A frequent trip to Manx Motorcycles in Beaufort Street resulted in me bringing home an old Bultaco. A Spanish bike manufacturer with a fine racing heritage, mine was an old road bike fitted with knobblies but it had no front brakes.

 

We used to ride it where the 'Birds nest Stadium' is now. If no-one could drive us there, we occasionally rode the bikes over the Bunbury railway bridge hoping no train would come from the other direction!

 

Many of my friends learnt to ride on my Bultaco and a common mistake was stalling it on takeoff. We would go down to a local church carpark and tell new riders to give it a good rev and 'ease' the clutch out... Someone, I shall call Gareth because it is his name, was particularly bad at stalling the bike. After finally listening and giving the bike a decent rev, he dropped the clutch like a hot potato and shot off towards the back wall of the Jehovah's Witness Hall at a great rate of knots! Somehow, he managed to slow it down without giving a re-enactment of the coming of the lord to the church goers and promptly dropped it.

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