Where there is Sand

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Sand and Motorcycles 2015

There was rain first thing and I wondered if it would be dry all day, but it soon cleared and was not seen again. Anywhere! It must have been just for me. Out on the Buell again to find out what this event was about. I had heard about it and read an article in one of the bike magazines.

Leighton Buzzard Railway was originally built in 1919 by Leighton Buzzard Light Railway Ltd to transport the sand the town is famous for. It now runs a visitors service. After the second world war motorcycles were used by maintenance fitters to get to sites to repair and maintain the equipment used in the industry. The Sand and Motorcycles Day is in tribute to these riders and their machines. They must have been pretty good riders as to get to the trucks and track they did it across country on unpaved paths. I remember one of the bikes being a 1938 Zenith.

I arrived around 10:30 and the display area in the field was about a quarter full. I wandered around the stands to see what was there, local bike shop, Thames Valley Advanced motorcycle club, the Air Ambulance, Thames Valley and this time, selling their lottery tickets and the local micro brewery that I would have liked to try but too early in the day. I handed out fliers as I went. I think all the bikers turn up at the same events as the guy I had parked next to last Sunday was there again too! By the time I had done a circuit of the field it had filled up. There must have been close to a thousand bikes there. Some leaving and more arriving all the time. It was a grand spectacle. There were a number of interesting bikes there, among them was a Woden, a JAP engined special in a featherbed frame.

 It was nicely done and the engine had electron crankcases. I had to ask about it as the crankcases looked like cast iron but had not a sign of rust. It all is was a bit special. A 1912 Scott that was in good order. We all get used to looking at sleek modern stuff but this one was a little less refined as was the manufacturing process at the time. There were no die-cast moulds to make things smooth and parts were hand crafted and made to fit.

 On the thoughts of a later bike hidden in the field was this Ariel Arrow special in what looks like a Bantam frame. All of 500cc, two arrow engines married together with a great deal of thought, engineering and ingenuity. 

Around the field were these magnificent BSAs. It is worth looking up the Leighton Buzzard Light Railway web site for more about the events that go on there. It is down for a revisit to ride on the railway.

Over the Hill

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Kop Hill Climb 2015

Just a week after visiting the museums in Spain it was great to see some action at Kop Hill. It was a weekend event that had a grand assortment of cars and bikes of all ages blasting up the hill or at least trying to. The London Motorcycle Museum was there for the first time. We didn't get a chance to send something up the hill as our registration was too late, but perhaps next year we will.

Kop Hill is in Princes Risborough in Buckinghamshire. It is a charity event that has been going for years. It provides an opportunity to show off your bikes and cars and give them go up the hill. It looks quite steep at the top and for most vehicles takes about a minute and a half to get there. I did walk some of the way up, but having bike gear on I didn't get too far. The hill is closed towards the top so few get to see them arrive. At the bottom of the hill there is the paddock that has the bikes and cars in for everyone to look over.

The start close by and the sounds of tannoy and engines revving gives the feeling of real competition. I was there Sunday afternoon with Gita on the Buell. I had a few fliers with me and passed one on to a guy who was parked next to me. I took a few short videos on my camera and put the best bits together and now that is on You tube:  

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xggDMAaMwhc

It was good fun to see the bikes and talk to their owners. Other museums present were Brooklands, Shuttleworth and a good representation from the Vintage Motorcycle Club made the show very enjoyable. Even Bonhams were there with some immaculate machines.

I visited the Thames Valley Air Ambulance stand and got them to send me one of their lottery forms. They need all the money they can as they only operate from donations. They have no government funding like the RNLI but more important for bikers as we are more likely to be in need of an air ambulance than rescuing at sea (Guy Martin being an exception). The lottery means that the Air Ambulance gets well deserved funds and you may get a little money back if you win. You won't get millions but you will get something for your money.

Back at the Museum on Monday morning and there are spaces where the Kop Hill display bikes should have been. Another international day of visitors and more discussions on rear suspension systems that were innovations at the time. More to come on that subject.

One Hundred

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100th Post!

This is a very special one as I have now got to 100 in the two and a half years I have been writing “Something for the Museum”. I was asked if I could do it as I had been putting my escapades on Facebook since I became a volunteer. These postings were getting longer and longer and not the usual stuff you see. According to James I was the most active thing at the LMM and doing stuff so regularly that it was sensible I continue but not on Facebook but with a proper posting in a Blog.  This one will be quite long as I am making it an Index for all the previous postings with a little description so you know what it is about. The titles don't always give you an idea about what the subject is. So here goes in chronological order from the beginning in February 2013.

