Yesterday, local bike dealer Saltire Motorcycles/AlbaCustoms had arranged a café racer show at their store. As
I was at a loose end I decided to ride over and have a look. I’d been meaning
to visit this particular store anyway since they’d moved to bigger premises a
while ago.
The new store has a ‘regular’ shop
selling much what you’d expect them to, and another area upstairs which caters
to custom bikes. There’s a café, a tattoo artist, a proper barbers and an
indoor arena where you can learn to ride a bike and then sit your motorcycle
test.
It certainly sounded interesting, and I
used to know the owner when he ran a small independent shop years ago which
sold and serviced MZ four-strokes like my Skorpions.
As an added bonus, the sun came out and
it was actually a pleasant day to go for a ride.
I went early enough that it wasn't too busy and I could near enough the bikes to take some pictures. Here are some of the bikes entered in the show.
Some were professionally built, but the overall winner was this home-built Honda CX 500 which, I reckon, better represented the spirit of the café racers of old.
Yes, Satire is a vast shop these days. The indoor learner area is great for the Scottish climate. It was said that Lloyd's in Hamilton was the biggest big shop in Europe way back when, but Saltire is much bigger.
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