I worked as an RAC Road Patrolman in the 1950's with an ancient 16H Norton attached to a big wooden box sidecar. We worked long hours in summer especially and although we had some limits on fuel purchase I did many miles in the course of a week, as my stretch of road was from Ashford in Kent to Dover Port . Long streams of motorists heading to or from the Continent. many of them badly prepared for the trip, and breaking, or already broken down
. Before I joined I had not ridden a sidecar outfit so was tutoured for half a day by my "next door" patrolman.
. I very very soon became a proficient sidecarist., and could get the old outfit to sit up and beg with the sidecar wheel in the air as the Norton thumped slowly along on max retard. These antics were frowned upon by my very officious Superintendent
Early on in my new role I was waiting at my RAC Box for any phone call from my Superintendent when coasting down the A20 hill came a "dead" scooter with a lad and his girlfriend on board. " Can yer 'elp us Mister it won't go" A quick clean of a very whiskered plug got it running again.
They were going touring France on holiday on a scooter without any tools not even a plug spanner. But best of all, ALL their luggage consisted of brown paper parcels tied with string and festooned around the scooter.!
The very first shower of rain would have found them scattering clean, spare knickers, etc etc across the French countryside as the brown paper disintegrated. The innocence of youth, I often wonder how far they got.
A life size picture ,of a handsome young RAC man adorned an RAC outfit in Bill Bewleys's Lakeland Motor Museum for many years. Modesty forbids me from naming him, but our blue uniforms were MUCH better than the drab AA man. The pay was peanuts for very long hours however
