Andy is one of the classic scenes leading journalists and his series of profiles on 1950's and '60's off road stars in The Classic Motorcycle magazine have been hugely popular. The first seventeen of these profiles were the contents for his first book Off Road Giants which was published in October 2008 and eighteen more stars of yesteryear have been covered in the eagerly awaited volume two which is now available.
These rider profiles reflect on a golden time for off road sport when as a small lad Andy was taken to his first scramble at Westbury Sub Mendip in his big brother's Morris eight van. The intoxicating cocktail of Castrol R and the thundering exhausts started a lifetime's passion for off road sport which remains to this day.
Andy started riding in trials in 1972 on a 1960 Greeves Scottish before moving on to a Villiers powered Cheetah and then to a Cotton Minarelli. Later he rode a MAR Ossa and then Beamish Suzuki's in both two and three wheeled form with some success.
During the nineteen eighties won many awards in MCC long distance trials on a mixture of Japanese machines, he stopped trials riding in 1991 but returned in 2000 and in 2006 won a gold medal in the 2006 Lands End on his Cheney Triumph.
In his forty two years of riding on the road he's covered many thousands of miles and ridden scores of different machines. These have included an epic coast to coast trip across North America, a tour of New Zealand and much of mainland Europe usually on his Moto Guzzi twins.
February 2011
