Bennelli’s Come to Town
As much as I
like to get out to events and spread the word of the London Motorcycle Museum,
you cannot get to them all. Last Sunday was no exception with missing out on an
interesting day. It was titled “Sand and
Motorcycles” It is an annual event at the Leighton Buzzard Railway celebrating
the history of the sand that was excavated for making the castings for shells
in World War One and after the war the company built a narrow gauge railway to
the main line. Moving on to World War Two and the pits had expanded to a vast
area so some motorcycles were purchased to transport the fitters around the
site doing running repairs to equipment. These bikes did sterling service in
the most inhospitable conditions as sand and oil grind all the moving parts to
paste very quickly. The riders must have been pretty good at off road too! I
have now put this event in my diary and will try to be there to represent the
Museum next year. So I’ve been busy this past week with Sunday hosting a
Scalextric 2CV Grand Prix in the back garden and having to repair all the cars
used to some degree over the next few days. Only just getting out to the LE club
night on Tuesday to return all the Ally Pally show gear for storage with Chris.
It is now Sunday and I need to touch base with the Museum and find out what has
happened in the last week. There are two new arrivals to see a 1968 BSA
Spitfire racer built and raced by Steve Brown who worked in the race department
at BSA and a well used little C10 of 1953 vintage. So while I was there half a
dozen bikes with very sporty exhausts made their presence felt and heard. Six Bennelli’s
had arrived! What an array of machinery!
One of the guys had been at the Salon
Privee a few weeks ago and promised to come. They had arrived in style. The
Bennelli Owners club! Most people remember the across the frame Sei or six in
English and that was before the Honda Six!
We had a discussion about the effectiveness of the rear brake on one of
the Bennelli’s. I muted the point that it was not necessary to work that well
as the front one could stand it on end anyway. There were some nice comments about
the Valiant then they disappeared into the Museum and I took a few photos of
the bikes.
They were looking at somewhere else to go today so I mention the
Sand and Motorcycle event at Leighton Buzzard and it turned out that one of the
guys lived quite close to it. The bit of news was that after talking to Bill
about the Speedway Museum at the Paradise Wildlife Park at Broxbourne he told
me about the introduction of Speedway into the UK from Australia with the first
event being at Canada Heights then, of all places Greenford! In 1928 the track was
built and is now no longer there. It has become a housing estate just off the
A40 at the north end of Oldfield Lane South or the south end of Oldfield Lane
North. Something to follow up when the weather is less hospitable.
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