Tag: motorcycle

Two Wheel always had a Bartertown/Beyond the Thunderdome/ post-apocalyptic kind of feel to it, but it’s all gone now!

My son Max and I went for one of those perfect rides today.  We headed down to Guelph in sunny, room temperature air with no wind.  It was glorious.

After a few stops and lunch we headed back north and swung into Two Wheel Motorsport’s new digs.  The building looks impressive from the outside but the insides are something else!  Two Wheel used to have a kind of organic, bigger than where it was situated/post apocalyptic vibe to it, the new place is enormous, modern and shows off their stock like a bike show.

With walls of glass and an open concept, if you’ve never been to Two Wheel before, it’s worth a trip north of Guelph on 6 – you can’t miss riding past this motorcycle Mecca now.

Shock & Awe when you walk in the front door of the new building!

Not only can you actually sit on the bikes now (they used to be piled on top of each other so you couldn’t get a leg over), but there is so much space the stock on hand feels more like a bike show than a dealer!

They even had examples of modern art on display!

I could happily walk in to Two Wheel Motorsport and drop fifty grand.  My local dealer has gone pro.  I can’t wait to see how they evolve into their new space.

The only downside was having to dual sport my way across the unpaved parking lot on a Concours with a passenger.  Hopefully the drive will be paved soon and then this place will become a beacon for bikers all over the area.  It’s worth a ride over to see what they’ve done.

I’m going to build this one in stages.  Putting together the research in order to eventually build a map of my grandfather’s path through 1940s France will take some time.

The goal is to work out how my granddad, William Morris, worked his way through France as the British Expeditionary Force and the French military collapsed under the weight of the German Blitzkrieg during the Battle of France.


What I know so far:  
Bill was already a member of the RAF when the war began.  He was able to operate everything from heavy trucks to motorbikes and found himself supplying Hurricane squadrons in France as a heavy lorry operator.  Being stationed in France as a part of the British Expeditionary force in 1939/40, when the Blitzkrieg began he started to make his way to the coast.  He got close to Dunkirk at the end of May but the chaos made it look like a bad idea, so he kept pushing south, avoiding the fast moving German Panzer divisions that were pushing into France in huge leaps.

Sinking of the Lancastria in the National Maritime Museum

He got down to St  Nazaire by mid-June and witnessed the sinking of the Lancastria – where more people were killed in a single sinking than in the combined losses of the Titanic and the Lusitania; it’s the largest single maritime loss of life in British history.

By this point it must have seemed like the world was ending.  Here’s a quote from the man himself:


“When Paris was made a free city (June 11th) the British Expeditionary Force had to evacuate and make for St. Nazaire. The roads were clogged with retreating troops and equipment. What couldn’t be carried was destroyed. We arrived in St. Nazaire in the afternoon just in time to see the ship that was to carry us out destroyed by dive bombers. An officer directing traffic suggested we try to make for Brest. We arrived there two days later just as the last ship was preparing to leave, I had to leave my German Shepherd behind on the docks as there was no room for her on the boat.”


Bill got out of France through Brest on June 13th, 1940 – over two weeks after Dunkirk.  From May to June, 1940, Granddad saw more of France than he probably intended.  His unit was disbanded due to losses, but I’m not sure which squadron he was attached to.  A number of them were decimated trying to battle BF109s with biplanes.  The few Hurricane squadrons could stand up to the Messerschmidts but were badly out numbered and inexperienced.  If the documents I’ve got are accurate and he was providing support to a Hurricane squadron east of Paris, then there are a number of candidate RAF squadrons who were based around Reims.

At some point the planes and air crews must have taken off and left the support people, including Bill, to try and find their own way out.  He had been missing for so long and so many British soldiers were lost in the Battle of France, that he was declared missing or dead.  When he got back on British soil and was given leave, Bill headed straight home to Sheringham in Norfolk where he waited on the street for my grandmother to walk by on her way to work.  She must have been stunned to see that ghost standing there.  Bill always had a flare for the dramatic.

This is the opening chapter in a war story Bill never talked about, but I’ve been trying to piece back together from existing details.  A couple of interesting things could come out of this…


1)  Build up a map of Bill’s route through France in 1940.  Put together a collection of World War 2 era British bikes and ride them from the air field he was stationed at and follow the meandering route he may have followed, stopping at the places we have evidence he was, eventually ending where he escaped the continent.  I’ve got two brothers and several cousins, all direct relatives of Bill’s, who could do this ride with me.

