-JdK- Each summer Rob and I take a longer ride on our Nortons, We've been to the UK, Scotland, Ireland, Central Europe. This year we joined the BOM rally in the west of Belgium but when all the others returned to the Antwerp region we headed for the Alps.
In the past years we took our side valve Nortons, this year it would be different as we prepared our cammy Nortons, a 1931 CS1 and a 1932 M30. We've had these bikes for many years, they've seen a lot of work and modifications and we agree these are not the most practical bikes to take on a tour like this, most notably, it's more difficult to take luggage or spare parts, they can be pretty nervous in the unavoidable cities and the gearing is just not correct for climbing steep mountain passes.
Anyway, it was a lot of fun. We spent a few hours in Belgium fixing a positive stop mechanism and the M30 burned through six liters of oil but for the rest they needed no more attention than some light fettling. We did around 2500 km in eight days riding from the Netherlands into Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria and Italy; the map above was recorded by my Beeline SatNav. In case you are wondering, we did use the night train from Innsbruck to Dusseldorf for the ride home.
