TWO
31 May – 6 June 2003
Shirley: There is an interminable wait for the bike in the UK. The shipping agent said 40 days, so we allow 50 and it takes 60! Thank goodness for family. My brother’s niece, Bettina, and her English husband, Tim, live in Surrey. Their friendship and spare bed are lifesavers. When we finally get to the bike in Felixstowe, our stress levels are peaking. We have a single day to get from one side of the UK to the other to catch the ferry to the Isle of Man.
We arrive at customs early and the officials are more than helpful. They check out the bike registration from Australia, our green-card insurance, ask a couple of questions about what else is in the crate and that is it. They don’t even want to see the carnet.
‘You know you have to take the crate with you?’ is all the bloke at the freight-terminal office has to say as he points us to the back of the shed. Brian walks towards a freight officer only to be sharply told to move back to the car. ‘You can’t walk around here, because you don’t have green vests on. And you know you have to take the crate away with you?’ Of course we do!
No-one seems even to think that we might not be able to take the crate away. Brian and I will be on the bike and Bettina and Tim, who kindly drove us to collect the bike, are in a hatchback. When the crate appears we are pleased to see there are no telltale tyre marks to indicate it had been run over, or bits of tape holding it together to show it had been dropped off the forklift. Everything seems to be as it should. Tim and Brian take to the crate with hammers and crowbars. Inside, the bike is in perfect condition. The metres of bubble wrap, tape and tie-downs have worked their magic.
We’re pleased to hear it fire up straightaway after 60 days in the crate, but there is a hint of panic in Tim’s voice when he points out there seems to be fuel pouring out from the bottom of the bike. It takes just a bit of fiddling with the fuel lines to fix that problem and we are away – without the crate. Tim has hidden bits of it under a nearby skip, behind it and alongside it, making sure the address labels are removed.
As we get to the gate, the man comes out of the office and walks to the car. From the bike I can see into the office and the CCTV screens. Guilt and anxiety come to the surface as I realise they have been able to see us on their monitors the entire time we’ve been working on the bike. I am waiting for the ‘What about the crate?’ question when the man says he is after the copy of the paperwork the forklift driver gave us.
I can’t help but let forth a scream of joy as we ride out of the yard.
Brian: There is no fast way to get from one side of England to the other, which we of course need to do in a day to get the Saturday ferry from Heysham to the Isle of Man. The traffic is unbearable and every time we come to a roundabout it banks back for more than a kilometre. I’ve been a long time out of the saddle and take my time to get the feel of the bike again, but one thing I notice is how good the English drivers are compared with those in Australia. They are polite and move over to let you cut the traffic when the going gets slow.
Along the way we see rolling green pastures, sheep and small villages on either side of the roads. Every now and then a church steeple pops up among coppices; we are starting to feel like we are in England. We turn off the main roads at Harrogate and are in typical English countryside: narrow, hedge-lined roads with fields of sheep hemmed in by walls of stone.
Roadworks see us taking a detour through the Yorkshire Dales and ending up on the wrong road without us knowing it. We find a great guesthouse and, after a home-cooked meal, take a walk in the twilight. We wander through fields, over the rivers, past the sheep, climb over stiles and end up in town. It is just about perfect. The only problem is we really don’t know where we are or how we will get on the road to Heysham in the morning.
Shirley: Our hostess, Joan, gives us directions for a short cut to the main road. It is picture-book stuff – a narrow lane cuts through lush pastures with grazing sheep. We pass through the tiny village of Giggleswick near Settle. Once we are on the main road it is clear sailing through to the port of Heysham, home to a nuclear power station, a sea port and a caravan park for tourists to take in the wondrous sights.
We make it in good time and are on board the ferry by 11 a.m., which gives us 2 hours and 45 minutes to wait. Obviously, very few cars or vans are making the journey to the Isle of Man, but there are hundreds of bikes. The deck hands load the bikes alongside parallel barriers. The bikes are then roped onto these barriers, a bit like cattle. To protect the bikes from the ropes, they use old rags. It doesn’t seem very technical, but we hope they know what they are doing.
