Mick Payne looks back over 60 years of the Federation of Sidecar Clubs, and sadly records the recent passing of his friend and long-time member, Ray Doran.
I’d just started at infant school (as it was then known), my sister had recently been born and we lived in a two-up, two-down terraced house with an outside toilet.
Dad went to his job on an old bicycle with a Trojan Mini Motor on the back and a little wooden seat clamped to the crossbar for yours truly.
My friend’s dad had a motorbike and sidecar, though – not for family transport but to carry the tools of his job as a chimney sweep, and a ride in the wooden box was my first experience of sidecars.
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It was also the year in which the Federation of Sidecar Clubs came into being – 1958 – and the Fed’s current chairman John Hind has provided a lot of history from those early days.
The first meeting was at The Fox public house in Burwell, Cambridgeshire, and as the Fed’s name suggests, it was a coming together of a group of regional small clubs. One of these, The Yorkshire Sidecar Club, was there that October and is still an active member.
Today the Fed is made up of regional and one-make clubs, and includes the National Association of Bikers with a Disability (NABD).
Read more in the April 2018 issue of OBM – on sale now!
