At a time when women did not even drive, a lady rider blazed a trail.

It was one of those biting mornings of late September in 1926, the kind that you know will lacerate your cheeks like a thin ice whip when you get up to speed, when the three bikers convened in the Stretford neighbourhood of Manchester. Their annual pilgrimage to the ancient town of Holywell in Wales was 53 miles of partially paved roads and cobbled streets away. Their transport for the ride, an OK Supreme, a DOT and a Douglas – three now defunct British motorcycle marques that were among the most sought-after of the era – stood fuelled, polished and ready for action. The women who piloted the machines, Babs Nield and Dot Cowley, both accomplished flat track racers, and their friend-slash-motorcycle-junkie, Agnes Golden, were still in their 20’s and anomalies of the riding community. As three of the first women to hold motorbike licenses in the city of Manchester, they were unabashed saboteurs of the stereotypes that were hung on women in the early 20^th century. The nation had only just recently given women the right to vote, they were banned from work after marriage and the notion of a woman even driving  a car seemed like heresy. But none of that mattered at all because Agnes had a mission for the gang: to ride to Holywell, collect some of the holy water for which it was famous, and transport the precious liquid back to Manchester as a gift for her religiously devout mother to cleanse her transgressions. And so, the young women clad in leather, heavy canvas and waxed cotton headed west toward North Wales in the cool morning light.

Dot Cowley on her Flat Tracker

The roads were rough and only partially tarred so exceeding the 20-mph speed limit was out of the question. Horse-drawn carts still jostled with motorized vehicles for the same swath of macadam and cobbles. Escorted by the stares and jeers of those they passed on the way, the exotic trio arrived in the late afternoon and set to their task of filling Agnes’ grandmother’s flask with the waters from St Winefride’s Well, since the 7^th century a site of Christian pilgrimage. The next day, the flasks were filled and attached to the rear of Agnes’ bike and the women made their way home. It was at about the halfway point while riding through the village of Brooks Bar when a stray dog bolted from under a parked wagon and across the path of Agnes’ front wheel. She was fortunately moving at a slow pace but the evasive action caused her to lose the control of the bike and it went over in the middle of the road. She was unharmed and the bike was fine but the holy water was lost, spilled across the cobbled road like a bucket of mop water. It was Dot who spotted the solution that would set them back on their way. One of the large troughs scattered at regular intervals along the route for the purpose of watering horses would become the source of their faux holy water. Their flasks now refilled, they set off for the final leg of the weekend’s journey and reached home by nightfall. Agnes’ mum was waiting at the doorstep having heard the small-bore bikes from a half mile away. She beamed as she watched her daughter arrive home safely carrying the precious liquid cargo from Holywell. She could not wait until the flasks were in the house before taking a sip and declaring it ‘the best holy water she’d ever tasted’.

The women drifted apart over the decade that followed. Both Dot and Babs pursued their careers as flat trackers and Agnes settled into her role as a wife and mother to five children during the great depression. As soul destroying as it was, her bike was one of the first possessions to be sold off. The family scraped by in the pre-war years and then absorbed the full brunt of the Blitz from their simple two up / two down in the rough neighbourhood of Stretford. The Christmas Blitz of 1940, a ten-hour brutalizing by the German Luftwaffe that killed 73 people in Stretford alone on the night of 22 December, nearly led to the demise of the whole family when a bomb hit a school next to their home but failed to explode.  For Agnes, dreams of motorcycling seemed as faint as the heartbeat of a loved one near death.

Manchester Christmas Blitz of 1940

Six years later hardship struck the family yet again when the River Irwell burst its banks and flooded the entire neighbourhood. As the water levels subsided, Agnes’ husband, Steven and youngest child Charles came upon a 1935 Norton that had been submerged in the floodwaters for over a month. Over the months that followed, the two painstakingly restored the bike in the sitting room of their little house. Charles still recalls vividly when his father first kick-started the resuscitated machine and the thunderous exhaust brought down 100 years of soot and grime from the sitting room fireplace, filling the room with blackness and roars of laughter. The home was a disaster, but they didn’t care because their mission had been accomplished. A week later, for her 50^thbirthday, Steve and Charles presented Agnes with a gift that rekindled a flame that was never quite extinguished: After 16 years, this pioneering woman was once again a motorcyclist.

The Norton was hers.

Agnes and Charles on her Norton

Robb La Velle

Roro La Velle is the founder and Maharaja of Client Experience with Two Wheeled Expeditions. He has ridden around the world twice and laid tracks through over 40 countries on 4 continents. He is also the author of ‘The Places In Between‘, an account of a husband & wife team circumnavigating the world on two wheels