Madness in Jersey

WAY back in 1985, I visited the Isle of Man for the TT races; just as a spectator, mind you, standing on the sidelines of what’s acknowledged as the world’s most dangerous road race. Funnily enough, the Isle of Man TT experience wasn’t the main reason for the trip—no sir, the trip to Motorcycling Mecca was just a happy sideline to the main goal: obtaining unobtainable parts for a Manx Norton I was attempting to rebuild.

Apart from experiencing the TT Races and buying a whole heap of Cammy Norton parts, one of the highlights of the adventure was a little side trip to Jersey, one of the Channel Islands, to pick up a Triumph Bonneville.

To set the scene, in 1985, Double Overhead Cam Norton parts availability wasn’t like it was three decades previous. Obviously, in 1955, you would just go down to your local Norton Shop and order a new Manx for the next season’s racing. It wasn’t like the present day either, more than two decades after 1985, when you can now, once again, order a brand new Molnar Manx for the next season’s historic racing. No, in the 1980s, if you wanted parts for your rare and delectable Manx—boy, you were dead out of luck!

I’d bought the bike late in 1983, on the night of September 25, and if you loosely assembled the parts, it almost looked like a bike. But, oh what a mess! I’d only paid $2000 for it but I finally owned a short-stroke Cammy Norton. It had the wrong frame, wrong wheels, a fibreglass tank, and some weird as anything fork sliders, which turned out to be Panther.

Sad to say, but on September 26, 1983, just as Australia II got the gun across the line to wrest the America’s Cup from USA for the first time in 132 years, and Bob Hawke was calling Aussie bosses bums, I only had time for a casual glance at the TV screen: I was too busy sorting out the pile of Manx parts I’d just bought.

That’s when the real trouble started—you simply couldn’t buy bits for Manx Nortons. The one person in the world who was doing anything like a regular supply of parts was a bloke called Ray Petty, who lived in England. Ray was a Super Tuner in the ’50s, ’60s and even into the ’70s. So you just wrote him a letter and got in the queue of parts-starved Manx owners who stretched around the globe. Sure, you could ring him, and have a nice chat, but he’d only tell you that, yes, you were in the queue, he had your order and would eventually whittle the pile of orders down to yours.

Geoff Clatworthy, builder of the mighty ES2 Norton that ruled Australian classic racing for so many years, whispered some insider info into my ear, suggesting that if a Ray Petty customer simply lobbed on his doorstep, especially after a long flight from Australia, that customer might jump a few places in the queue. So I did just that.

But it wasn’t as simple and unplanned as that, oh no!

Figuring I was going to the other side of the world, I might as well make good use of the airfares and take in a few sights at the same time. And I figured I’d take The Goog, my Best Girl at the time, as she didn’t eat much, smelled real nice and was a barrel of laughs to have around at a party.

But planning my first OS trip, I wasn’t the suave, sophisticated Man of the World what I are now; I had no clue, but was prepared to give it my best shot.

I even wrote to Classic Bike Magazine, cockily suggesting to the readership that, back in Australia, a competitive Triumph Sidecar outfit was on offer to any itinerant Pommy race teams planning a racing holiday in Oz, as long as I could have a few races on their outfit in Pommy-land. Also in the letter was expressed a desire to buy a cheap old Triumph twin for transport around the UK while we were there.

I got two letters back: one was from Andy Molnar (yeah, the same bloke who these days manufactures the Molnar Manx, the machine to have if you want to do well in Classic Racing). Andy’s news was bad: if you weren’t already entered and paid up in any UK race meeting in the next 12 month, you were too late. Entries were closed and there were no exceptions. But he did say to drop in and have a beer or 10; he’d gotten drunk with Aussies before, and reckoned a night on the turps with Aussies was always very interesting and lots of fun before it all turned to shit and everyone gets arrested.

The other letter was from a bloke who lived on Jersey, a tiny little island just off the coast of France, but an island whose locals identify a lot more with the Poms than the Frogs.

“Don’t buy an old Triumph,” he wrote. “Borrow mine for as long as you like.”

Turns out this Jersey native had married an Australian girl and he’d always heard about what Top Aussie Blokes we all were, so, “Borrow me Trumpy, Cobber, she’ll be right!”

All I had to do was bring it back in one piece and still running. Plus, I had to bring some Vegemite for his missus.

