Newcastle 2

Back home now from Newcastle, and time to put down a few thoughts about my trip.
I've always liked Newcastle as a city - it exudes a feeling of confidence, is busy, wealthy, and architecturally an interesting blending of old and new in a way that doesn't jar. Best of all are the people - warm, friendly, easy going, and  nothing ever seems to be problem for them. Also, compared to Glasgow, very well dressed - a distinct lack of football jerseys and dodgy 'sportswear'.
Whilst I was there it was unseasonally hot, hotter in fact than July had been, and I haven't seen so many legs on display since I was in the South of France. A lot of men choosing to wear shorts, and women wearing  short skirts and extremely short shorts. Even 'business women' in smart suits wear short skirts rather than the trousers more common at home. T. Dan Smith (mentioned in my previous post) had referred to his plan to redevelop Newcastle as turning it into the 'Brasilia of the North'. 'St Tropez of the North' would be more appropriate judging by what I saw.
Last night, rather than just sit in my hotel room reading books, (as I had done on previous nights), I was lucky to manage to get a ticket for Reginald D Hunter who I had seen a few times on television. As those of you who know me are aware, I've not had a very good year, so it did me a lot of good to out for an evening.
How a man can hold an audience's attention and have them in stitches for an hour armed with only a microphone is totally beyond me, but Reg (as he refers to himself) was amazing. Not only incredibly funny, but also made a number of serious points about life and relationships between the jokes. If you ever get a chance to see him, go - you won't be disappointed!
Job over, and it was back home today in brilliant sunshine. As mentioned before, rather than the obvious and more direct route of driving westward then picking up the M6 and M74 home, I instead headed north up the A1, stopping at the Holy Isle, also known as Lindisfarne.
Holy Isle is a tidal island, and you have to check the tide tables to avoid being trapped by the incoming sea. When I arrived, there was over 5 hours before the tide came in, so I had plenty of time for a good look round.
There's a very pretty village:

A castle which I didn't bother walking to:

And some ruined religious buildings I didn't go to either.
One thing I did see was a man selling fruit and vegetables on a table outside his house. I spoke to him and he had grown them in his garden, so I bought some very fresh strawberries, some courgettes (zucchini to our American readers), a cauliflower, plus a 'green cauliflower' which I'd never seen before. The seller also referred to it as a  'Romano', so that's something new for me to look forward to. Why people selling produce outside their houses isn't more common, I don't know. In France you see this regularly, but it's so rare here.
Well worth a visit if you're in the area, and the woman at the National Trust van in the carpark was stunningly attractive. (Predictable joke - I wouldn't mind viewing some of her sights!)
Visit over, and I headed back to the causeway back to the mainland only to be stopped by a guy in a Toyota Landcruiser who had blocked the road and signalling people to stop. I asked him what the problem was and replied that we were stuck on the island as the 'road was flooded'. As it was hours until the tide came in I doubted it, and looking down the road I could see it was a bit wet but not flooded.  He was insistent that it was too dangerous, so I called him a rude name and drove round his car using the grass and headed over the 'flooded' causeway.

Note there about 3 inches of water, hardly flooded. Also note artistic reflection of parking ticket on top of dashboard and heating elements in the windscreen.
Needless to say I made it across the 'flood' that had defeated Mr. Landcruiser in my Ford Focus despite not having 4 wheel drive and high ground clearance.

A bit further on I saw this sign which meant that Mr Landcruiser was too afraid to cross the bit that doesn't even get seriously underwater at high tide!
If you do get caught by the tide there's this hut you can wait in until the tide goes out (and watch your car disappear under water!)

Green thing in the corner is a stick on lizard shaped air freshener - no, don't ask why!

After that it was a straightforward drive round Edinburgh and past Glasgow, then home. As It had been very hot and sunny all week I was looking forward to going out on the bike this weekend, but an hour after I got in it started to pour with rain! Welcome to Scotland!

Newcastle

I'm working in Newcastle this week so thought I'd try posting from my laptop. (Be generous if I make a mess of this as it's my first attempt). Because it's work I've had to come in the car, but I've seen a few things of interest, first of which concerns motorbikes:

In carparks they have these bike locks. There's an extendable chain which you lock in place with your own padlock.

You  see the mechanism here. You insert a £1 coin to release the chain then lock it with your padlock. When you unlock, the pound coin is returned. This is to stop people leaving the chains lying on the ground. So the parking is free. I parked my car in a car park with these from 08:00 to 18:00 and had to pay £14!!!

I'm working in Royal Victoria Infirmary (maintaining electrical equipment - very boring!), and the 2 universities are near by (Newcastle and Northumbria). As this is the start of term, a lot of the local pubs and swinging nightspots are running promotions to encourage students to go, and one is offering a car as a prize based on 'The Inbetweeners' television show:

Yes, a tatty old Fiat with a non-matching door, just like in the show! Quality!!!!!

At the hospital I saw a rack of bicycles for hire:

You hire them by sending a text to the operator who texts you back with the code for the lock. At the end of the hire you lock the bike and text the code for the location you leave it at. Let's hope the system works and the bikes don't end up being stolen or at the bottom of the river!

Also nearby is Newcastle Civic Centre, a very large and striking building of, er, 'interesting' 60s architecture.

