National Rally; July 2000
Cumbria to Cornwall on a 400 Four
The year is 1977 and the bike is a fire-engine red Honda CB400F equipped with a frame mounted white cockpit fairing and ace bars. On a good day with a following wind you could tuck down behind the fairing with your feet on the rear footrests and believe you were Barry Sheene or Kenny Roberts. It was a long time ago but I can still remember these things. I loved that bike and did many miles on it.
At that time, I lived on Portland and I worked at what was then called AUWE and which was later to be called ARE. However, although I was based at Portland, that year I spent most of my time working away at Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria. In fact, I was spending so much time there that I decided to ride my Bike to Barrow so that I could get more use out of it than I would have done if I had left it at home in Portland.
Anyway, come the summer I pleaded with my boss to let me have a week off to go on holiday. The plan was for my girlfriend and I to go on the bike to Cornwall. We decided to stay in a guest house just outside Truro and we booked a room in the name of Mr and Mrs Fairbanks. If I recall correctly, my girlfriend even purchased a plastic gold band type wedding ring. Those were the days!
Before describing our holiday, I should point out to those who are considerably younger than myself that the green-house effect and the lessening of the ozone layer was not a problem in those days. Although 1976 was a phenomenon in terms of being a hot summer, 1977 was just like every other summer I can remember from those times, i.e. it rained a lot and it was none too hot.
On the Saturday, I set off on my bike from Barrow to ride to Portland to meet up with my girlfriend. Before leaving, I changed the oil as the bike only went 1500 miles between changes and I used to change it at 750 miles anyway as the Hondas of that era were fussy in this respect. The rain was persistent and unrelenting for most of the 400 mile journey. All I can remember of that journey is shivering at a service station while trying to eat a Mars bar, and the annoying characteristic the bike had of missing on the two outside cylinders when it rained hard. This was a standard problem with CB400s and no amount of silicon gel seemed to solve it.
I arrived intact at Portland that evening and we packed everything into a tank bag and a hold-all ready for the next day. The next day, Sunday, we loaded up the bike with the tank bag going where it's meant to go and with the hold-all bungee'd to the rear rack and set off for Plymouth and my Mum's. At this point, I would like to point out another annoying characteristic of the early CB400F and that is the pillion foot-rests were mounted to the swinging-arm. This meant that the pillion's legs were synchronised with the back-end of the bike but it also meant that my girlfriend's legs got plenty of exercise while we were riding along. This annoying characteristic was later remedied.
I have always enjoyed the ride from Dorset to Plymouth and I particularly like to follow the coast road going via Lyme Regis, Sidmouth, etc. followed by a scenic ride across Dartmoor. The thing that I always recall about this journey is my extremely dodgy overtakes caused by the fact that I always forgot to allow for the dismal acceleration that a 400cc bike loaded with two people and luggage has. Never the less, we arrived safely at Mum's and stayed in Plymouth overnight.
The next day, Monday, we set off for Truro. Sadly, just outside Liskeard things went a bit wrong. It had just started raining and I decided that it was time put on my wellies (I had been told that these are very useful in Cornwall, ask Jethro). What I failed to notice as I pulled into a lay-by was that Cornwall County Council had just been working on it and that there was about a 6 inch kerb between us and it. A low speed crash resulted with my girlfriend, myself and my bike sliding gracefully down the lay-by. I picked my girlfriend up first and then the bike second (I must have been in shock). Luckily all we had were a few bruises and grazes. Thanks to engine bars, the bike had also got off lightly with a broken rear indicator and slightly bent handlebars. One side of the handlebars drooped down as they were meant to and the other side drooped up, due to the crash, making the bike interesting to ride.
Slightly shaken we set off again and eventually arrived as Mr and Mrs Fairbanks at the Truro guest-house. Looking back it was very comfortable there, good breakfasts and a very comfortable room. I wonder if it's still going? We used it as a base for our daily excursions. We went to Land's End, Penzance, Falmouth, St Ives and just about everywhere in Cornwall that week. Of course, it rained heavily for most of the week often requiring the need for my girlfriend to push start the CB400. She got quite a lot of exercise from that bike.
At the end of the week two old college friends who lived in Coventry were getting married so on the Friday we left the guest house and made our way to Coventry via the A38, M5 and M6. Being a lot of motorway I recall it as being a fairly boring and uneventful journey. The CB400 had a sweet motor and I can remember my girlfriend falling asleep on the back. Apart from that, the only point of note was that I made a wrong turn at spaghetti junction resulting in a 100 mile detour. We arrived on Friday night and got into a fairly heavy drinking session with our friends. So heavy in fact that we missed the wedding the next day due to extreme hangovers. We did, however, manage to stop throwing up and make it to the reception.
On the Sunday we returned home to Portland and on the Monday I said goodbye to my girlfriend and travelled with my colleagues by car back to Barrow. That evening, I passed out at the top of stairs at the hotel we were staying at in Barrow. My boss was not impressed at the condition I had returned to work in as it took me some weeks to recover from my holiday. That week I had covered somewhere in the region of 2000 miles on my bike. Could this have been the cause or was it something else? As I said earlier, it was a long time ago and we were young.
So what's changed since then? Well the main thing is that the plastic wedding ring was exchanged for a real one and we've been married for a good many years. What hasn't changed is that I still ride bikes.