1     Scootermania   …....Display of British scooters at Coventry Transport Museum
2     Bristol Classic Bike Show 2013
3     More from the Bristol Classic Bike Show
4     Another Day at the LMM
5     A Day in Agadir  …....riding a scooter in Morocco
6     2CV Club visit to the LMM
7     Wey ValleyBike Club Meeting …. A ride out to Newlands Corner
8     Wey Valley Bike Club run....... to the LMM
9     Meridian Chapter …......visit to Warrs in Mottingham
10   Drive it Day
11  Stafford Classic Bike Show
12  Stafford Classic Bike Show 2
13  Stafford Classic Bike Show 3
14  VMCC meeting 7th May …..... at the Cricketers in Pirbryte
15  1946 Triumph GP Racer …..... A Warhorse
16  Pre Show preparations ........ Kempton Park
17  Kempton Park Southern Classic Bike Show
18  More from Kempton
19 Lowesley Partk Transport Fair
20 Where has the last week gone? …...... Bike Club visits.
21  The Lion Rally 2013
22  Velocettes at Shiplake
23  Ace Cafe Racer Day ….... at Brooklands
24  Pre Rally Preparations …....for Paul Fynn Rally
25  Paul Fynn Rally 2013
26  Too many MOTs in one day
27  Chinnor Byke Dayz 2013
28  Another Week …........ a mixed bag of things
29  Firefighters …..........visit from our motorcycling firemen
30  10 Seconds of fame ….. I appear on BBC France news
31  Post Holiday Blues ......  what to do with a broken key fob
32  Hot Monday ….... visit by the Kawasaki bike club
33  Alley Pally show part 1
34  Alley Pally show part 2
35 After Alley Pally …..... report on a bike ride
36  An Italian Presence ….. Benellis come to visit
37  A Rainy Monday ….... report on an AJS twin and the TRW
38 A Wet and Windy Monday …... report on REG racer
39 Wednesday 6th November …....visit by White Helmets
40  A Ray of Sunshine ….... Report on the Sunbeam B24S
41 Gone Flying ….....visit to IWM Duxford
42  Kempton Park Bike show 2013 ….....Off Road bike show
43  A Norton twin …...... model 7 Dominator
44 The Norton 500T
45 What to do when it rains …... report on a private collection.
46  The Best Twin …....... Douglas motorcycles
47  More on Douglas
48  The Ormonde
49  BSA M20
50  A Scooter at the museum ….. report on the Velocette Viceroy
51  A Week of fliers …... Visit to the National Motorcycle Museum Birmingham
52  Matchless Owners Club Visit
53  BSA or two ….... Drive it Day and report on the BSA rockets
54  Another MoT. ….. Report on the 1911 BSA
55  Kempton Park 2014 …...... Southern Classic Bike Show
56  Triumph Miteesse
57  Windsor Great Park Rally
58  A New Visitor …..   The Ivy
59  Uxbridge Rotary Club Auto Show
60  Just Catching up ….. Pete's cartoon and a bike run
61  Croxley Green and more …... Croxley Green and Eastbourne Air Show
62  Jack's Fish and Chip Shop. ….. Wednesday lunch with the VMCC
63  WVAMC bike club …... Neal Spalding on Moto GP
64  Transport Museum Stand ….... at Acton yard
65  Caistor Castle Motor Museum
66  Visit to the Imperial War Museum …....  London
67  Enfield Photos ..... Enfield and TT Triumph at the LMM
68  India first report ….... My tour of India 1
69  Delhi onwards …....               2
70  Beyond Assam …...               3
71  After Goa …...........               4
72  Chennai at the factory …...    5   Visit to the Enfield factory
73  A Place to Remember …....   6    Puri
74  Rajasthan …............              7
75  The Enfield Shrine …....        8
76  Triumph India ….....              9 visit to Triumph HQ
77  Back Home …........  Leaving India and the launch of the Tiger 800
78  Forgotten Engineer …..    Chris Castle and the Austel
79  Military at the Museum …. Story of the TRW
80  A Rare Beast …....   More on the Douglas DV60
81  Another Museum visited …. History on Wheels at Eaton Wick
82  Things from the shed …...  A look at some Bike Shed bikes at the LMM
83  St George ….. Bike run and a visit to Sammy Millers
84  A Special Day ….....  Opening of the Minter Cafe
85  Chasing a Ghost …... A very rare BSA
86  Kempton Park 2015 ….... Southern Classic Bike Show
87  More Fun with the Oldies ...... more from the SCBS
88  Bike Club Event …... Trip to Luxembourg
89  Cassington 2015
90  Paul Fynn 2015 …. run through Windsor Great Park
91  After the Bike Ride … Chinnor Byke Dayz
92  Gone West …. Trip to Canada Toronto and Niagara Falls
93  Winnipeg ….... Bike shop visits and a ride out
94  Back to Toronto ….. seeing some nice bikes
95  A closer look …. some classic Ducatis from bike shop in Winnipeg
96  More on the Ormonde …... refurbishing the engine
97  2015 Two Stroke Challenge … the start at Jack Lilleys
98  Museum 1 in Spain …....  Moto Museo Barcelona
99  Museum 2 in Spain …....  Moto Museo Bassella

