My Flirtation with Motor Bikes

I became interested in motor bikes during a spell in Ceylon (a.k.a.Sri Lanka) in 1953/54. A strange place to be thinking of that mode of transport, after all, perched right at the top of Ceylon, the main thing you could buy that had two wheels were pedal bikes, and I did buy one of those, complete with dropped handle bars, multi gears, dynamo lights and a bell! I even had it shipped home. However, a couple of lads managed to obtain motor bikes, probably second hand from a local Ceylonese chappie as there were no m/c shops in Trincomalee (there wasn’t very much else either!) and this started my interest in motor bikes. In those days a tour of duty would be 2 or 2 ½ years, and on completion of that time we were entitled to a considerable amount of leave, sometimes up to ten weeks, these two lads decided that instead of taking the slow boat troopship to the U.K. they would ride their motor bikes home, go by boat from Ceylon to India then road to the English channel.

My tour duly came to an end and I embarked in the Empire Clyde for a leisurely cruise back to Blighty. On arrival home in Bristol, I had made up my mind to buy a motor bike, but because of my lack of knowledge of those machines I didn’t have a clue what I wanted. My next posting was to be the signal school within the Royal Naval barracks, H.M.S. Drake, in Plymouth, my thinking was that if I lived in Bristol and worked in Plymouth I would need something that wasn’t going to cost the earth in petrol. Now, there’s a laugh considering today’s fuel prices, but everything is relative, although petrol was, I don’t know, say, half a crown (22 ½ p) gallon, I had to be careful with my pennies (old type!). I knew that there was no way that I could pay cash for a m/c and I would have to buy it on the old H.P. (hire purchase) therefore someone would have to stand security for me, come in mother. So, off we went to Fowlers Motor Cycles in Bristol to view the stock. After walking up and down the rows of shiny bikes both new and second hand I decided on a used 125cc BSA Bantam with a dual seat, which I was informed could do something like 65 mpg, my thoughts being that the distance between Bristol and Plymouth was about 130 miles (no motorways in those days, just the longest lane in England, the A38), and petrol, as I’ve said, about 22 ½ p a gallon, that meant it would only cost about 5 shillings (25p) for the trip or 10 old shillings (50p) return. So mum signed up and the bike was mine. I needed protective clothing, and purchased a pair of those black gauntlet type gloves which covered the ends of sleeves and for the rest I could use my naval attire, namely, one big black oilskin and my black naval welly boots, commonly called sea boots, and very thick white sea boot stockings, I also bought a skid lid which didn’t have a British Standard Institute approval kite and a pair of goggles, not much need for the goggles as my new pride and joy had a perspex windscreen which stretched up level with my face.

After I had settled into my new posting in Plymouth I rode my bike back from Bristol and that was when I realised I had made a mistake. Modern 125cc machines are quite capable of going over 100 m.p.h; my m/c would only do about 55 mph downhill with a following wind! And, as for going up hill, well, against the wind and with my oilskin billowing out like a yacht’s sails it was very difficult to make any speed. Again, my reasoning had told me that the journey should take somewhere around 3 hours, in fact it would take about 7 hours and if it wasn’t for the kindness of the lorry drivers who would pull over and wave me on it would have taken a lot longer (lorry drivers rarely do that anymore!). Therefore, if I departed Plymouth late on a Friday afternoon I would not arrive in Bristol until somewhere near 11.00 p.m. and for the return journey I had to leave Bristol between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Sunday night, thank goodness for that all night transport café which used to be just outside of Bridgewater. Anyway I persevered until my next posting which was the Royal Naval Air Station at Yeovilton.