Films like Chris Nolan’s Dunkirk shine a light on the often ignored early moments of World War 2.  There is more work to be done.

We could do it on the 80th anniversary of the Battle of France in May and June of 2020.  It’s a forgotten moment in the war that is often misunderstood and mocked historically.  The French didn’t surrender (in fact they bloodied the nose of an otherwise technically superior German force and vitally weakened it prior to the Battle of Britain.  There would have been hundreds more German planes and thousands more personnel available for the Battle of Britain had the French military and British Expeditionary Force not fought as they had in France.  Bill’s journey would be an opportunity to highlight a lot of that forgotten and misunderstood history.


2)  This is the first part of William Morris’s rather astonishing path through World War 2.  His improbably survival (he was the member of multiple units that got disbanded due being decimated in battle) is the only reason I’m here today, so I find it fascinating.  Had Granddad not survived the war he would never have fathered my mum in 1946.  Our family exists as it does today because of his survival.  A longer term goal would be to put together a based on true events story of Bill’s experiences during the war, from his time in occupied France, to his work retrieving wrecks during the Battle of Britain, to his years in the desert in the later half of the war, his story sheds light on a working man’s experience in the military.  So often the attention has been on the wealthier officer class of pilots and commanders, but this is a look at World War Two from the trenches (so to speak).


3) If the book got written, it’d make for one heck of a TV or film series!


Meanwhile, the research continues…

The Norton 16H in RAF blue (once the war began they just churned out army green ones).  The TV show would have myself and my cousins – all the current descendents of Bill Morris, following his trek through 1940s France.

https://www.nortonownersclub.org/history/1936-1945-wd

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/houdij/bsa-m20-ww2/?lp=true

http://www.classic-british-motorcycles.com/bsa-m20.html

http://gregwilliams.ca/a-history-of-triumphs-tiger-100/

Ariel W/NG 350
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_W/NG_350
https://www.autoevolution.com/moto/ariel-w-ng-350-1940.html#aeng_ariel-w-ng-350-1940-350
https://youtu.be/BXHyCoZsj3s

Matchless 3G/L
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchless_G3/L
http://www.realclassic.co.uk/matchless07032600.html

British WW2 outfits:
http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showthread.php/9538-British-Allied-Motorcycles-with-Sidecars

1940 Battle of France WW2 RESEARCH:


A paper I wrote for a history course at university in 1996:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/14N2QfA8P8UQP_YK426gUZlGNbP7NNCcJcsd31OAaDVQ/edit?usp=sharing

Statistics on the Battle of France:
http://www.historynet.com/fall-of-france

Bloodiest Battles of WW2:
http://www.militaryeducation.org/10-bloodiest-battles-of-world-war-ii/

The WW2 soldiers France has forgotten
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32956736

Aircrafts and bases of the Royal Air Force on May 10, 1940
https://ww2-weapons.com/raf-squadrons-in-may-1940/

RAF Personnel research guide: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/royal-air-force-personnel/

Get a copy of military service records:

https://www.gov.uk/get-copy-military-service-records/apply-for-someone-elses-records

Finding unit records: http://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/tutorials/military/finding-unit-records

RAF french bases in 1940 May – by June they were all gone…

Berry-au-Bac (France)

Merville (France)

Douai (France)

Poix (France)

Rosieres-en-Saneterre (France)

Reims (France)

Lille (France)

Betheniville (France)

Villeneuve-les-Vertus (France)

Conde-Vraux (France)

Berry-au-Bac (France)

Reims (France)

Vintry-en-Artois (France)

Abbeville (France)

RAF in France 1940, (Fighting against Odds)

http://disc.yourwebapps.com/discussion.cgi?disc=244414;article=535;

Hurricane Squadrons in the Battle of France

http://disc.yourwebapps.com/discussion.cgi?disc=244414;article=538;title=BattleOfBritain

“British losses in the Battle for France:  68,111 killed in action, wounded or captured. Some 64,000 vehicles destroyed or abandoned and 2,472 guns destroyed or abandoned.”