After an uneventful sail, thanks to a calm Irish Sea, we are finally at the Isle of Man. Getting off the ferry is nowhere near as easy as getting on. There is almost a free-for-all after an hour’s delay. We are wedged into a crowd of bikers on the tight stairway heading to the vehicle deck. The people behind us are pushing while the people in front are standing firm – they have nowhere to go. It turns out a couple of Harley riders had blocked the exits as they stuffed around.
Everyone on the island gets involved in the Isle of Man TT and bikers are welcomed with open arms. The police even turn a blind eye to some ‘safe speeding’ – and don’t mind a bit of larrikin behaviour as long as it doesn’t get out of hand. The authorities recognise the huge financial benefit this event brings to the island and have a sensible attitude to allowing people to let off steam. They let everyone know what is and is not allowed and, in the main, people comply.
But when we arrive on the island there is an undercurrent of sadness and foreboding. Some of the racers seem subdued. We soon learn that last year’s champ, Dave Jefferies, crashed into a stone wall during practice a couple of days earlier. There is no room for error here. Skidding across the narrow country road, Dave and his bike snapped off a telegraph pole before coming to a sudden halt at the wall. He died instantly. As they say here, everyone knows the risks and you take your chances. A journalist once said the racers have ‘balls the size of watermelons’. This isn’t an exaggeration.
Take Jim Moodie, who was following Dave Jefferies that day. The telegraph lines were strung across the road and Jim, riding a Triumph Daytona 600, hit the wires hanging over the track. He travelled 140 m further with the wires snaked around his chest and neck. He was nearly garrotted, yet he raced the next day. However, it does put a damper on the event to ride past the accident scene and see the flowers propped along the wall.
Riders here think nothing of completing one race of more than 160 km then competing in the next race on different bikes. Some would race up to 560 km in one day. It’s amazing – the laps are 60 km and the races are three or four laps. Most races take more than an hour to complete and up to 15 minutes to start, with 10 seconds between each starter.
It’s ‘Mad Sunday’, when the track is closed to two-way traffic and it’s open for all to play. There are no speed restrictions on the open roads but dangerous driving will bring the full weight of the law down on your wallet. We are warned not to disobey speed-restriction signs in towns. The police have a system where they pull you up, book you and you must go directly to the station to pay the very steep fine.
As Brian fuels up the bike, a mature gent takes an interest in our Phillip Island Motorcycle GP sticker. Kiwi Mac Trilford is here with his mate John Hudson, an expat Pom speedway rider based in New Zealand. John will ride in the ‘parade lap’ on a four-cylinder 250cc Honda owned by famous trials rider Sammy Miller. At 67 years of age Miller broke three ribs and his collarbone in a competition in France, so couldn’t ride in this year’s parade lap. John has taken the hire car out for a few laps of the 60 km-plus track. He was out at 5 a.m. and admits he frightened the living daylights out of himself on his way around. This doesn’t augur well for me. I am more than a little anxious about our high-speed lap of the island.
Brian: On Mad Sunday, any motorcycle can take to the track at any speed. Shirley and I work out which way everyone is going around the track and join in the fun. We ride into Crosby and see the flowers and bikes pulled up, people paying their respects to Dave Jefferies. They think he hit an oil spill from another bike, losing control. Jefferies won nine IOM races, including last year’s open. Just three minutes before his accident, he set the fastest lap ever, averaging more than 200 km/h on a track that has riders down almost to walking pace at some hairpin turns.
We carry on in a snaking conga line up the mountain, taking it in turns to overtake cars. As we get to an unrestricted area, the sports bikes wind out and so do I, pushing the big Beemer up to around 160 km/h – and still we are being overtaken as though we’re standing still. We are overtaken at 200 km/h-plus on sweeping corners over the top of the mountain. I remain conservative and keep my speed down to around 160–70 km/h. Some of these guys can really ride, particularly the ones with the ‘legs of Man’ symbol on their number plates. This is their home track and they know every bump.
