LONDON – I never planned to have a thing for motorcycles; it just happened. My mum tells me that the first time I offered up anything of verbal consequence was when two motorcycles passing over the railroad crossing a short distance from our house. I have a dim memory of this because I recall being slightly peeved I couldn’t get out of the stroller for a closer look.

My dad was in between motorcycles when I was young, presumably on account of having to sacrifice such delights for the family car, which I’m pleased to report was regularly pointed in the direction of motocross meets a few hours from home.

When I was eight, my parents took to me to Dave Taylor’s Trail Park in Dartford, England, where I rode a motorbike for the first time. Dave Taylor was a trial bike rider and stuntman, but he was also a champion of motorcycle safety. He believed kids who had passion issues with bikes, like me, should get a chance to ride at the earliest opportunity and build up some skills for later on in life.

Still, I couldn’t believe I was actually allowed to do this. My first experience of riding a motorbike was too thrilling for my infant brain to contextualize – probably because I’d no knowledge of grown-up love – so I was left with a very raw ‘beside-myself-with-delight’ feeling, which I expressed by shrieking a lot.

A can of worms well and truly had been opened. If looking at bikes was enough to cause apoplexy, the fact that I’d ridden one ensured my poor parents wouldn’t get a moment’s peace until I could go again.

We were a comfortable family, but far from wealthy. The thought of actually owning a bike hadn’t even crossed my tiny mind. The moment that it happened has been erased from my brain, which indicates, to me at least, that it was too much to absorb – my mind, memory, quite literally blown away.

My dad was a motor engineer for an insurance company. He’d managed to get hold of a stolen/recovered Yamaha YG1 80cc that was due for the scrap yard. It was a road bike but with a bit of dad know-how and some knobbly tires, it was perfect for a spot of scrambling. I’m not sure how keen Mum was with all this motorcycle business. I think it was suggested to her that maybe a few spills would put me off. Even if it didn’t, surely getting used to handling a bike, should I eventually take one out on the road when I was older, wasn’t such a bad thing, was it?

There was a circuit about an hour away, located on some wasteland outside London. It was properly organized, and the people were nice, if not a little more ‘rough and ready’ than the sorts of folk I was familiar with. Every other Saturday, Dad would attach to our family station wagon a homemade trailer (another written-off item, this time the base of a fire-damaged camper that had been cannily converted – my old man was a genius) and the family – Mum, younger sister and baby brother – would set off to watch me getting to grips with my bike. They all sacrificed their weekends for me. I still feel humbled by it, but one imagines at the time I took it all for granted…

All of my gear was secondhand, save the crash helmet, gloves and body armor that sat under my prized Yamaha racing shirt. I knew I was a little out of place with my too-big musty, mustard-yellow leather pants, the discolored seat of which had stretched to actual cow size.

As my bike was designed for the road, it suffered ground-clearance issues. Often it’d grind to a halt over some of the taller bumps, leaving me stranded like a sailboat on a sandbank. Not that I gave a tinker’s cuss, I hasten to add. To say that I lived for Saturday fortnight is somewhat of an understatement. In hindsight, it’s a miracle I wasn’t bullied to an early grave, let alone had friends, as I could speak of nothing else.

I had my fair share of spills on that little bike, but nothing too serious – the odd collarbone, some damage to the tendons in my wrist caused by a knobble tire…a few of us had a fallen afoul of a nasty corner, and on one occasion a fellow rider started his bike on my arm as it lay buried under mud. I wasn’t the fastest rider out there, by any means, but I was grimly determined, to the point that if I was injured and no one noticed, I’d keep quiet about it in case my fortnightly license was revoked.

One Saturday afternoon I fractured my right ankle. I sort of remember hitting it on a wooden post and it aching for a few days, but I figured it was okay. Six weeks later, my right foot had started to turn in on itself. As the pain was long gone, I’d not really noticed. It was only when Mum wanted to know why one side of my shoe leather was worn down to the carcass was it apparent I’d done more damage than I frankly cared about. After a demonstration of my newfound limp, I was packed off to the doctor’s office, then X-rayed, and after a decision to not break and reset the offending bone, physiotherapy.

This event marks my first encounter with real pain. Not just mine, but others’ pain, as well. I can still hear the screams of grown-ups in that awful room, being manipulated by burly chaps in white coats attempting to correct/readdress damage down to their various components. I’d never seen a man cry before; now I was in midst of dozens of them. Some would offer cheery salutations to me before bellowing out in sheer agony and breaking down completely. A few would even try to maintain the ‘it’s okay’ charade by winking at me as big fat tears rolled down my pallid cheeks.

My own experience was nothing short of terrifying. It wasn’t the actual manipulation of rubbery little bones being corrected by ham-like hands and this awful little semicircle with a platform on it, on which my foot would be rested, held flat, while another white-coat would bend my ankle in the opposite direction of happy. No, it was the ice bath.

My foot and ankle would be submerged in ice water for up to 10 minutes before treatment would begin. It was utterly awful, the pain so bad that I was unable to speak, let alone cry. The subsequent horrors, seriously awful, believe me, were in no way as bad as the ice bath, so there was a kind of ironic relief when it came to the actual manipulation. This treatment went on for a few weeks, I was given exercises to do in between sessions and boy-oh-boy, did I do them. It wasn’t just to avoid the ice bath either; I wanted to go back onto the track.