Armée de l’Air – Order of Battle, 10th May 1940

http://france1940.free.fr/adla/ada_may.html

Traces of World War 2 – Royal Air Force, Battle of France 1940

http://www.epibreren.com/ww2/raf/index.html

RAF base Marham history

https://www.raf.mod.uk/our-organisation/stations/raf-marham/

Royal Air Force – Order of Battle, France, 10th May 1940

http://france1940.free.fr/uk/raf_may.html

A simulation of the Battle of France in 1940:

http://www.tangmerepilots.co.uk/campaignbof.htm

Mapping the Maginot line RAF supporting stations in France:

https://goo.gl/maps/QTuF9Fbt7ts

https://goo.gl/maps/K1FfdZBuEdt

MUSEE DU TERRAIN D’AVIATION DE CONDE-VRAUX 1939 / 1945
Association Maison Rouge

http://amrvraux.com/


OTHER RELATED RESEARCH:

Moto-raids into occupied France (from a January 1941 article): might be good as a chapter piece between the BoF, the Battle of Britain and heading off to the desert…

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I drove the Canadian Rockies this past summer.  Riding from Ghost Lake in Alberta to Chilliwack in British Columbia would be one hell of a few days.  We did it in a crazy day and a half going the most direct route we could with one missed turn having us drive the wrong way to Boston Flats to get back on the Trans Canada.  Doing the Rockies like that it was pretty exhausting, even in a car.


On a bike it’d be dangerous to try and pull that off, especially as none of the roads are straight and you’re fighting altitude too.  It would be a shame to rush through it anyway, so taking your time is the way to go.  When I eventually ride the southern Canadian Rockies it’ll be a multi-day trip that makes use of every road I can find.
  

Day One:  Cochrane, AB to Radium Hot Springs, BC.  323kms via 40/742.  Lunch in Banff.  That’s just over five hours of riding at a sixty kilometre per hour average.  With multiple stops, it’d be a full day of riding twisty roads before hanging it up in Radium Hot Springs for dinner.

Day Two: Radium Hot Springs to Revelstoke, BC. 252kms via 95 and TransCanada.  This might seem like a short day, but it’s high altitude passes over top of the world stuff.  We staggered into Revelstoke around dinner time and wanted to stop, but had to push on.




Day Three:  Revelstoke to Vernon along Upper Arrow Lake.  300kms via 23 and 6.  We didn’t go this way last time and bombed down the TransCanada behind infinite numbers of campers and eighteen wheelers who were wheezing up and down the inclines.  This route is at least as twisty but should offer less heavy traffic than on the more direct route.  Kamloops was a pretty rough spot, so I wouldn’t miss it the second time through.

Day Four:  Vernon to Hope via Boston Flats and Hell’s Gate.  After a couple of light days, the last day going West is a kicker.  Just over 400kms of very twisty mountain roads.  Google maps says it’s a five hour effort, but with traffic, twists and roads that’ll leave your mouth hanging open, that’s an optimistic ETA.  This would be an all day ride along some unforgettable roads.  I ran into a new rider at Hell’s Gate who had ridden up from Vancouver.  He was grinning ear to ear.

From Hope you’re ideally poised to hit the west coast, but this isn’t about that.  If you still haven’t had enough of your Canadian Rocky Mountain High, a trip back skirting the US border offers you a whole new set of twists, turns and stunning scenery.  I’d be hard pressed not to want to head toward Valhalla…

You could do a lot worse than giving yourself a couple of weeks (or months, or the rest of your life) wandering the Canadian Rockies.  This trip doesn’t even touch Jasper or Whistler.  There are also a number of roads that don’t go anywhere.  Chasing down those dead ends would be an obsession of mine if I lived out there.

Here are some of those roads we saw this summer… 

…and these are all ‘main’ roads!

Like most Canadian Roads, they suffer huge swings in temperature.  The ideal thing to tackle them on would be a road focused adventure bike.  The extra suspension travel would help soak up the inevitable imperfections while allowing you to still enjoy the twists and turns.  They also happen to be the ideal ride for a big guy like me.

KTM focuses on fast ADV bikes, but you’d also be spoiled for choice if you looked at Triumph’s big Explorer, or BMW’s bonkers XR sports ADV.  

Yamaha’s Super Ten is a solid, fast choice, as are the other larger capacity Japanese bikes (though they all seem to object to defining the category).

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I did a 360km-ish kilometre ride on Saturday.  All back roads and as twisty as I can find in the farm-desert we live in.  I was gone shortly after 8am and had a coffee at Higher Ground before ripping up and down the Forks of the Credit.  I was then up past Orangeville to Hockley Valley Road, back through Mono Hills and up to River Road into Terra Nova before coming back down to Horning’s Mills and north to Noisy River Road into Creemore.  All in all I crossed the escarpment half a dozen times on my way north.


