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Welcome to my blog, these are the ramblings and musings of an (upper) middle aged biker and if you enjoy braais, (barbeques) beers and motorbikes then hopefully you will enjoy what Janet and I do; we do lots of braais, we drink lots of beer and we tour South Africa on our motorbike, which at the moment is a BMW R1200RT. Join us, read about what we do and please leave us your comments.



Saturday, July 14, 2012

Matchless 500cc single

I got my motorcycle licence way back in 1968 in the BSAPolice driving school whilst in the training depot in Salisbury, (now Harare) Rhodesia, (now Zimbabwe). We were taught well and my love of riding developed from those days, even though I had been riding scooters illegally before then.
I remember the Police riding school very well, we rode the Matchless 500cc single and the BSA 650 twin, both fantastic motorbikes and although neither of them were well suited to off road riding we did quite extensive dirt road training on them as those who would later be posted to district stations would have to ride them for miles on virtually non existant roads.
The extensive training that we received stood me in good stead for the thousands and thousands of kilometres that I have ridden since then.
I came across this old photograph of my late friend Patrol Officer Paul Weinel on one of the Matchless motorbikes, probably taken whilst he was stationed at Kezi.
The old British bikes were gradually phased out and replaced with Yamaha 350's, much faster and more nimble but they lacked the panache of the early bikes, I would love to have a Matchless 500cc like this beauty in my garage next to the BMW.
Isn't that a beauty? Surely there's one for me somewhere.

4 comments:

IHG said...

That is a BEAUTY!!!!

the rider said...

Hey my friend the Iowa Harley Girl, yes don't you just love those old classics? That's something I would really like to have in my garage.

Darthfarter said...

What about a new Royal Enfield?

http://www.royalenfield.co.za/our-bikes/

I really like the look of the Classic Military one

the rider said...

Yes you're right there, the new Royal Enfield does look good, I wouldn't mind one of those to cruise around locally on. Thanks for the comment.