Oddly, this whole episode may have had an upside. If my parents, especially my mum, wanted any evidence that this whole bike thing wasn’t a passing fad, then there it was. On June 26, 1981, when I was exactly 12 and a half, I got my first proper motocross bike: a secondhand Yamaha YZ 100e. This bike was designed to be ridden hard on dirt, mud, and nothing else. I’d passed probation, and I don’t think anyone in the world could’ve been happier, or indeed, prouder.

The old circuit on which I used to train had been sold to some property developers, so we now had to go over to Slough (west of London) every other Saturday. This circuit was a lot less forgiving than the track at Englefield Green. It was much more convoluted and rugged, and the soil was rich and thick. This meant it stuck fast to everything. My Yamaha would get packed with mud that would bake into a ceramic-like shell.

I can remember the process of cleaning the bike almost as much as riding it. Dad would prepare the bike by spraying generous amounts of WD40 over the engine (ah, that lovely smell as the engine warmed), so that when the inevitable cleaning would take place, the caked-on mud would be easier to pry off with a screwdriver. After the worst was over, we’d hose the bike down and give it a bit of TLC. Then we’d clean the dirt off the drive, I’d hose, and Dad would sweep the mud down the drain – easier than it sounds, as this was a clay-based coagulate.

On one Sunday afternoon during the winter, following a particularly muddy Saturday, I was put in charge of the hose as Dad swept the drive. I became distracted by a passing neighbor and managed to hit my Dad square in the face with a jet of freezing cold water. I was alerted to this temporarily lack of concentration by my dad, his glasses at right angles to his head as he screamed, “Careful you *insert very unpleasant adult word*!” It remains one of the funniest things I’ve witnessed. Dad saw the funny side, too, after he’d dried himself off.

No longer was I riding with the juniors; I was riding with the seniors, for all intents and purposes fully grown men. I was 14 years old and beginning to outgrow my bike, something that had already become a bit of a headache for my parents after overhearing a conversation one night. They needn’t have worried.

It was early on a Saturday afternoon when I hit a jump fast and hard, when a much larger bike did the same thing on my inside. He collided with my handlebars that pushed them full-left lock, just as my front wheel hit the ground. I came to a dead stop and flew over the front of my bike. This had happened a few times before, although this time my bike was still carrying speed. I was just wondering where my bike had gone when it landed right across my back in an unprotected area of my spine. I dimly recall some blood coming out of my face.

I was taken to the hospital and fussed over but was considered fit enough to go home that evening, even though I was unable to walk properly. Sure enough, a fortnight later, I was back on the track, but something was different. I tried to ignore a feeling of dissatisfaction, but it persisted until I released I wasn’t actually enjoying the prospect of Saturday’s session during the week. I went through this in my mind. I still adored my bike and the sport of riding, but something had usurped it. I was on the second or third lap of a session when I realized I was actually afraid. I rode back to the paddock and my dad asked me what the matter was. I can still hear myself telling him that ‘I didn’t want to do this anymore.’ In many respects, this day marks the beginning of my adult life, and I can’t possible explain why.

In due course, my bike was sold. I erased this traumatic event from my psyche, and Saturdays became like everyone else’s. I’m sure my mum, sister and brother were glad to have their Saturdays returned to them, too, and who could blame them, ’though I’m still not sure if Dad shared their feelings.

When dad and I went to the Goodwood Revival at the end of last summer, we spent a good while watching the classic motocross bikes and taking in that glorious undulating sound as the tires chewed through the Hampshire mud. He asked me if I’d do it again, clearly remembering our past motocross experiences with fondness. I’d had loved to, but sadly, that accident did a little more harm than knocking a bit of fear into me. It perforated my disc, and there are days when I can’t walk properly. I’ve no intention of risking paralysis for a few gorgeous afternoons out on the dirt, but I have no regrets whatsoever.

When I ventured onto the roads at age 17, I hope my mum’s concerns that had arisen during my motocross days were appeased from knowing that motocross had honed my skills as a street bike rider. Because of my formative years, I am able to enjoy riding quickly and safely (most of the time), confident that I am able to handle the sorts of incidents that can result in injury and/or death. I can think of at least two occasions where innate skills prevented a full-on disaster, purely because I knew how to correct a wiggle or bring the bike to a safe conclusion after some *$#@?! car driver pulled out of an intersection with scant regard to my, or other people’s, safety.

Either way, I look back on those motocross days with an enormous amount of fondness, and I know who I have to thank for them.

About Jamie Dwelly:

UK-based James “Jamie” Dwelly has been riding bikes since he was eight, started out on an 80cc Yamaha converted by his biker dad for off-road usage. When his mother realized his passion wasn’t just a passing “kid fad,” Jamie got a second hand yz1000e Yam, which he happily rode for another three years before retiring at the grand of age of 12 when an accident left him with a perforated disc in his back. At 18, Jamie bought a Yamaha RD200 and has never been without a bike since. After a succession of fast, beautiful bikes, he currently owns a 1976 Triumph Bonneville and is eyeing up another ludicrously nippy crotch rocket to sate his lust for speed. E-mail Jamie at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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