Neil Stafford - Rider Profile

My motorcycling started in 1966 when my father (who had worked for Ariel in the 1950’s) accepted that cycling to school did not have the kudos I required and generously funded the purchase of an almost new Honda 90 Sport.

This allowed me to pass my test and saw me make the journey from Birmingham to London bound for University College. The trip home and back at Christmas 1967 demonstrated the need for something more substantial and in May 1968 I acquired a one owner, mint condition Norton Model 50 – 796 CXM.

Now with a suitable mount I could join Peter Scatchard (in the year above me at UCL) at the South London branch of the Norton Owners Club meetings in the basement at Taylor Matterson, the Balham-based Norton dealer whose Spares Manager, George Child had been so instrumental in setting up and supporting the Club in its earliest years.

The highlight of life with the Model 50 was a trip to the I. o. M in 1968 for TT week. The failure to break the 60 minute barrier for the lap on Mad Sunday left me with the desire for more power. So I committed the cardinal sin of splitting the engine and frame and purchased an ex-RAC ES2 500cc engine for the princely sum of £10. I have hazy memories of riding back across South London, carrying the engine in a rucksack on the pillion of mate Dave Williams’ 350 Velocette.

Even more criminally, as a penniless student, I couldn’t afford to transport the old 350 bits back home to Birmingham – they are probably waiting to be discovered somewhere in a backyard in Mortlake!

My motorcycle riding days were put on hold as I started out on a 35 year career-path that was to see the virtual demise of the British Motor Industry (although I don’t think it was entirely down to me.) In fairness, my most recent foray out of retirement for an 8 month stint at Aston Martin last year shows that some parts are still very much alive and kicking.

The ES2 was stripped down in 1971 with the various boxes following me around the country until this year when the incentive arrived to start the rebuild with significant input from Mike Pemberton at Pushrod Performance, Les Emery at Norvil and John at JMS Finishing (and courtesy of the funding provided by the spell at Aston!).

In the intervening years I kept my ‘two wheel’ eye in by navigating for Peter on several National Rallies in the 70s. The highlight of those rides has to be 1974, the year we decided that 2 up on a 50cc Kreidler seemed like a good challenge. Non stop riding for 24 hours to get round the 500 miles was the order of the day (apart from the obligatory rest stops, of course!).

The last pillion adventure with Peter was as part of the centenary parade from the National Motorcycle Museum to unveil the plaque at the old Norton factory in Bracebridge Street in 1998.

That (or the imminent approach of the 50th birthday) whetted my appetite for two wheeled travel again, so along came the Honda Fireblade – just 10 times the capacity (and probably horsepower) of my first powered two wheeler. It has proved to be great fun but not the ideal mount for consecutive days of 8 hour riding as a 3 day / 1000 mile trip to Aberdeen with Peter in 2003 proved. A trip to the Island for the 1999 Manx did, however, see a significant reduction in the lap time achieved on the Model 50!

The return to two wheels highlighted the need for me to brush up my riding skills and Peter and I enjoyed attending a Bike Safe course with Martyn Hillier of the Gloucestershire Police. So much so, in fact that we spent a further day riding with Martyn putting into practice what we had leant on the course. I would definitely recommend the course to anyone getting back to biking and even experienced riders can benefit as I’m sure Peter would agree.

So – subject to the successful and timely completion of the rebuild – the scene is set for 1600 miles back in Scotland of hopefully enjoyable and trouble-free riding, all in the aid of a very deserving cause.

Peter Scatchard - Rider Profile

I started riding (legally!) on the day of my 16th birthday, 9th December 1963. A year-older school chum, Norman Witt, had got me fascinated with these self-propelled bicycles, with lifts home (helmet-less, of course!!) to Teddington, SW London, from school, some 8 miles away in Hammersmith, on various iron-horses, the most memorable being a 500 Single AJS rigid-framed tool. ’Twas he that provided my first machine, £2 crossing palms to secure a very grotty 125cc 2-Stroke Royal Enfield.

Having sorta restored push-bikes, I knew a little about spannering, and lots about paint and stickers, so the RE ended up looking quite smart with its Royal Blue cycle parts and white tank, but I never quite got to the bottom of the non-existent kick-starter, nor the intermittent first-gear (in a 3-speed box!). The rubbish un-damped front forks, solid rear-end, sheering primary-drive woodruff-key and pathetic brakes all ‘added to the charm’ but hey, this was independence and my partying and skirt-chasing range expanded from about 3 miles to around 12 (Pi R squared….!!!!).

