Frank Westworth on the Norton Ranger

IT SURPRISES ME EVERY TIME IT DAWNS ON ME, BUT I’ve been riding motorcycles for more than half a century. Even more remarkable is the fact that I’ve been paid to ride them and then write about them for three of those five decades. What a way to earn a shilling. The careers master at my old school somehow failed to suggest this as an option at the time. What did he know?

You might think that after riding an average of three or four different machines every month for 30-odd years, it would be difficult to remember much about any of them. But you would be wrong. Although the great majority of the bikes have faded from my increasingly ancient recollection files, a few – relatively few – still stand out. Here’s one now.

Sometime in the late 1980s, then. An AJS and Matchless fan since the very early 1970s, I had recently discovered the unexpected delights of the 1964-on AJS (and Matchless) twins. These are easily distinguished from their earlier stablemates by being suspended on Norton Roadholder forks while rolling along above a pair of Norton wheels – the front adorned with a proper brake. My own 1966 AJS example