memorabilia and history While formal museums can display their exhibits in a brightly-lit blaze of formality, there is sometimes a cold feeling of detachment and a lack of soul and passion. Fortunately, motorcycle museums are rarely of this form, and more usually consist…

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While taking part in a French motorcycling event, Ian Kerr stumbles across a charming motorcycle museum in the historic town of Entrevaux. The annual five-day Drailles event, run by the Moto Club Senas Durance that’s based in the town of the same name in Provence in the South of France, celebrated its seventh birthday this…

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John Edwards tells the story of a Triton dream – with a Norton Dominator rolling chassis that cost £16 and an engine from a 1953 sprung-hub Triumph Tiger 100 whose owner parted with the whole bike for a fiver! As a coffee-bar cowboy in the early Sixties, I loved the look of the BSA Gold…

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Perran Newman hadn’t swung a leg over a motorcycle in more than 20 years when a friend invited him to try four of his vintage machines along with a modern BMW for comparison – and here he recounts the experience. As I enter my 72nd year, it’s 22 years since I last rode a bike…

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Mick Payne wonders whether it will ever be possible for anyone to produce a truly definitive list of every sidecar manufacturer in history. Who remembers the column NAIT? It stood for ‘Not Appearing in Tragatsch’ and was a regular piece on the marques that slipped beyond the radar of Erwin Tragatsch when compiling his Illustrated…

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We all remember our first solo motorcycle ride, and lifelong motorcyclist John Edwards recalls the excitement and euphoria of his own, on a side-valve 500cc 16H Norton that he bought for a heady £7 in 1958! Apart from some fun in a local park on my friend’s 32cc Cyclemaster-powered bicycle in 1957, I actually learned…

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Nigel Stennett-Cox visits a motorcycle museum whose exhibits are crammed into old railway buildings in North Norfolk. If you appreciate the quirky and different, you’ll love a visit to the Norfolk Motorcycle Museum, for I cannot conceive of another such establishment being quite like it – certainly nowhere else than such a remote and rural…

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