Wednesday, 7 September 2016
Monday, 5 September 2016
Cafe Racer Saturday II
As in often the case at these things, the car park can be as interesting as the show itself. I was particularly taken by the blue Triumph Speed Triple with the extra-wide ‘bars.
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| I may be too old! |
Cafe Racer Saturday
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.
Sunday, 4 September 2016
Saturday, 3 September 2016
Wednesday, 31 August 2016
Bubblecar Museum
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| Messerschmidt KR200 (Germany) |
A short while ago, I and a couple of others made the trip down to Lincolnshire for the East EuropeanMotorcycle Rally. On the Saturday afternoon we took a short trip out to
the Boston Bubblecar Museum for a look around.
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| Bond Minicars Mks. B, C & F (UK) |
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| Piaggio Ape van (Italy) |
This is a small
friendly museum on two floors with a café and gift shop attached, staffed by
volunteers who, we were informed, also made the cakes and scones which we
sampled after our wander around.
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| Cafe & Giftshop |
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| Inter Torpedo Autoscooter (France) |
As well as a
host of micro-cars, small capacity scooters, and motorcycles they also have
loads of motoring memorabilia and the glass cases mounted on the walls hold
collections of old toys, cameras, board games and the like.
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| Garage forecourt with Lambretta & Watsonian Bambini sidecar |
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| Bond Bug memorabilia |
There were even
a couple of closet sized rooms laid out as a living-room and a kitchen from the
period between the wars.
The kitchen looked scarily like the one in the first
house I bought, even to some of the antiquated furnishings.
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| Heinkel Trojan (Germany) & Berkeley B105 (UK) |
While most of
the exhibits are lined up as you would expect, a number of them had been
included in period tableaus, which was a nice touch.
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| Bond Mk. C & Nutshell folding caravan (UK) |
There was also
an area which held vehicles yet to be restored, some of which were in a sorry
state indeed.
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| The Scrapyard |
Overall, it was
a pleasant way to spend an hour or so and, if you're ever in the vicinity, I'd
heartily recommend you make the effort to pay it a visit.
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| Heinkel Tourist & Durkopp Diana (Germany), Douglas Vespa & Bond P4 (UK) |
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