New Bike from Holland

Apologies, if needed, for my lack of posts recently, but I was more than a little miffed by snide comments re kilometre odometers last year.

Last week I travelled to NLM just outside Leicester via the East Midlands Airport, where I caught a glimpse of XH558. Aah!

However, my trip was not to ogle a Vulcan but to buy a bike.

Upon greeting Stuart at NLM, whom I have known for over 10 years, the first bike I saw in his shop was a pristine MZ ES250 from 1972! Apart from salivated on it a bit that was not what I was after. Two bikes along was my goal, a 1991 moto Guzzi 650 Florida. A few bikes further along was a Morini 250 v-twin which Hannah expressed interest in, except for the red colour. Another customer, male, suggested that perhaps she preferred pink, only to be greeted by one of Hannah's scowls. Black is her colour, like all real bikes.

As I have mentioned before, I think, my next (though possibly last) bike just had to have an electric start and shaft drive. The horrors I had endured with Morini chains are etched too deeply and my hips will preclude heaving an engine over by kickstarter eventually though riding it should still be possible until I need my titanium hip joints.

When I saw the Florida in the NLM website I sort of fell in love with it. With Hannah in tow I arranged to fly out using BMIBaby (NEVER again), collect the bike and catch the ferry from Harwich to the Hoek van Holland the next day. We stayed at a very nice B&B near Harwich overnight (address available if wanted).

The road milage was 250 miles (the speedo being a mph one) though since the bike has only done 29,000 miles the chances this time of going round the clock are slim.

Currently I am going about the (very bureaucratic Dutch) process of getting the bike registered in Holland.

I had hoped this year to use it to do a tour of old haunts in England and Wales, as well as visit new haunts like Norton sub Hamdon where my long ago ancestor from 1460 lived but the Belastingdienst (Dutch tax servive ) have decided that almost half my Civil Service pension is actually theirs so the trip has been postponed till at least next year!

However, the chance of such a bike turning up again meant that passing it up would have been almost too much to bear.

This is actually the largest capacity bike I have ever owned, though neither the heaviest nor the most powerful, but with linked brakes and a gearbox totally unlike an MZ is a joy to ride.

Stuart said that I had to forget my car brake leg (or some such) when using the brake system but was completely flummoxed when I reminded him I have never actually ever driven a car!