MY husband’s love for motorcycle combinations began just after our engagement. Some weekends he would travel from work in Berkshire to see me in Kendal using various solo machines.
Then, after crashing his BSA Bantam, he bought a 250 side-valve Panther from a scrap yard for £2.10.0., refurbished it and added a sidecar. He was smitten. On his first journey, he turned it over on a corner by braking and accelerating in the wrong order, but he was a fast learner and didn’t do it again.
Shortly before our marriage in August. 1962, we acquired an ES2 Norton, made around 1953, which we rode solo for a short time. Then we found a home-made sidecar. It had its drawbacks. Its designer had never heard of aerodynamics and it was all square angles. But it was cheap, so it was fitted on and, as a treat, I was promised a windscreen for our honeymoonjourney.
Our first outing was to visit my future sister-in-law in Bristol. In a brief respite from the rain, I could see a large bee heading straight for my forehead. At the last moment, I bent my head sideways and the bee continued without a deviation. My windscreen was urgently needed. Arriving in Bristol, Peter was snug and dry in his Belstaff suit but I was soaked to the skin. Without a windscreen, the rain had been driven straight down my neck.
After our wedding, we stowed ourselves in and on our outfit and, in a cloud of confetti, we began our journey to the West Highlands of Scotland, leaving the tin cans and old boots on top of a pillar box.
Sixty miles on, outside Wor-
cester, we had a puncture in the back tyre. On a Saturday afternoon in summer, no garage wants to know you with a problem like that. One and a half hours later, I and a now shop-soiled husband were on our way again.
The next fortnight was a monument to the strength of newly-married love and the magnificent engineering of the Norton. The sidecar began to shed bits all over the bumpy roads of the Highlands. First to go was one of the old-fashioned pram springs at the back of the sidecar, leaving me canted over to one side. With some re-arranging, Peter strapped the body to the chassis with pieces of old inner tube, rendering it safe, but totally spring-less.
Next went the kick-start, which stripped its splines and just fell off. It wouldn’t stay on without more inner tube and, running on a tight budget, we couldn’t afford to have it fixed.
It had to be push starts every time from then on.
As our cottage was two ferries away from civilisation, on our way home we left the engine running on the boats. This worked on the Corran-Ardgour ferry. The second was the Ballachulish. Just as it was our turn to drive off, Peter let in the clutch – and stalled. Those who remember Ballachulish before the bridge, will know that on the south side of the ferry the road went up an incline of perhaps 1 in 8. A long line of motorists waiting that hot September afternoon watched us push that thing up the hill. Almost at the top, a valiant little 12-year-old came out and enthusiastically leaned on the back end.
We had trouble-free motoring for the next fifty miles, until just outside Crianlarich when the sidecar wheel dropped down into a huge pothole. I became aware of a
strange floating feeling and, looking down, I saw that the bike and I were parting company. The large balljoint at the back of the outfit had broken apart and we were only joined together by the front bolts. We stowed the luggage in the nose of the sidecar and went on very carefully.
A few miles outside Crianlarich, we saw a small garage with a workshop where a young man was throwing his jacket into a van, obviously going off for his lunch. After some pleading, he agreed to try to mend the joint. He took less than an hour, building up the socket with great skill. He put the whole thing back together, apologising for the rough edges on the weld, and charged us ten shillings.
The following day we finished our marathon. By now the lack of springing had taken its toll. The sidecar light had fallen off, then the mudguard, which I had hung on to for many miles. A greater problem made me lose my concentration on that, because the bottom of the sidecar began to lose its pins and I could feel draughts finding gaps in the plywood. I finished the journey supporting my weight with my arms on the edges of the sidecar. I’ll never know how we made it home!
No Mediterranean tan for me after my honeymoon. Instead, I boasted amazing Technicolor bruises along each arm to prove my devotion to my husband.
Though we loved the Norton and now bitterly regret parting with this lovely machine, we were seduced by a beautiful Royal Enfield Meteor 700, with colour-matched sports sidecar. This proved to be beautiful but treacherous -but that’s another story.
Barbara Hallihan
