Back Street Heroes June 2025

Hello, and welcome to this new issue of BSH! Scanning idly through Facebook a while ago, I found a pretty good explanation of why we, as bikers, do what we do. I started reading it, changing it about a bit, adding a bit here, taking away a bit there, cos that’s what we editor types do, and ended up pretty much rewriting it as the Americanness (I’m guessing) of it didn’t really fit with us lot over ‘ere. “I can’t really tell you why I first wanted a motorcycle all those years ago, or why I still want one now, but I can tell you that, since owning a bike, my life’s so, so much better. Yes, I get wet, I get cold, I’ve been afraid, and I’ve hurt myself…

The first is the easy one: it’s the number of people who attended the 2024 Stormin’ the Castle – a number which, I’m told by the MAG committee, is on an even pegging with the Farmyard Party, which marks them both as the biggest events of the rally year. The second was a huge surprise to me, as was the amount of time it took to photograph each item that made it up. What is it? It’s the number of bikes entered in the custom show. I’ve not seen such a varied and interesting selection at any event all season. And the third? Well, that one’s the best one yet, and I’ll leave it ‘til the end to explain that… I know, I know, mean, aren’t I? So, what happened…

Like the pics of Juha’s bike, these were taken last February on mine and Pam’s trip to the far north (something I’m not entirely sure she’s forgiven me for as she really wanted to go somewhere warm for a holiday, not to a country that was -7 degrees C at best while we were there, and -25 at worst). She took these pics for me, too, as I was over the other side of the river from Sami’s workshop, photographing (another) Juha’s Shovel (as featured in issue 485), as the days aren’t very long that far north at that time of year. This’ere hardtail Shovel, of 1975 vintage, which makes a 1200 (74 cubic inch), was built by a guy named Jori Jantunen in 2019 and found its way to…

Just before writing this, I happened to be reading an old article Jim Fogg’d written about the Kent Show back in the day, and it reminded me how much things’ve changed, and how much I miss all the interactions that’ve been ‘progressed’ out of our daily lives. He mentioned the banter with the bloke when paying at the Dartford crossing kiosk (remember that?), and it made me think of other interactions that’ve been taken away by progress; no more banter with the petrol pump guy and, rarely, unless you’re out with your mates, do you see another biker at the petrol station? Back in the day I lived in Sussex, and didn’t go to Kent very often because it was local and wasn’t much of a ride – it was…

A good few years back, he was running a very tough FJ1200 chop, but’d gone as far with it, really, as he could, and was looking for a new challenge. Someone offered him a good price for the big Yam and, unsurprisingly, it became theirs, and he set about looking for a new project. He was offered, shortly after, the rolling chassis that would, eventually, become what you see here. It’d originally been built by NCC Devon Honorary Wellsy for another Devon member, Geoff, and’d been jigged and tacked up a couple o’ times before the style you see was decided upon. Sadly, Geoff passed away before it was done, and it sat in Wellsy’s workshop as a jacked-up rolling chassis for 14 years (yes, you did read that right…

The Trip Out, you see, since it moved to the Euston Estate (that’s Euston, West Suffolk – not Euston-where-the-trains-are), is maybe eleven miles away from the BSH Editorial Hovel – so close in fact that I’ve been known to drive over on the Friday morning in the van to drop all the gear off, and then come home again to get the bike and ride back across (and then do the reverse on Sunday, obviously). It’s a nice run on the bike, too; across Thetford Forest with the sunlight dappling through the trees, skirt round the west of Thetford itself to avoid the town centre, and then a few miles along long, straight roads between fields of newly-harvested corn down to Euston itself – easy and largely free of trucks,…