However, although the number looked familiar, I couldn’t be sure until my friend George Black called me from Yorkshire to confirm that it was indeed the same bike and he had acquired it when he resided in Shetland and still has it to this day.

I contacted the son of one of the former owners and he sent me the accompanying photo which shows his dad starting up the Bantam, now fitted with a ‘go faster’ megaphone silencer.

I thought that John and other readers might be interested to know that his bike still exists and that having travelled a long way from one end of the country to the other in its early years, now appears to be on the way back down again.