It feels surreal to whip past parked police cars, three and four abreast on the wrong side of the road, and knowing it’s all legal as long as they deem you are riding safely. I’m travelling at about half the pace of the racing bikes, but my concentration levels still have to be high. I wonder how the racers can maintain such levels for six laps, or over 364 km. My respect for their abilities as riders grows.
We pull up at Snaefell, the top of the track in the clouds. It’s bitterly cold and the crowd enjoys the antics of the boys dropping wheel stands and roaring past the ‘Bobbies’, who look decidedly uninterested.
Back on the bike, it’s a fast run, and I mean fast, down the hill to the start–finish line. This is an awesome experience for any motorcyclist. I know the dangers and accept the consequences, but the exhilaration is intoxicating. Just ask anyone who rides.
Shirley: The first thing I notice are the crowds, all hanging around the dangerous parts of the track. Like the ones in the Roman Forum, they are out for blood, waiting for crashes. It’s hardly comforting. Other bikes hurtle past us – so close the draft nearly sucks off my right boot. I can feel Brian’s enjoyment. He’s having a ball, so I just hang on and go with the flow, moving with the bike and feeling the line through his body. It is exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. I have the utmost confidence in Brian’s riding, but the others on the road are an unknown quantity.
When we ride through Crosby, the floral tributes are a sobering reminder of the dangers of this track. When we get to the start–finish line, I draw a deep breath but I am suffering from mixed emotions. Despite myself, I loved the ride, the speed and the terror, but once is enough. ‘I’m happy for you to go around again, but I think I’d rather have a look around town,’ I tell Brian. I am secretly pleased when he says that once is enough!
Brian: Everyone brings out their bikes during race time – the fast and modern like the ones we met on the track, and the vintage and classic. The courtyard outside Castletown’s Castle Rushen is the meeting point for the classic bikes. It is nirvana. An old man in a tweed jacket and porkpie hat puffs as he passes us, push-starting a racing Velocette motorcycle circa 1950. As it roars into life, the noise is deafening. He revs it until evil-looking blue smoke comes out the ‘megaphone’. As he lets the engine die to a stop, it’s as if others have to fill the void.
We bump into our Kiwi friends John and Mac. They have the little 250 Honda, which John obligingly fires up. The four small megaphones are even louder than the Velo and drown out an old busker plying his trade on a squeezebox. The busker gives up and moves on. John revs the little bike up to 10,000 rpm, still well shy of its 17,000 red line. I sit on the bike and pretend just for a minute or two.
I look over and see an exotic MV Agusta racer and an old gent in full racing leathers as he fires it up. The 750cc racer is at least twice as loud as the Honda and people close by put their fingers in their ears to block out the noise. I look at the old guy and think he looks familiar. He should be – it’s Phil Read, a highly successful GP racer of the 1960s. As the noise dies down, two women old enough to collect the pension but dressed in bike leathers rush to his side for a photo opportunity. There is a display of trophies, helmets and a worn-through bike boot once belonging to the late Mike ‘The Bike’ Hailwood, a legendary English racer. Mike Hailwood’s son, David, is here to take part in the so-called ‘parade lap’. We ogle plenty of other exotic machinery before heading to the pub.
Shirley: Race day presents a couple of drawbacks. One is the need to settle into your viewing spot before the first race and stay put until after the last. The roads are closed to all but the racers. There are roads around the outskirts of the island, but they have ‘Shirley will get lost’ written all over them.
Once on the track, Brian and I climb the mountain and pass through the clouds. It is bloody cold and doesn’t seem like perfect racing weather. This is the second drawback – the delays caused by bad weather. While it might be sunny on one part of the track it can be foggy and icy on the top of the mountain, where visibility is only a few metres. These guys might be crazy, but they won’t race when it is really dangerous.