Memories of the actual transactions are a little vague, but within a few months, the RE had been ‘passed-on’ and a 125cc Bantam was acquired. I’d started to learn; the RE looked a whole lot prettier, but an overall grubby black BSA with kick-starter that could actually be kicked to bring the thing into life, and suspension at both ends that actually worked (after a fashion) was not to be sneezed at.

With a father who worked for an airline, I was able to air-freight the Bantam to Glasgow in the summer of 1964, from whence I rode it past Loch Lomond over Rannoch Moor and down Glencoe to Fort William, and thence up the Great Glen to my relatives’ farm north of Inverness, then back all the way to Teddington, including one of the very last of the Firth of Forth Queensferry rides, with the to-all-intents-and-purposes-finished new Forth Road Bridge towering above us.

Next up was a 225cc James Captain, featuring a less-than-lovely AMC imitation Villiers single two-stroke mill – hey, it was better than the Bantam! Real forks and swinging arm, rather than plunger, rear suspension, and enough power to flip the back-end out on ice!!

Come the following summer, 1965, I’d passed my riding-test, and managed to persuade the parents to allow the next step, a 500cc 4-stroke. Plans for a Triumph 5T or similar were bypassed when a Norton 77 hove into view, essentially a 600cc side-car power-plant. But, it featured a genuine Dominator twin-cylinder engine, and it was indeed a Norton once freed of its sidecar and enormous dustbin fairing. Wow, did this thing corner!!!!

If an old lugged-frame Norton 77 could be this good, what would the fabled Featherbed Norton be like? Summer of 1966 saw that answered, with the acquisition of a Norton 99 Wideline Dominator 600cc twin, XLH 495, from South Croydon. And yes, it was all true!! Boy, this bike really flew round go round bends!!

From 1966 to 1969, my 99 saw stalwart service through my University years. And for the next 3 years until 1972, she continued to be either the sole or joint means of transport – by this time, I’d acquired a wife, the wonderful Val, and an 850 Mini!! Mileage on the 99 was by now way north of 100,000 miles, though by no means all on original parts – My Grandfather’s Axe comes to mind!!

During this period I had joined and then become very involved in the running of the Norton Owners Club (NOC). As Public Relations Officer, I helped forged strong links between the Club and Norton Villiers, now the manufacturers of Nortons, and the UK motorcycle press.

1972 saw our acquisition of a 750 Norton Commando Fastback special, purchased direct from Norton Villiers in Andover, in preparation for a 20,000 mile jaunt around Europe the following year.

The objective was to visit every one of the partner-countries as Britain joined the European Economic Community, now the EC. Val and I set off in March 1973, and returned to the UK in October of the same year, having succeeded in our aims, despite the occasional glitches along the way, the whole saga being reported over 12 issues of the late lamented Motorcyclist Illustrated (MCI). Road-side maintenance skills, coupled to an adroit choice and cunning storage of essential components, right down to spare main-bearings, had proved essential but feasible – maybe of value later!?!

On return to the UK, KHO 63L was sold, and MPX 93D, a 750 Norton Atlas was acquired as the ‘hack’ to take me to importer after importer as I borrowed road-test machinery to write-up in the UK motorcycle press through the rest of 1973 and 1974. Favourite was undoubtedly a Rickman / Honda 750/4, the handling of a Featherbed Norton with the power and sophistication of that lovely Honda 4-pot mill. At the other end of the capacity scale, a Kreidler 50 / 6-speeder provided the mount for me AND fellow-RRTT rider Neil Stafford as navigator to gain maximum points in the 1974 National Rally – what a result!! 500 miles in 24 hours, 2-up on a 50cc bike at 10,000 rpm+ the whole way!!

By now, family and work-pressures saw motorcycling activities scaling down, though the Atlas continued to see commuting duties for the 3 years I worked at ICI Dulux Paints as brand-manager for their Matchmaker range.

The experience I gained through this took me to Retail Products Manager at Hermetite, the gasket-goo and other automotive chemicals people, where I ran a TT-Paddock service in June 1977.

By 1978, I was Marketing Manager for Solvolene Lubricants, the UK agents for the famous and fabulous Solvol Autosol chrome and aluminium polish, and again I provided a TT-paddock service. I blagged the so-called Mike Hailwood reconnoitring Yamaha XS1100 for a few laps of the fearsome 37.75 mile circuit, and lived to tell the tale!!

In 1982 after a couple of years at OKO, the tyre-sealant people, I received an invitation to join Bill Irwin, an old Kiwi buddy we’d met on our Euro-jaunt, in his IT business in New Zealand, where we spent two very happy years, during which I set up a branch of the Norton Owners Club there.