Moto Museum 2 Spain

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Moto Museum 2: Bassella

After a few minutes thought after leaving Moto Museum 1 the brain kicks into gear, I have hired a car, the kids don't get up until the afternoon and we have no plan for the morning. The second Museum will open at 10am. It is only one and a half hours away. Leave by 08:30 arrive about 10:00, leave Museum 11:30 and be back as the kids are waking up. Gita goes along with this. So bright and early on the Sunday morning we are away taking some motorway and some of the nice biking main roads. I miss the Museum sign and waste valuable visiting time searching for it. How could I miss this sign! 

When we do get there the Museum looks closed but one of the people working at the cafeteria in the same building says someone will be back in a minute. After a minute I have assed over some LMM fliers and will collect some of theirs when I leave. 

They have about 200 bikes on display with lots of room to view them. I am enjoying every second reading the notes about the bikes and again taking lots of photos. There are quite a number of British bikes on display with all the major players represented. There is even a Velocette LE! Not many of those in Spain!

Bultaco, Montessa and Ossa are well represented with more variants than you can imagine. A very much younger picture of a smiling Sammy Miller adorns one wall. 

Displays of Off Roading fill a large area as this was the main international market for the Spanish machines. They all did the small machines for domestic consumption.  What did catch my eye was this 4 cylinder Derby two stroke racer.

Within the two levels of the Museum is a restoration area, a mini cinema where they are playing a film of the history of the Museum and telling the story of how, the founder, Mario Soler began restoring motorcycles that started the collection.

The Museum is interesting in itself. A dam was built and the village of Bassella where the Soler Collection lived was flooded in the 1990's. The villagers were relocated and so was the Museum. The building that now houses the collection was built from reclaimed materials of the original village and the name of the place along with the Museum and a petrol station are all that is left. We leave the Museum around mid day and get back to Barcelona around two and then we all head off to the beach to have lunch, some sun and an unexpected dip.

Moto Museum 1 in Spain

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Moto Museum 1 : Barcelona

You may be thinking that there are two motorcycle museums in Barcelona and you would be partly correct. There are three Moto Museums all run by the same people and is the Mario Soler collection. The main museum is at Bassella some 150km to the north of Barcelona and the other one is in Andorra. I visited the museum in Barcelona that displayed Catalunya motorcycle manufacturers, these are Bultaco, Montessa and Ossa. All famous names from the seventies and eighties with racing pedigrees and competition. Some famous names rode these machines that include Sammy Miller and Mick Andrews.

The Museum in Barcelona is nicely laid out and displaying about 50 machines.  I did my best to photograph them all and try to read as much as I could. Much of the information has an English paragraph or two so you don't have to learn Spanish before you visit. The lady on the reception desk was very helpful and her English excellent. As usual I left fliers and this time collected some of theirs.

 I didn't know how far the museum in Bassella was I could have bought a combined ticket for 10€, but I was not sure I would get there as I wanted to have some culture in Gaudi's architecture that seems around everywhere. Now that was a man who had imagination!

I spent some time going around the museum in Barcelona and among the bikes displayed were Lutetia, Patria, Reiju, Sanglas, Maf, Mymsa, Sanson, Cimson and Derby.

The Derby I was interested in was the 250SS. It is a split single two stroke with interesting head and twin exhaust.





 In the racing section there is the Arisco 250cc twin which, like some engines of that era were two 125's strung together.

