It was a nice sunny morning when I set off for the classic car and bike show at the Chiltern Open Air Museum. I was riding my 1960 Matchless G3 Dispatch Riders bike, it is quite a rare machine being 1 of 457 built for the Home Office to escort the Green Goddess fire engines in the event of a nuclear attack!! There is only 150 of these bikes worldwide thought to have survived, and this is very original.

By the time I got to COAM my clutch was in need of adjustment, so I parked in the field with the rest of the Busy Bee members, there was a good turnout, Brian, Pat, Steve, Frank, Johnny, Rob, Karen and Steve, Ian and Bob. I borrowed some tools off Steve that he carries in his Outfit and adjusted the clutch which needs to be done from the gearbox end. Busy Bee get free entry and a free cup of coffee as part of our entry as a club member, which is good. The open air museum is very interesting, and it is a great place to have a car and bike show. There were plenty of classics to view while you sampled a barbeque cheese burger.

We all sat around and had some great discussions as usual! Towards the end of the day a man was having trouble starting a lovely 500cc Velocette. Brian and I offered to give him a bump start, but this was not successful! We took the plug out and yes it was soaking wet with fuel, after cleaning and re fitting the plug, Brian said could I give it a kick as I seemed to have the most puff left out of the 3 of us! I did my procedure for starting a big British Single, gave her a kick and she burst into life, that lovely vintage machine sounded great!

Everyone started to drift off and me Brian and Pat were the last to leave, we had a nice little ride down the country lanes to Denham with a Norton Electra, Brian and Pat on their FS1E and me on the Matchless which made an unusual sight! A great day at a local event and the weather behaved itself!

Pete Barton