An audience with Alan Jones and Bill Hawkins, Wedn

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An audience with Alan Jones and Bill Hawkins, Wedn

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COME AND MEET THE WORLD'S TWO MOST EXPERIENCED RIDERS (PROBABLY) - OVER 40,000 MOTORCYCLES AND ABOUT 1.6 MILLION MILES BETWEEN THEM – ON WEDNESDAY 29TH JULY

Valentino Rossi may be the world's most glamorous, charismatic and successful racer, but his statistics pale into insignificance when measured against those of arguably Britain's most prolific motorcyclists, Alan Jones and Bill Hawkins……

Alan Jones and Bill Hawkins are not your average motorcyclists. If they were, then they could expect to ride as many as 25 machines in each of their lifetimes, and cover between 50,000 and 100,000 miles. For Alan and Bill things were rather different. Between the mid-1950s and the early 1970s Alan rode some 30,000 motorcycles in all weathers, and during the six years up to 1973 Bill rode over 10,000 machines. Between them they covered some 1.6 million miles. How come? They were both Associated Motorcycles (AMC) Senior Testers, Alan becoming the firm’s Chief Tester when it moved to Andover. Together with the other riders in the AMC team, Alan and Bill were responsible for ensuring that every AJS, Matchless and Norton had been tested and fettled before delivery to motorcycle dealers all over the world, eventually to be sold to their enthusiastic new owners. And when they weren’t working for AMC during the week, Alan and Bill could be found at the weekends involved with motorcycle road racing – Alan as a race starter at Brands Hatch, and Bill as a competitor at national and international levels.

At 8.00pm on Wednesday 29th July Alan Jones and Bill Hawkins, together with several other former colleagues from AMC, will be on stage for the latest Greenwich Motorcycle Club "An Audience with…" at the Eynsford Riverside Club, 24 Riverside, Eynsford, Kent DA4 0AE (just 3 miles from Brands Hatch). Entry will be free-of-charge, there will be displays of rare photographs depicting aspects of the British motorcycle industry at its peak, and some incredibly rare film, never before seen in public, showing Norton Commando 750 Fastbacks being tested vigorously following initial cracked frame problems when that model first went on sale in the USA. In the audience there will be a number of luminaries from the world of motorcycling and motorcycle sport. Further information is available on the Greenwich Motorcycle Club's website www.greenwichmotorcycleclub.co.uk.

Note: “An Audience with Alan Jones and Bill Hawkins” will be the second in the series. The first, which took place in 2008, was with veteran grass track and road racing competitor Don Overall, who started racing at the end of the 1920s and is still, at 96 years-of-age, properly in touch with the sport and with his many friends in it. All things considered, Don hopes to be present on 29th July.

Issued by the Greenwich Motorcycle Club 13.7.2009
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An audience with Alan Jones and Bill Hawkins, Wedn

Post by GOLDSTAR »

I drove up from Folkestone area in appalling weather for this and have to say it was really worth it, must have been 200 present and the atmosphere was very friendly and welcoming, I met a lot of people whi had worked for AMC including Bill Cakebridge, even purchased a copy of his book, Bill Hawkins I know, he was his normal approachable self as was my new aquaintance Alan Jones. all seemed to enjoy the evening and it was a credit to those who organised it, Thank you very much for a smashing evening, Mind you it was down to 4omph in the torrential rain on the way home but it was all worth it.
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