(Picture stolen from the Web as the ones I took on my phone weren't very good)

I'd always wanted to have a look at this ever since I heard it mentioned in the song 'Dan the Plan' by local singer Alan Hull. The song refers to T. Dan Smith, a local politician jailed for corruption in awarding contracts and connected with the building of the Civic Centre. The song contains the lines:

But the Civic Centre shines like money in your hand
Let's raise another glass to Dan the Plan

This isn't the first time I've gone to see a buiding mentioned in a song. I once rode across London to see the Hoover Factory, mentioned in the Elvis Costello song of the same name, and someone once wrote a song about the Luma lightbulb factory in Glasgow when it was being used as a caravan showroom 'Caravanland'

That's all for now, you might get another installment on my week in Newcastle. It depends on how bored I get sitting in my hotel room!

Coupes Moto Légende

Every year in May, the Coupes Moto Légende is held at the Dijon-Prenois race track in Eastern France. It's a big 'classic' bike show, with the term 'classic' meaning over 25 years old, so plenty of bikes that people my age remember. There's club stands, autojumbles, and numerous of the bikes, both road and race, are taken out on the track for demonstration laps. In theory, these are not races, but someone forgot to tell some of the race riders!

Some video from this year's event to give you a flavour, and here's a good gallery of bikes at a previous meeting.

I'm planning on going next year, (26th - 27th May), so if anyone else is interested, get and touch and we'll try and arrange to meet up. How exactly we'll arrange to meet at an event with about 20,000 other people, in a place I've not been to before, and can only speak a rudimentary amount of the language; will be a slight problem, but I'm sure we'll work something out!

Website for the event gives more details, and there's plenty of video from previous events on YouTube and Dailymotion. There's a particularly good video here, but Blogger doesn't seem to like posting video directly from anyone other than YouTube.

Friday bike

An old 80s Kawasaki Z1300 you think. But look more closely - it's a V12 2600cc built from two Z1300 engines! Gulp!
Don't know anything about this bike other than I found the picture somewhere on the Web and copied it into my computer. As an engineering project it's beautifully done, so well done that it looks like it came out of the Kawasaki factory like that.
Can't imagine what it's like to ride, but just imagine the sound on hard acceleration!

Some assembly required 2

Another engineless Skorpion assembly kit on Ebay. This one appears to have a race saddle and what might be a Hagon shock. (Well, it's got a red spring.)
Does this mean people with Yamaha XTZ 660s are buying Skorpions for their engines?

Songs for Swingin' Lovers

This album has nothing to do with what I'm about to blog about other than having the word swingin' in the title, it's just that blog entries look so boring without a picture.
I've mentioned before that I've got 2 Travellers - the silver one I use, and a white one which I bought because it was cheap. The bike itself is fine other than being a bit tatty and the bodywork is cracked around the mounting points (common fault), but as I don't have a need for it at the moment, I haven't ridden it. I've tidied up and repainted various bits (good old Hammerite!), repaired most of the cracks on the bodywork, fitted a Yamaha TRX850 headlight (much better than the standard Traveller unit and a straight 'bolt in'), a pair of Avon Roadriders, a pair of Brembo calipers, and welded up a rear rack.
A common fault on the Skorpion is the swing arm rusting and this bike was no exception. I had repainted a spare swing arm and fitted new bearings, so today I lined the inside with Waxoyl to help prevent it rusting from the inside out.
You have to heat Waxoyl to make it liquid enough to apply, so I put the tin into a bucket full of boiling water, covered the top to stop the heat escaping, and left it for an hour. By then it had got thin enough to pour, so I poured some into each 'leg' of the swing arm (one at a time), and poured the excess back out into the tin. I did this four times, each time with a different face of the swing arm downwards so that side would get coated. I then left it to cool and harden.
I fitted the Waxoyled swing arm into the bike and replaced the alloy 'rocker' in the rear suspension with a spare one to which I'd fitted new bearings. Everything was fitted with lots of grease and torqued up nice and tightly. A quick test and the 'clonk' the old suspension had now disappeared, so that's another thing ticked off the list. Hopefully I'll get this bike finished and back on the road over the winter, then I'll decide whether or not to keep it or to replace it with another project.

Last night I was in a local supermarket and found this:

96 hour deodorant! Yes, 96 hour! I thought the 48 hour stuff was excessive, but 96 hour? Who doesn't wash for 96 hours and thinks that a quick spray with this will stop them smelling? Perhaps it's better you don't answer that!!

Friday bike

Possibly one of the most advanced and influential motorcycles ever built.

The NSU Max, first built in 1953. A 250cc single with an overhead cam (very rare in those days). Leading link forks and pressed steel frame look suspiciously similar to what Honda were building a few years later, though they didn't copy the single rear shock setup.
By 1955, NSU were the biggest bike manufacturer in the world, selling even more than BSA, although few (if any) NSUs were imported into Britain at the time. NSU also set numerous land speed records with Max based bikes, and in 1956 built the first bike to do over 200 mph.
The overhead cam was driven by a sort of 'conrod', a setup later used by NSU on their Prinz car.

Look at the picture of the Max and compare it with what the British bike industry was producing in 1953.