After leaving The Goog with relloes, I headed down to Jersey. So there I was, after a train from London and a ferry from Southampton, standing on the dock holding helmet, jacket, gloves, and a caterer’s pack of Vegemite.

The Trumpy’s owner whisked me away to his place, apologising all the way that he’d stuffed up and tonight was the missus’ birthday and he wouldn’t be able to go for a drink with me and the lads of the Jersey branch of the Triumph Owners Club at the Wolf Caves Tavern that night. But here were the keys, and the Tavern is over that-away.

I gotta tell you, it was weird: some bloke I’d contacted by letter once and phoned twice was throwing me the key to his old Bonneville and sending me off to drink with people I’d never met before. Seemed like the perfect start for an adventure, and oh Lordy—what an adventure it was.

Now, dear reader, what you must understand is this: Jersey, like its mate in the Channel Islands, Guernsey, is tiny. You just can’t get too lost on Jersey.

The Trump started first kick, which must’ve been a good sign, and we found the Wolf Caves Tavern very easily. The two things I noticed were: a, the roads were very narrow, and b, there were no footpaths to speak of, but right at the edge of the bitumen grew six-foot high stone walls made out of those really gnarly, really sharp volcanic rocks, all pieced together so perfectly you just knew they had help from space aliens.

Pulling up in the carpark of the Wolf Caves, it was time to be amazed by two more things: Firstly, just how many Pommie bikes would be there; and secondly, how bloody hospitable these Jerseyanarians were. I was still taking off helmets and putting sidestands down when one of the locals walked out of the pub door, a pint glass in each hand yelling: “G’day, Aussie, ’e said you’d be here soon, so here’s your pint—get it into ya, son!”

“Um, Gulp! … err, thanks… glug,” was all I could say.

And that sort of set the tone for the rest of the night. Here was an entire pub-load of bastards I’d only just met but already they were the very best friends I’d ever had. They were having none of this bullshit ‘mainland’ stuff where guests have to pay for their own beer—I simply wasn’t allowed to return the shout.

We did all kinds of Jersey pub stuff, like playing pool, playing darts, perving on the sheilas, talking motorbikes and drinking beer. Just like in any other pub anywhere in the world, I guess.

One freaky thing was that it all happened the same time as the Juventus Soccer Riot occurred. It was sobering to watch that horrible event with all the injuries and deaths taking place live on the telly as we drank on.

The drunker I stood there, the longer I got and we were all having a whale of a time. The pints of lager kept flowing, causing everyone to play the best pool and most accurate games of darts you could ever imagine.

Only the Good Lord Above knew what time it was when the landlord threw us out; we shuffled as an unconnected collection of staggerers, stumblers and noisy pricks who neighbours hate.

“’Ere, Aussie, are you okay to ride?” asked the Prez.

“Oh shit yeah—I’m not half as drink as what some thinkle peep I am…” I replied, although if the truth be known, I was full as a state school; Elephant’s Trunk, mate. Adrian Quist—as a parrot!

“Right lads,” the Prez barked. “We’re heading down (muffled sound) then down around (unpronounceable) before turning left at (didn’t quite catch it) then down to the beach for a burger!”

“Beach, right, got that,” I muttered while kicking the Bonnie in the guts. The pack of noisy Triumphs blared off and powered down the only bit of road on the entire island that looked civilised. And then the rocky walls began again, which logically thinking, shouldn’t have made the pack ride any faster or more dangerously, but sure appeared to do so. Fair dinkum! It was like the first lap dash to the first corner of a racetrack. Positioned somewhere in the middle of the pack, there was no intention of improving my position, but didn’t want to lose any places, either.

Now, I gotta tell ya, I’ve had many a fine ride on many a fine motorbike, along some spectacular pieces of roadway and probably travelled too fast for the conditions. But this ride was definitely the scariest I’d been on; totally out of my control. On that particular night on that particular road, I felt very much out of my depth and doing something really dangerous. Dangerous and stupid. And whenever you’re on a motorcycle and you get the feeling that you’re doing something stupid, it’s because you are!

A huge pack of well-lubricated local riders with intimate local knowledge, plus one dufus from overseas, would roar up to the bend, slam the brakes on, throw ’er down and scrape around the corner, before roaring off to the next one. No-one had blinkers, no-one bothered about hand signals, and very few had brake lights The whole time, the tight pack of lunatics was being corralled by these really grumpy looking walls; one slip-up, and you’d end up in the biggest pile of Triumph parts and mincemeat.