Part of the history of Spanish manufacturers Bultaco had stopped production in the eighties and has now resumed. Sanglas, known for big singles and used by the Police was taken over by Yamaha and looks like one. There are lots of names that I have not heard of but were doing much the same as we were in the UK at the time. There is even one bike that has a Villiers twin to push it along. Just for Pete I took a photo of a Ducati 160TS.

It was a very enjoyable visit and the location is just a short distance from the Tourist Information in the centre of the city. I'll be going to Barcelona again next year and will drop in to see it again. I have been told that the exhibition is changed regularly so when I next visit there should be something different to see.

2015 Two Stroke Challenge

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Two Stroke Challenge

It seems ages ago that I was out on a ROG's Run having a great time in the sun enjoying a blat around Sussex and Hampshire then to whizz off to Barnsley for the August Bank Holiday to be part of the UK Assam Association and present my visit to the Enfield Shrine near Chotila. It was also printed in their newsletter.

While in Barnsley I stayed at the Ramada Inn, where I left some fliers and also at the Holiday Inn where the event took place. On reception there there was a biker who has promised to pay the Museum a visit. I also met a couple of guys, father and son who had met up to do the Dales and the Moors on their bikes. The son had come from Lincoln and the father from Edinburgh. They had good weather as it only became very wet on the Sunday night and a little on the Monday. Car trouble kept me at home during the week but on Saturday I was off to Jack Lilleys for the start of the Two Stroke Challenge they are sponsoring. Portsmouth to Porto on some not very new bikes and camping too! I have posted the start on Youtube and can be found on this link:- 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWyPi4ixkCs

They should be back in about 2 weeks.

Sunday got me out and about with Wey Valley Advanced Motorcycle Club back by one run with our coffee break at the Chalet Transport Cafe at Cowfold. Lucky for me as arriving at the same time were the Sussex Vintage Motorcycle Club. 

They had been to the Museum last year as a coach trip. One guy was there on his pre-war Triumph twin and that very nicely presented as were all their bikes. I spent most of my time in the car park handing out fliers and talking to people. 

Later on in the afternoon was the Shere Hill Climb that the WVAMC went on to visit but I had to head for home and missed out on all the fun. Perhaps next year?

Also going on over the weekend was Salon Privee where the Museum was also represented with the Tiger 80 on display.

Monday, back at the Museum, and reporting back about what I had been up too and picking up more fliers for next weekend.

More on the Ormonde

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Work on the Ormonde

Unusually I am at the Museum on a Sunday because everyone is away at the Beezumph Rally and are not due back until later in the day. Not much is happening and I take the opportunity to see what was going on with the Ormonde. It is not on display but languishing in the little barn with the engine out. 

The Antoine engine is in pieces and the owner is sitting on one of the benches in the sun patiently removing the remains of red hermatite from the threads in the crankcase. The barrel is screwed into it. It all looks so flimsy. Each part of the engine is being worked on in turn and nothing is disassembled until then. The crankcase walls seem paper thin and most of the metal is around the crankcase bolt bosses. There is a string seal that is compressed into a recess in each of the crankcase halves.

This will be replaced on assembly. Holes have been patched where threads have stripped but for 113 years old it is still hanging in there. The crankshaft looks a fairly substantial item and the piston has 3 solid 6mm rings. There is a little burning past the rings. One ring is missing and the other has been removed to use as a pattern for a replacement.

 There has been some conjecture about the actual capacity of the engine and now, having measured the bore and stroke it comes out to 402cc. While this patient work was in progress I wondered how many they would have had to make to turn a profit? At that time (1902) the Ormonde and depending on model was selling for £42 to £45 and a good wage that would give you a very comfortable life style was £1 a week. Bicycles were selling for about £5. I estimated that the motorcycle would have about £20 of parts. Premises would probably have been £1 a week with other overheads similarly. So for a year the overheads would have been £100, wages for 3 people, at 3 on £1 each per week each £150 that equates to 10 motorcycles per year! It is no wonder that everyone seemed to be building motorcycles. Consider how rich they would have been if they sold 100? Much of what is known about the Ormonde is lost but if you want to spend a little time on a visit reading its history it is surprising it has survived so long. This is not the only Ormonde around with 8 more survivors ranging in years of 1900 to 1904. We do not know how many were built. After 1904 Johanas Guttman went off to make bicycles. I wonder what happened to the other two?

Later that day the bike return in the van and I have a chance to have a good look around them before they go back on display, they are all triples, the P1, Egli framed OHC racer and Gary's bike that he raced.