We ride around the track (within the speed limit today) to find the best vantage point. We end up at Sulby Bridge, behind a low stone wall. We have become two of those people we think are crazy for hiding behind a wall to watch the races! It is sunny but the top of the mountain is shrouded in fog. This delays the race by three hours. They finally get under way at 1.45, but it is well worth the wait.
Sulby Bridge is around a sharp right-hand turn. As the riders come around the corner, they put on the power to get up the hill and past the pub. They are so close you can feel the wind brushing your jacket. You can see the whites of their eyes as they come around the corner. Even the marshals need nerves of steel. One guy in the 1000cc race loses the line, goes straight ahead at the bend and then reverts to the track, heading straight for the marshal!
There’s a race every second day, so there is plenty of time to catch the Isle of Man sights. But before we can do any sightseeing, we need to confirm the ferry’s departure time for Ireland. I can’t help but visit the tourist office to gather every brochure of interest. The tourist officer gives me more information on things to do and see, adding that the locals love bikers coming over here; they really don’t cause much trouble and are great for the island’s economy. ‘I’m not looking forward to next week, though,’ she says. ‘There is a lawn-bowls tournament and they are notorious for being hard to please, whingeing about everything and everyone.’
Who would have thought?
People-watching can be good fun at events like this. The guys sitting next to us have squeezed everything, including the kitchen sink, into a hire van. They’re over for the weekend only and will head back with just two hours to spare before they have to be at work. They produce an Esky and a portable barbecue. We feel total disappointment when we notice that the Esky is for storing food, while the beer cans are left to sun themselves beside it.
The island’s Purple Helmets are a comic stunt group from the Isle of Man’s Southern 100 Motorcycle Club. They started their act to raise funds for local charities. Now they are head-liners at bike meets across Europe and a must-see at the Isle of Man. The group comprises about 20 riders all decked out in black (not purple) helmets and wearing long beige padded coats. They ride Honda 90s and do such stunts as The Shit House (yep, a dunny being dragged behind a bike), The Naked Piano Player (doesn’t take much imagination to visualise this one), The Rocket, The Baked Bean Powered Bike (picture a man eating the beans and using the methane created to power his bike), The Pyramid (standard gymnastics with bikes thrown into the mix), Jousting, and Walking the Couch. The riders jump over each other, drag each other around in wheelie bins, and take a couch, lounge chair, TV and coffee table out for a ride around the track. One gets into a circle of steel and rolls around the track. And they shoot a member out of a cannon. The act is hysterical.
There is another death, this time a rider in the parade lap. Just over a kilometre from the start line, Peter Jarmann, a Swiss rider who had just competed in the 400cc production race and come ninth, was riding a Bultaco two-stroke race bike when apparently the gearbox seized up. Jarmann had raced the Bultaco the previous week without any trouble. Out of control, he careered into a stone wall. He was on a borrowed bike and the owner was distraught. It seems unreal that you could be killed during a parade.
Our Kiwi friend John, who rode in the parade lap, sums up the racers’ attitude to the high risks: ‘You have to die somewhere. This place is not so bad for a pure motorcycle racer to be remembered.’
The fog closes in on the final race day and, after numerous delays, the races are postponed until the next day. The mountain and the town of Douglas are shrouded in fog. We head to Point of Ayre at the very tip of the island where the brilliant sunshine makes the waters look inviting – if you like freezing your bits off!
The Sea Cat ferry is taking us to Belfast, where we are meeting Liam McCabe, a world traveller we met in Melbourne when he was on his four-year motorcycle odyssey. The sailing is a bit rough and we keep checking on the bike. It is, of course, in one piece.
I clutch the directions provided by our B&B as we ride off the boat. So intent are we on finding the right exit that we nearly run Liam over when he steps in front of the bike to attract our attention. We didn’t expect him to meet us, as it is after midnight, but that’s Irish hospitality for you.