Now things improved considerably, as Yeovilton was only about 40 odd miles from Bristol I wouldn’t be spending so much time on the road, with luck just under 2 hours! I became friendly with one of the WRNS in air traffic control and we would shoot off somewhere local on the bike (it also had pillion riders foot rests) until one day she said that she was getting fed up with burning her legs on the exhaust pipe! The exhaust went up at an angle of 45 degrees instead of horizontal as is normal. It was then she dropped a bomb shell and wanted to know why I had bought a “scrambles” bike instead of a normal roadster! That was my other mistake, and all became clear. Why the exhaust went almost straight up, why the front mudguard was about 9 inches above the front wheel. The previous owner had put on a windscreen, front and rear lights and rear foot rests etc. I didn’t know it was a scrambles bike nor did the salesman at Fowlers let on. So, with my newly found motor cycle advisor, we went off to a shop in Yeovil and exchanged my BSA Bantam for a Triumph 3T 350cc twin. Wow, what a difference, I could now cruise at any speed I wanted to, plenty of power and my 40 odd mile trip home to Bristol would take less than an hour. I was happy, WRN was happy. By the way, I took my motor cycle driving test in Devonport on the Bantam, it entailed the examiner standing by the roadside and telling me to drive around the block a couple of times, and for the emergency stop he would jump out into the road in front of me, brave or stupid? which meant I was out of sight to him most of the time and then answer a couple of questions on the highway code.

In due course I had a shore posting to Singapore and had to get shot of the Triumph, but, my interest in m/c’s continued and in partnership with one of my mates purchased a BSA 500cc twin, can’t remember what the model was, but that was a different kettle of fish altogether. Top speed, well in excess of 100 mph. Singapore in those days wasn’t the sophisticated city it is today and, although most of the police motor cyclist had Nortons, not many were a match for my BSA . One of the naughty things I used to do was to come up behind a Chinese gentleman who would be walking along with one of those bamboo canes across his shoulders and a wicker bucket at each end and just touch the end of his bamboo and watch him spin around, rather fast, of course, I was gone like a shot.

Once we decided to go up Malaya to Kuala Lumpur (KL), about 250 miles, for the weekend. The roads were for the most part straight and flat which allowed for opening up the throttle and at one stage we were racing with a Jaguar XK something or other but after playing games with me for a while that disappeared into the distance. In one particular section where I could see for miles ahead, a herd of goats was crossing the road, I slowed down as I approached and when it looked as if the last one had reached the other side I opened the throttle only for the silly billy to turn around and go back the way he had come. I hit him full in the side and he lay in the road screaming (have you ever heard a goat in distress? it’s awful). Most worrying though was that suddenly what seemed like hundreds of Malayans appeared from nowhere and I thought our goose had been cooked, fortunately one of them who spoke very good English said the best thing we could do was to scarper, which we did, pronto.

On our way back from K.L. the bike suffered a mal function and we were stranded in the middle of nowhere. Now, this was scarey because Malaya was still under emergency rule and there was a night time curfew in force. With thoughts of being set upon by the commies we hailed the odd vehicle that went past, but most of them didn’t want to know until one did stop and we asked them to inform the police at the next village that we had broken down, this they apparently did because to our relief a police armoured troop carrier arrived, complete with many heavily armed Malay policemen and bundled us, and the bike inside and took us back to the village. There we managed to scrounge a lift from a couple of Europeans who were on their way to Singapore, leaving the bike at the police station to be collected at a later date. One of my lasting memories with the bike was one Wednesday after a lunchtime session in the NAAFI canteen I was riding back to the mess and must have blanked out as I woke up in a 4 foot deep monsoon ditch with a hole burnt through the seat of my shorts and a rather painful buttock, apparently, according to eye witnesses, I was going around a rather sharp bend and slid across the road on my back side! I couldn’t sit down for a couple of days!

On my return home to the U.K.one of my neighbours in Bristol convinced me of the folly of riding motor bikes and said I would be far better off with a car, a lot safer, drier, and comfortable, and to this day I have never ridden another motor bike, in fact I would be absolutely terrified to jump aboard one of the modern day machines. Oddly enough, I still have a full motor cycle driving licence as it is automatically renewed with the car driving licence and I have never bothered to cancel it. Wonder what the insurance would be if I actually bought a bike now, especially at my age!

David Hanson

(Jufair)