Tom Cunliffe
Most of the ‘there I was…’ stories in sailing magazines tend to continue with, ‘and the waves were forty feet high,’ or some such eye-catching statement. This one doesn’t, but don’t despair. Read on and all will be revealed. Instead of a maritime call-to-arms, it starts simply with, ‘There I was, lying under my motorcycle.’
It was early spring. Bikes are a bit like boats, and along with many of us, I keep my machine in commission over the winter in what usually turns out to be the vain hope that I’ll get a few dry days to enjoy it. The cold’s a factor of course, but the time is long gone when I rode home in the small hours to my boat in Beaulieu from a lecture in Kent in temperatures so dire that if the unfaired Honda accelerated beyond 40MPH the