Sam Hewitt

When thinking of a sport to combine with football (or soccer to our American friends) the petrol-fuelled revelry of motorcycling hardly seems conducive, but motorcycle football really was all the rage in the 1920s, 30s and even beyond, with crowds flocking to watch the beautiful game played on motorcycles. A question of sport The bizarre…

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This attractive 500cc replica of a Production TT winner started life as a 350cc Viper. Pretty special Wrapped up against the cold, Colin Archer exercises his motorcycle. Bombing along the wide empty roads of the Mendips with my head tucked behind the Velocette’s race screen, it needed little imagination to transport my mind back to…

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Have you ever been to a museum and wanted to ‘have a go’ on the exhibits? Now, the National Motorcycle Museum has decided to allow that to happen. Trying times Nottingham man Clive Osman had come along to sample the older machines, though he wasn’t a complete novice to the game, having ridden a couple…

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Previously an event favoured equally by those of the two-, three- and four-wheeled persuasion, the 1953 Land’s End Trial was one in which the motorcycles took centre stage. Motorcycles dominate at the Land’s End Trial C R Bell (Ariel) trundles determinedly across Darracott. Those behind him would be caught in a small snowstorm that thankfully…

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An exhaustive search led to the resurrection of an incredibly rare, but quite fabulous, model. Vitesse with finesse Though it has taken an awful lot of hard work and effort to construct, Gernot isn’t afraid to use his Super Vitesse. Gernot Schuh is nuts about New Hudson. The 45-year-old Austrian bought the first of his…

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Modern literature often relates the decline of the British and continental motorcycle industry in the 1950s and 1960s. Arguably the rot set in before the First World War. The story of the Ormonde With the explosion of cycling during the late Victorian and early Edwardian days, leading to huge businesses yielding gargantuan profits, it is…

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A tangle of Nortons at Brooklands in 1927. Crash, bang, wallop… Though Brooklands endured sustained popularity as a venue for record-breaking and high-speed machine proving, it was never really a place that provided much spectator enjoyment and in consequence, crowds numbers were always small – succinctly described in Motor Cycling of October 12, 1927, as…

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The 680 ohv Brough Superior was launched as smaller version of the iconic SS100 – and it certainly looked the part. But, for better or worse, does it share its bigger brother’s characteristics? Beautiful baby As I travelled back from riding the 680 Brough Superior, I was trying to think about what it most reminded…

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