Sidecars..a source of pure joy

I posted a self-deprecating meme a month back consisting of a montage of 5 photographs. The first, in a shot of me at my motorcycling zenith wearing my Vanson race leathers, I’m proudly displaying my race-prepped Ducati 996. The caption reads ‘I’m committed to Italian sport bikes and that is it.’  The second shot shows me on a BMW GS somewhere in Iran and states ‘I will never own a BMW: They’re for old people.’ Next comes me a astride my 40 year old BMW R100 and the cocky line exhorts ‘I will never own a vintage bike. They’re for geriatrics.’ The final image sees me and my girlfriend in our R100/Sidecar combo getting ready to join the Distinguished Gentlemen’s Ride in London. Of course, the misguided text claims that. ‘As long as I can stand, I will never, ever own a sidecar.’ Obviously my words are quite tasty because I dine on them a lot.  

And you may ask yourself, how did I get here? It all started with a realisation that is founded in the ethos of Two Wheeled Expeditions: For me, sharing great experiences creates a sublime level of happiness. One day, one glorious day, I was doing what I often do on a sunny Tuesday afternoon: riding my old BMW with zero plans or destination through central London. The meandering path synchronises with my wandering mind like therapy as I discover streets, shops, parks and whole neighbourhoods I never knew existed. And then the epiphany: I wanted to share this beautiful experience with my girlfriend, her daughter, our dog Tupac and everyone I knew! I promptly logged onto Amazon and ordered some Doggles.

Fast forward to a small workshop in the beautiful Cotswolds countryside and the century-old home of Watsonian Sidecars. With tools that have been in use since the company’s founding, these craftsmen create beautiful bolt-on cockpits of fibreglass and steel that are the standard of the sidecar world. I opted for the GP Manx, not because of its stunning looks or exceptional build quality (it possesses these in spades), but because it was at hand. Either join the 6 month wait list or ride away with this masterpiece. I didn’t even need my brain. With a swipe of the Visa, I was steaming toward London.

I’d like to throw out a cool Fight Club line here and exhort ‘there is only one rule of sidecarring’, but sadly there are two so it doesn’t work. Rule 1 of sidecarring is never forget the sidecar is there unless you really hate your passenger. You may laugh, but this is very easy to do. Jumping into the cockpit and letting a friend take the handlebars saw me nearly go teeth first into a nearby Toyota bumper in a matter of metres. Rule 2 is less perilous: always factor the ‘sidecar lag’ into your ride plans. Regardless of where you go, you will be photographed, videoed, queried, chatted up and wooed by shoppers, bus drivers, kids, policewomen, members of Parliament, canines and pretty much any living creature you come in contact with. Put on your best Brad Pitt face and roll with your newly found fame because sidecars bring joy.

Now as bikers, I’m sure the burning question on the tip of your tongues is what it’s actually like to ride one. In a nutshell, it’s pretty fucking weird at first. Let’s start with the obvious. Motorcycles turn by leaning and leaning is initiated through counter-steering. It’s funny how my riders don’t know that. At your next pub meet, ask someone which way they pull the handlebar to turn right. Right?  BAAAP! Wrong answer. You pull the left handlebar (and push the right) to turn right. When a sidecar is attached, you do the opposite. Pull the right handlebar toward you to turn right. Hard. The ‘hard’ exclamation cannot be overstated because riding with a sidecar requires a lot of upper body work. Especially at speed, you will be working those arms hard to get the 3-wheeler to obey but think on the bright side: in a matter of months you’ll look like Arnold in his prime.

A final tip. In the UK, sidecars are mounted in the left because, since we drive on the left, this keeps the sidecar, and the passenger you love, out of the path of oncoming traffic. When you turn hard to the right, the sidecar acts like an outrigger. You can turn as hard and fast as you want and that 3^rd wheel will keep you planted. Turn hard left, however, and an empty sidecar will quickly lift off the road surface. This may look cool but the cartoonishness of a bike on its side, the sidecar towering above, may lead to undue embarrassment.

I can honestly say that my old BMW R100 gets used ten times more now that it’s grown its sidecar appendage. My girl beams every time I pick her up at work to save her yet another sweaty journey home in the London Underground. My friends’ kids line up to take turns in the Harry Potter mobile. Even Tupac, our German Shorthaired Pointer, has gotten over his initial trepidation and gleefully holds his head above the windscreen as we ride, his soft, floppy ears waving in the wind like socks on a laundry line.

The lesson I learned from all of this is motorcycles are fun. All motorcycles. Dirtbikes, racebikes, enduros, boxer twins, thumpers, sidecars, all of them. Except trikes. I’ll never, ever own a trike. They’re for old people.

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.

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.

 

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.