PAG 27, page 2
Now fully recovered from the epic trip through France David and the Hornet are once again seeking adventure.
Read on for more high jink’s ..In which we see that a Morgan body WILL go into a Pembleton, Visit the Fens, try Motocross, meet a very unlucky Black Cat, and get drowned on the way back!
Long ago I won a place to Cambridge University and joined the university motorcycle club. It was shortly after the dinosaurs vanished from the earth and in time to be voted onto the committee simply on the strength of having a British motorcycle. We had a lot of fun in those days, and the advent of the internet (there is now a CUMCC newsgroup) has allowed us to re-visit our past. A reunion dinner was organised in one of the colleges for the 22nd of October last year.
In my time, and probably even now, Cambridge societies all had to have an annual black-tie dinner; it was expected. The motorcycle club was no different (apart from a tendency to work bits of leather apparel in with the normal dinner jacket) so a reunion dinner was very much in tradition, as was the planned Sunday Run on the morning after, when hangovers were blown away by the bracing fenland air, in theory at least. So this invitation was really just resuming old habits and I accepted with alacrity. In the absence of a motorcycle, I would, of course, be driving the Hornet. I didn’t mind that. Whenever you see pictures of old motorcycle clubs there’s regularly a Morgan in the shots, so I didn’t feel I would be out of place.
It being late October I planned to break the journey at my parents in Marlow (Bucks and over half way). I was booked into my college for Saturday night and Sunday was left free-form. I also had an errand that seemed worth doing as it was on the way; I had a Morgan body frame to return to Hemel Hempstead. Why? Well I’m building a Morgan as my next tricycle; this was the dismantled remains of an original body which I had borrowed to copy.
Saturday the 22nd dawned bright, cold and (damnation!) ‘changeable’. I set to and loaded the boot with my clothes, basic tools and spares, and as many of the lesser bits of Mog as it would take. Then, with the seat-back bulging, I put driving gear, extra layers, maps and directions in the glove compartment where they could be got at easily. The rest of the Morgan body went in the passenger seat, all wrapped in bin liners, and, boy, was it a close-run thing. It sat up as high as I did, forced a most awkward gear-changing style on me, loosely described as over-the-top-and-round-the-corner, and I had the hoop that supports the beetleback of the Morgan tied across the Hornet’s tail with bailer twine. I looked at it and wondered if I’d have to beat off any trawling policemen, stopped thinking about it and set off.
Well it all went quite well actually. I didn’t want to push things with the deck cargo hampering driving, but I arrived uneventfully to Marlow, had lunch with my parents, who were on good form, and on to Hemel. Here it was time for a cup of tea and to GET RID OF ALL THAT BLOODY WOODWORK! At last I could stop driving like Granny. It was such a joy to be motoring onward to Cambridge without bits of wood sticking into me or impeding my ‘racing’ changes as I shot in and out of roundabouts going cross country to the A1(M); the weather continued to threaten intermittently without delivering and I arrived in Cambridge, dry and happy, shortly before dusk. After I’d dealt with the small group of instant-enthusiast-type students that had magically appeared and parked the Hornet off road, I left her for the night. As she normally lives outside I always take the seats in to stop them getting waterlogged, but it also serves as a good anti-joyrider system when I’m away from home; I don’t lock her up but rely on the lack of seats. It’s casual vandalism that worries me most on these occasions.
Well we all had a great time that evening, re-constructing old incidents from the collective memory: ‘Do you remember that…?’ ‘Well, all I saw was…’ ‘Yes but did you realise that while that was going on, I was…?’ Brilliant.
Sunday was bright and cold, I was dehydrated and tired, having been in bed for what felt like 30 minutes. I packed my kit and loaded the car and started out for the rendez-vous for the run with time to find a nice greasy set-you-up-for-the-day Full English Breakfast en route. We were due to meet at the traditional place for starting a CUMCC run, Marshal’s Garage in the Newmarket Road (gave you a chance to fill up before launch); however Marshal’s had been redeveloped so we met in the car park of PC World at about the spot where we thought the forecourt would have been. Somehow a retail warehouse car park wasn’t the same although at that stage of the day there was plenty of