On our return to the UK, I was astounded and very flattered to be appointed Vice President of the Norton Owners Club, the only such office-holder not to have been an employee of Norton, though I’d interviewed there in 1969 as I left university.

For over a decade, bike-riding didn’t feature in my life; professionally, I was commuting the motorways of the Thames Valley, and the airways of the northern hemisphere, and personally I was tied up with nest-building and not setting the ‘wrong’ example to my two boys. And privately, I had become very involved with the Wilts & Berks Canal restoration society, where I ended up as Chairman for 5 years.

By 1997, bikes were part of my life once again. Summer-time commuting across the Chilterns to my job as Marketing Director for Hitachi’s disk-drive business in Maidenhead brought a BMW R100GS into the frame, after having been amazed at how much I’d enjoyed Kiwi pal Bill’s Paris-Dakar GS100 on a return visit to New Zealand.

1999 saw the realisation of a 15-year dream; an original A1 Kawasaki GPz900R. Boy, what a wonderful machine, still the cheapest way to 150+mph performance, not that I ever saw that. However, it’s absolutely true that 130mph was the natural cruising gait of this seminal motorcycle, but it was a 50 mph accident in August of that year that saw me close to the Grim Reaper, with the classic pull-out-of-a-petrol-station Mini driver.

The sticky-end having been dismissed thanks to the Emergency Services and the A&E Unit at Milton Keynes Hospital, and the potential screw-up to my functionality sorted out by two lots of surgical teams, in 2001 I raised a significant sum for both of my surgeons’ relevant charities by hauling my shattered leg back into cross-country running, and completing the Latymer Upper School Round-The-River 4+ mile course in under 30 minutes (as captain of X-Country, I’d done it in 22.5 minutes as a 9.5 stone ‘weakling” in 1966, but hey-ho!!).

Captain Sensible then took over, with a blue BMW K1100RS in 2002, from which the back wheel fell out at around 70 mph through some ‘inconsistencies’ in the servicing. My Heine Gericke leathers did a great job, and I was incredibly lucky this occurred on a deserted bit of straight dual-carriageway – thank-you, Guardian Angel.

The red K1100RS later that some year was a much better buy, on which I accompanied fellow-RRTT rider Neil on his Honda FireBlade on a brilliant 3-day non-motorway trip up to Aberdeen and back in 2003. However in January 2003 White-Van-Man was lurking, and a dislocated shoulder persuaded me to give modern bikes up as a practical ‘everyday’ proposition.

But bikes get in yer blood, don’t they? Time to resurrect the Old Faithful 1959 Norton Dominator 99 I’d acquired in 1966 and shifted from pillar-to-post over all those years.

The 2006 rebuild just missed completion in time for the first Norton OC ‘Reunion Rally’ on the Upper Thames at Bablocke Hythe, but it was ready for the 350 mile round-trip to Norton Day near Oswestry, almost bang-on 40 years from my first ride on her in the mean streets of Croydon all those years before.

Since then, the NOC International Rally in the Isle of Man was attended in 2007, and the Isle of Wight National Rally saw another ferry-trip. And 2008 saw me Down-Under for the International Rally, held this year in Axedale, near Bendigo at the bottom of the Great Dividing Range in Victoria, Australia.

As well as the very non-standard Old Faithful (see ‘The Bikes’), I’m now in the process of restoring a 1955 Norton Dominator 88, another Featherbed, but a 500cc twin this time, which is scheduled to be swapped for a MkII 850 Commando Special, to provide a more practical ‘everyday’ bike, better up to meeting the demands of long distance touring in 21st century driving conditions, on which I’m aiming to attend the 2009 NOC International Rally in Austria.

And the bits and pieces for a rather special Slimline Featherbed Norton 500cc twin, a sort of Domiracer replica, are steadily being accumulated, as a winter 2008/9 project, aiming for 50 bhp, and provisionally named ‘The Commando Frightener’!!

As you may have gathered, there’s a fair chance I’ll see you if you ever attend one of the major Norton Owners Club’s events – if you’re there, come by and say hello, and whether we meet or not thank you for reading this diatribe.

If I’ve persuaded you that I’m a suitable person to trust with your money, I hope you’ll sponsor me and long-time Norton pal Neil Stafford on our Ride Round The Top, in aid of the Gutjwa School Appeal, seeking to make life better for desperately needy kids in a South Africa township – please click onto ‘Fund-Raising’.