By now it was well past noon and into the high thirties with humidity.  After a great lunch at The Old Mill House Pub in Creemore I was out to Cashtown Corners to fill up and then past Glen Huron and over the escarpment one more time before heading north to Thornbury Cidery and the cooler shores of Georgian Bay.

Nothing Cools you down like the shore of a great lake on a hot, summer day.

From Creemore on I was soaking wet and sweating freely, monkey butt (red and sore on my backside from wet, aggravated skin) was soon to follow.  It wasn’t so bad by the lake, but inland it was sweltering.  I was standing frequently to try and get wind under me, but by this point my big ride was just uncomfortable.  The Macna vented pants did ok on my legs, but where I needed it the most they were just trapping heat and leaving me dripping.


I bombed south down Beaver Valley, stopping once at an overlook to finish the Gatorade I had and then on to Flesherton for a stop at Highland Grounds before dodging and weaving south on back roads towards Elora and air conditioned nirvana.

Before I left that morning I learned that Wolfe and Robyn, the founders of Lobo Loco long distance motorcycle rallies, had already started the monumentally difficult Bun Burner Gold, the seemingly impossible fifteen hundred miles (2400kms!!!) in twenty-four hours – yes, that’s a 100km/hr average for a whole turn of the earth.  You’d need to be making time every hour so you’d have time to get gas, eat, drink and toilet; it’s madness!

By the time I’d seen what these two superheroes were going to attempt that morning they had already done more miles than I was going to do all day (monkey butt and all), and they still had the better part of two thousand kilometres to go… in a day!


Part of this is making sure you’ve got the right gear for the job.  I’m going to address that in another post, but the other side of this is do I think I can actually pull something like that off.  I’m months away from turning fifty and I’m starting to get a sense of what getting older is going to feel like.  Doubt is what starts you thinking that you have to act your age.


The two doing that epic bun burner are fifteen plus years younger than I am and much more experienced riders.  My starting to ride late grates on my nerves.  Despite numerous opportunities, events beyond my control conspired to prevent me from finding my way back to a hereditary hobby.  Those lost years still haunt me.

No point in moping about it.  I’ve gotta grab the opportunities as I find them and not let doubt weaken my resolve.  If I want to get an Iron Butt done then I need to get it done.  You don’t get shit done by moaning about it.  But first I’ve got to get my seat and kit sorted.  No point in trying to do a job without the right tools.

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I’m getting a bit stir crazy riding to the same places over and over.  Reading about Wolfe’s run at the Iron Butt Rally this year makes me want to raise my own long distance game with an eye to eventually taking a run at that event.  Who wouldn’t want to pass out in a graveyard for half an hour before hitting the never ending road again?


The Water is Life rally helps provide some alternatives, but what I really want to do is an overnight trip to roads both interesting and new.  The Adirondacks are the nearest thing I have to mountain roads anywhere near me beyond Southern Ontario’s flat, industrial farming desert.


Operating out of the Hotel Crittenden, I’d be able to leave luggage behind and travel light on the two loop days designed to explore the twisting roads of the Adirondack Mountains.  Hotel prices tend to spike on peak times like weekends, so a mid-week trip should keep costs minimal.  It’s a couple of hundred miles south and east, over the US border into New York State and south through the old mountains of eastern North America to Coudersport on the Allegheny River.



Day 1:  Ride to Coudersport:  352kms
https://goo.gl/maps/pGs8DgPVezkTCF6U7


Hotel Crittenden:  https://hotelcrittenden.com/


Interesting Adirondacks roads:  http://www.motorcycleroads.com/Routes/New-York_108.html






Day 2:  Snow Shoe Haneyville Loop:  352kms
https://goo.gl/maps/ixVjPmw6jBJzcHGg8

Day 3:  Hollerback Loop:  384kms
https://goo.gl/maps/13odCYiY5RNSJHAE8









Day 4:  Ride Home:  409kms
https://goo.gl/maps/RbVZd5wx9HQWbqoi7

1497kms (930 miles) in 4 days / 3 nights.
Monday – Thursday (cheapest hotel room rates)
Hotel nights:  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
August 19-22:  USD $238.50 / CAD $313 Single King Room /3 nights

The same area is great for autumn colours: 
https://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com/2018/09/pennsylvanian-autumn-colours.html

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Next week is on or about freezing up here in the never ending winter.  Friday is looking like it might be a possibility with a current suggestion of seven degrees Celsius.  I can handle seven degrees.

In a more perfect world I’d be heading out of work today, jumping in the van and driving south to where things get yellow and orange on the map.