Don’t really know whether they were trying to impress the visitor, or they always rode like that, but Jeez—it was a thrash and a half! Lots of fun, but…

We all made it to the beach and wolfed down burgers and bullshitted about the great ride we’d just had.

“So, what’s next?” I asked between burger munches.

“Not much,” came the lacklustre reply. “This is Jersey, there’s not much more to do…”

And with that, the Bonnie carried me back to mine host’s place and I got a scant few hours kip before the 6 am up & at ’em to catch the first and only ferry back to England.

Oh Good Lord it was a humdinger of a hangover, as coffee plus Vegemite on toast got me halfway to humanoid. The Bonnie was ridden up the loading ramp, strapped to the side of the hold, and I decided to check the insides of my eyelids for holes. Some prick of man in a seafarer’s uniform woke me up with a rousing, “Wakey, wakey Sunshine—you’re the last passenger to alight, get on your bike and off my boat or you’re going back to Jersey. I’d slept the whole journey, and even when back on dry land, wasn’t really awake as I propped myself up on a sandstone wall and casually glanced over the mechanical condition of the Triumph I’d just been riding at speeds dangerous and in close company with a whole pack of ratbags.

In the daylight, I ascertained the bike was in atrocious condition, as is often the case with vehicles that don’t have far to push home after a breakdown. The front tyre was not only rock solid, it was feathered as bad as I’d ever seen a tyre feathered. And polished. The feathered blocks of the tread pattern were actually shiny. The worst thing was that you could put all the air into you wanted, and it never got fatter, just a whistling sound from every place the air leaked out. The tyre was completely full of aerosol ‘Spare Tyre’ flat fixer, so was closer to a solid rubber tyre than a pneumatic one.

And the brakes—Oh My God, the brakes!

The rear shoes were so worn, the actuating cam was flipping right over 180 degrees. And the fronts. They were so worn, if you were silly enough to keep it squeezed on when you came to a stop, it locked up. The cams were so close to flipping over, the shoes would just self-servo into the drum, meaning once they’d locked on, you had to roll the bike backwards to unhook them.

A new front tyre and tube was bought from the nearest bike shop; the rear was looked at and overlooked; some not-completely-worn-out-yet second-hand brake shoes were fitted and we were soon on our way back to London Town.

Funnily enough, the engine was as sweet as sweet could be, and that sucker took me and The Goog all over the UK with not much more trouble. The owner knew little of its history, but I reckon it was something a tiny bit more special than just your average old 1966 Triumph Bonneville. I sort of suspected it could’ve been a Thruxton Bonnie, a rare race special the factory produced in very small numbers to win the Thruxton 500 mile race. In terms of street cred, the Thruxton Bonnie versus a standard Bonnie is held in the same regard as the car blokes revere their GTHO Phase III Falcons as opposed to a standard Falcon. There were a few things about the bike that hinted of a racing heritage, like all the drain plugs drilled for lockwiring, a very rare and desirable John Tickle Twin leading shoe front brake conversion, lots of little tweaks with the overhead gear and engine breathing and oh, of course, the close-ratio four speed gearbox that was a right pig to get going with its really tall first gear.

In fact, that was the only other problem we had with that Bonnie—traversing London with its log-jam traffic on a fully-laden, two-up Bonneville with a first gear higher than second and slightly lower than third is a real pain. We only got about halfway across when the clutch pushrod said, “I’m gone, see ya.”

Luckily, it was a short walk to the nearest Pommy bike shop and a brand new clutch rod was purchased and we were on our way again.

Out on the open road, the Bonnie was beautiful; compared to the manic ride around Jersey the night I picked it up, it was a breeze. Such a shame to have to give it back at the end of the holiday, but there were bigger fish to fry. Transporting many Manx Norton parts back to Australia was the priority now, and it’s funny what you could get away with at the airport back then. Like, in these freaked-out times, how do you think you’d go with a complete Manx Norton flywheel and conrod assembly, built and balanced by Manx expert Ray Petty as carry-on luggage? And how many airline employees would allow a Manx Norton petrol tank to be stowed in the overhead locker?

And the bags that went into the cargo hold with lots of interesting looking metal bits from a Manx Norton—if those same bags were put through today’s checks, I would still be in Guantanamo Bay wearing an orange jump suit and manacles.

Whoever said the Good Old Days were shit was wrong. Life was simpler then than it is now.

Road Tales By Kelly Ashton