Little did I realise as I clambered up the gangplank of the King Orry ferry tethered to the Liverpool dockside that I was about to find the cure for my acute homesickness. It was midnight on a cool summer June night in 1965 and I was embarking on an adventure that changed my life. Four hours later, after a merciful calm crossing of the infamous Irish sea, I arrived as dawn broke over Douglas Bay in the Isle of Man ready to watch my first Grand Prix, the six lap Senior TT round the legendary mountain circuit.
This weekend I am travelling to Le Mans to celebrate the 1000th Grand Prix since the World Championship started in 1949. I am not a person to keep a check on how many of those 1000 races I have attended but I am sure it is over 500.
It all started on June 18th 1965 and cost me around 15 euros on the Motorcycle Magazine day trip to the Holy Grail. Can you believe I slept through the 5am coach trip round the 60.721 kms circuit but was wide awake by the time the 50cc riders arrived at the Keppel pub at the legendary Creg-Ny-Baa right hander after their run down the mountain. You could hear them coming five kilometres away with the high revving gear changing two and four strokes piercing the crisp clear Manx air.
Luigi Taveri won the three-lap race riding the incredible twin cylinder Honda four-stroke. Then it was onto the main event, Hailwood versus Agostini both riding the works MV Agustas with those bright red fairings in the Manx drizzle. My boyhood hero Hailwood from my hometown of Oxford arrived first followed by Ago on his 500cc TT debut. A lap later Hailwood appeared on his own and the loudspeakers told us Ago had crashed without injury at Sarah’s cottage. We waited for our hero to arrive when the loudspeakers told us Hailwood has crashed at exactly the same corner but to our cheers had remounted and was continuing. We looked up the mountain waiting for him to appear.
He duly came into view sporting a bloody nose riding a very second-hand looking motorcycle, featuring a broken screen and flattened exhaust megaphones. Hailwood went onto win and retain the World 500cc title for MV before switching to Honda. For Ago it was just the start. For us it was back on the ferry and in Liverpool by midnight.
Plenty of TT trips followed but we wanted more and in 1973 planned a trip to Assen to sample ‘proper’ Grand Prix and specially to watch our new hero Jarno Saarinen in his debut 500cc season on the new Yamaha two-stroke. We were shattered by his death on a black Sunday afternoon at Monza. We still went to Assen to pay homage to a rider who surely would have been up there with the greats. We returned to Holland two years later on mass. Around twenty-five rather excitable Barry Sheene fans together with a large union jack ‘borrowed’ from Oxford Town Hall. A few months earlier we had travelled down the East coast of America by Greyhound bus to watch Barry in action at Daytona only to learn on our arrival of his horrendous crash in practice.
Barry was back and we were there, fuelled by Dutch beer and chips covered in mayonnaise, to cheer him on to first 500cc Grand Prix win after overtaking Ago on the last corner. That same year my hobby became a job. Five years later it was Assen once again. My first Grand Prix as a fully-fledged Grand Prix reporter in a race won to the utter delight of 150,000 crazy Dutch fans by local hero Jack Middelburg.
When I was younger I would send a postcard every day to my parents when on holiday with my mates. Even on those early trips to the TT there were plenty of postcards and Manx kippers arriving at their house. I can think of no better cure for that homesickness than travelling round the world watching and then reporting and commentating on Grand Prix motorcycle racing. I reckon that 15 euros was well spent by a skint teenager back in 1965 at the 139th Grand Prix of the 1000 we celebrate this weekend.