Motorcycling Days

Original writing read by John Dunn

Sometimes it is the smallest stretches of road, in unexpected places, that can make for the most pleasurable motorcycling, and I had to share this.

I had to get out of the chaos of Bicester’s ring road system, if for no other reason than to identify where I had been spat out of it geographically.

I was on the A41 heading for Oxford, whereas I had intended to be on the A41 towards Aylesbury.

I pulled off the main road to follow the old, pre-war route, to Oxford via Wendlebury.

There’s a bend in the road before Wendlebury, and a lane leads of from this, blocked by bollards to cars, but open enough for a motorcycle to slip through. Once through, I stopped , pulled the flask from the pannier, and enjoyed a coffee.

I had been on this spot before on a couple of occasions, and knew its history. The now defunct lane was blocked off when Graven Hill became an ammunition depot during the Second World War.

But there was more history. Through the gate in the field, before which I now stood, there was once a Roman town known as Alchester; completely invisible now to all but the archaeologist and his trowel.

Pondering the map, as I am wont to do on such occasions, my eye caught the name of Chesterton and Akeman Street; the former a village (a few hundred yards from being swallowed up by the the voracious field eater which is Bicester these days), and the latter, which is a famous Roman road.

All these ‘chesters’ and ‘cesters’ smack of the Roman activity that existed two thousand years ago round here, and I was drawn towards them.

I would take my leave of Alchester, ride over to Chesterton (crossing the busy A34 on the way), and follow Akeman Street on the short metalled stretch westwards towards Kirtlington.

That was my plan, and once on the Akeman Street I knew it was a plan that was meant to be.

We men of the wheel, we travel hundreds of miles with historic places of interest to see, race tracks to enjoy and ‘meets’ of various kinds to compare machinery, forgetting often that the most interesting place is most often under our wheels wherever we travel.

Akeman Street, so close to the chaos I had left behind, was empty of traffic. I could choose my speed, neither held up in front or harassed from behind, whilst savouring the history of the ancient route; the Roman soldiers that constructed the route, the legions that marched up and down it, and the many generations that have used the road since the Romans departed these isles. And beyond the road there was the gently rolling Oxfordshire countryside to refresh the spirit as I rode along.

Yes, a short stretch, a departure from my intended way, but a happy one, an uplifting one, when the road, history and nature came together to offer sheer motorcycling pleasure.

There was a bonus. Just before Kirtlington, I turned off Akerman Street (out of necessity, the metalled section finished at this point) and turned northwards to follow the Cherwell Valley, which I kept to my left. The lane followed a low ridgeway with the Cherwell to my left and the Gallos Brook a mile or so to my right. This is hardly a dramatic landscape, and yet the lowish elevation was sufficient to give views over the Cherwell that gladdened the heart.

I rode on to the former RAF airfield at Heyford. Wow hadn’t things changed around here since last I passed by, not all for the better. And yet I was buoyed through all the developments by the joy of the ride up to that point. I knew that beyond was the ‘Larkrise to Candleford’ country, made famous by Flora Thompson's pen, and it was there that I re-settled into the rhythm of country lane pottering that I relish.

No grandiose landscapes, no famous landmarks, no bikers’ cafs, just sunshine and a few thousand years’ worth of history under my very wheels at every turn, to make an ordinary ride special.

© John Dunn.

I was motorcycling in the northern Cotswolds yesterday, heading westwards to Dover's Hill, near Chipping Campden, and Middle Littleton to see the great tithe barn; Dover's Hill for the expansive views over the Vale of Evesham, and Middle Littleton for the wondrous medieval architecture.

The old saying that the journey is everything applies just as much to the top speed as it does to the destination, perhaps more so.

Side-on you behold the idiosyncratic shape of the Royal Enfield engine with the large, bulbous air-cooled cylinder head, and the three different visual levels of the seat, the tank and the headlight, each higher than the other as if sculptured to please the eye. In today’s parlance, the machine is  extremely naked, with no design abstraction between you and the machine; there's no attempt to hide the truth of its simplicity. This first sight of unashamed nakedness is but a foretaste of the no filter  motorcycling experience to come.

© John Dunn.

Also available as a YouTube video. 

I’m on my Royal Enfield Classic 500 heading for Newnham village near Daventry, where there is a blue commemorative plaque outside what was once The New Inn. It celebrates an important day in motorcycling history, when in 1908 there was a timed motorcycle hillclimb.

I’ll let the Reverend Basil H Davies a motorcycle journalist who wrote under the pen name of Ixion, describe the day.

“…a wild sensation was caused at the Newnham hill-climb of the Coventry club. Here every summer the Big Chiefs on the industry feverishly contested a little family combat, where strangers were tolerated but always humiliated when the prize awards came out.

In 1908 an unassuming nonentity from Yorkshire, in the person of AA Scott, walked off with all three events on formula, and his new two-stroke boasted an admirable kick-starter, an open frame and a lovely exhaust.

He did not convert the industry to open frames or to two-stroke engines, but he forced kick-starters and variable gears on a lethargic world.”

This was a big deal in the history of motorcycling, so I thought I’d ride along to Newnham to take a look around.

***

Try my YouTube videos too. Click here to take a look.

Listeners to the previous episode of my podcast "Motorcycling Days" will know how the Royal Enfield motorcycle came to my attention in India, more specifically in Shimla, the old British hill station in the foothills of  the Himalayas.

Making relentless and stately progress, the name in the recognisably flowing script on the side of the tank was - Royal Enfield.

Original writing read by John Dunn.