The Sock
Hero member
- Location
- London, England
Fifty Years Ago, Today
I’m incredibly grateful, to those who worked for Moto Laverda, back in the ‘70s.
Not only Francesco, Massimo, Piero and Luciano, but to everyone who worked in the factory. To Roger and Richard Slater, Laverda’s UK importers, and the truck drivers who transported the bikes.
All were involved in delivering my Laverda Triple, which I broke out of its crate fifty years ago, on 6th June 1976.
I could not have imagined, then, the number of lifelong friends I would meet, the hundreds of thousands of miles I would ride on it, the fun I would have and how it would shape the course of my life from that point on.
Although, as a child, I had travelled around the UK, living in six different houses before I was nine. I can’t be sure whether travel was in my blood or an effect of my experience. I do know that I had a habit of going missing, as a toddler on my tricycle, causing some anxiety to my parents.
Not to me, though, I always knew where I was.
Before getting the Laverda, I bought a new Norton 850 Commando, in ’73. It regularly made Sunday runs of 250 miles and more, but all restricted to Scotland.
The Laverda carried me to a whole ‘nother level.
In August ’76, I set off from the Isle of Bute, intending to visit friends in Aviemore. The darkening skies to the North threatened typical Scottish Summer weather. I, therefore, opted to turn right, towards sunnier skies and finished up visiting London, a mere 450 mile trip.
While there, I visited the Earls Court Motorcycle Show and met Phil Todd, on the Morphy Motors’ Stand.
Despite seeing Laverdas on that Stand and, occasionally in Dealer’s windows, mine was the only one I’d seen on the road, at least, until my last night in London. Upon returning with a girlfriend from the fair on Hampstead Heath, I found a red Jota parked next to it.
This turned out to be Pete Stratford’s, then Secretary of the Owners Club. He told tales of the Club’s exploits which sounded like my idea of fun and sent me an application form. The first Club Magazine I received contained a hilarious report of the Club Trip to the ’76 Bol d’Or in Le Mans, France. It sounded so good that I signed up for the ’77 Trip.
My first trip outside the UK, it was a fantastic experience and I was hooked. A couple of Laverda Owners visited the island. Among them was Jake Shafran who, when I moved to London in Jan ’78, met me and my bike at Euston. It was snowing in Scotland when I left and only a tenner, back then, to take the bike in the Guard’s van. Jake put me and the bike up for six weeks, in Golders Green, until I found a flat, in Barnet, through another Owner, Tim Holland.
In 1980, after several more Le Mans Trips, it was time to make the pilgrimage to Breganze, returning my motorcycle to where it was made. A trip immortalised in Jim Lindsay’s Bike Magazine article ‘Hic, Mine’s A Triple’
The first of several times I’ve made that journey, he most recent being in ’24, for the Moto Laverda 75th Anniversary Bash.
No-one would have been more surprised than me, if you’d told me back in ’76, that I’d still be riding that same Laverda, fifty years later.
Every day, as they say,...
June 1976. The first and, for some time, the only photograph I had of me on my Laverda. We didn't have cameras or smart phones in our pockets, back then.
1977 Waiting for the Rhubodach Ferry.
1979 Chatterton Rd, Bromley
C. 2019 Photo courtesy of Patrick Puxley
2022 Mallory Park Festival of a Thousand Bikes
but then I think it’s your shout so probably won’t see you
till 2029, Tom.