If I was on the road by 3:30pm, I think I could manage the eleven hour drive to St Louis by just past 2am.  I’d park up the van and have a sleep and aim for a morning departure from St Louis aiming South West into the Ozarks.





Seven days of following the twisting roads of the Ozarks would make for a brilliant March Break.  I’d aim to get back up to the hotel in St. Louis the next Saturday and spend one more night there before making the drive back into the frozen north on the Sunday before we’re back at work again.  A day of driving, 7 days on the bike, a day driving back.

Yes, please!

Them’s some nice March temperatures, especially compared to ours…

Ozarks Resources:
http://ozarkrides.com/
http://www.motorcycleroads.com/Routes/Arkansas_79.html
http://motorcycleozarks.com/
https://www.facebook.com/RideTheOzarks/
http://www.cruisetheozarks.com/
https://www.arkansas.com/outdoors/motorcycling/hot-spots/

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I’ve previously written about and done a fair bit of digging into my Grandad Bill Morris’s World War 2 service in the RAF.  His time spent in France with the British Expeditionary Force before the Nazis invaded in 1940 highlights a forgotten piece of history.  Weeks after Dunkirk had pulled most of the troops out, Bill’s RAF squadron was still flying a fighting retreat against overwhelming odds.

By comparing various historical documents I’ve managed to cobble together the strange course Bill’s squadron took during this desperate retreat.  Spending a year following in his footsteps would be a pretty magical experience and a brilliant way to spend a sabbatical away from work.

Conveniently, from a sabbatical time-off scheduling point of view, Bill landed in France in September, 1939 in Octeville and proceeded north to set up an air base in Norrent-Fontes near the Belgian border.  They then wintered in Rouvres and as battle commenced were fighting out of Reims before retreating south and then west around Paris, quickly setting up  aerodromes for his squadron’s Hurricanes and then breaking them down and moving on while under constant fire.  They were supposed to get out on the Lancastria in Saint-Nazaire (another forgotten piece of World War 2 history), but Bill was late getting there (operating heavy equipment means you’re not at the front of the line).  He saw the ship get dive bombed and sunk – the biggest maritime disaster in British history, with most of his squadron on it.  He spent the next two weeks working his way up the coast before getting out on a small fishing vessel and back to the UK at the end of June, just in time to get seconded to another unit for the Battle of Britain.  Being able to trace Bill’s steps would be a powerful journey.

This sabbatical ride would have to happen between July of one year and the August of the next.  Following Bill’s time in France I would be landing in Octeville from the UK in September, hopefully on a period bike.  My preferred ride would be a 1939 Triumph Speed Twin, though an RAF standard Norton 16H would be equally cool.


If I couldn’t find a period bike I’d try and source a modern descendent of the Triumph or Norton.  Triumph is actually coming out with a new Speed Twin shortly, so that’s an option.  Meanwhile, Norton is coming out with the Atlas, which would be a modern take on the do everything 16H.


I’d arrange to stay in the places Bill did at the same times he did over the winter and spring.  With many days at various locations in rural France, I’d have a chance to find the old aerodromes and make drone aerial imagery of each location, hopefully finding evidence of the his war history hidden in the landscape.  I wonder if I’d be able to see evidence of the Lancastria’s resting place from the air.  With time to get a feel for the place, I’d write and record the experience as I moved slowly at first and then with greater urgency in the spring around Paris, through Ruaudin, Nantes and Saint-Nazaire before ending the trip in Brest at the end of June when Bill left, almost three weeks after Dunkirk.

The research so far on Bill’s World War 2 service in France, the Battle of Britain in the UK and then into Africa!

Living in France for most of a year would offer a cornucopia of travel writing opportunities and the historical narrative I’m following would let me experience a lot of local colour in order to research a fictional novel I’ve been thinking about writing based on Bill’s World War 2 experience.


To get ready for this I’d get Bill’s full service record and research the whens and wheres of his experience on the continent during the Phoney War and through the Fall of France.  


When all was said and done I’d pack up the bike and ship it back home to Canada where it would always be a reminder of the year I walked in my Grandad’s footsteps.

Research Links to date:

Bill’s service record research:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PiN1LBIt0sBOa3uYNF6R7WI-5TP-jgOSPu9lrJlzVuU/edit?usp=sharing
Map of Bill’s Squadron movements in France: https://goo.gl/maps/hRr3aRAUFTM2
RAF squadron research: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-XGAS0ajnEVGmJ_8-aATYDJrPWUHoWri8AILsNd1pN8/edit?usp=sharing

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