1979 Mike The Bike Hailwood Last Ride - 5-Page Vintage Motorcycle Article

Description

1979 Mike The Bike Hailwood Last Ride - 5-Page Vintage Motorcycle Article
Original, vintage magazine article
Page Size: Approx 8" x 11" (21 cm x 28 cm) each page
Condition: Good
Ive been wanting to see a TT for 25 years and if I had to miss all the
ones that have gone before, I can’t think of a better first one’.’ by Pete Lyons
There were sheep up here with me last
night, but by dawn they'd cleared
out. 1 can imagine them sniffing
disdainfully and turning away from my car
in their meadow, trekking over the hilltop
to avoid my unseemly invasion of their
ancient privacy. “Oh. oh. The first of
them."
The thin morning light showed just the
hunchshouldered, barren brownygrass
backbone of the island. There was a raggy
grey cloudcap oppressing Snaefell's sum-
mit and there wasn't much world showing
out beyond the mist. Il felt very old up here
and remote. I found myself thinking of
Runes and Barrow-wights and.sitting up
in the back seal of my “hire car.’’holding a
sleeping bag around my arms in a cold
that was more perceived than actual, 1
half fancied that were I to turn around. I'd
spy Frodo’s band of wayfarers toiling in
resolute single file up the empty
mountainside.
These hills are old. Their age dwarfs the
official Thousand Years of the Tynwald,
the parliament set up by Danish Vikings
who captured the island something like
that long ago. The Kingdom of Mann is
celebrating that distant event this summer
in its jovially honest-hearted enthusiasm
for tourism, but this little bump in the Irish
Sea was hoary long before the longships
came.
There are some in the world of motorcy-
cling who hold the Tourist Trophy races to
be overly ancient themselves, that this
form of the sport died, or ought to have
died, decades ago. Listen to people who
don’t support the TT and you hear the
most distressing things about what's wrong
with it. But I’ve come here prepared to be
glad I did and the first thing I've been
noticing is that, for something that's sup-
posed to be obsolete, there are an awful lol
of people who have come a long way to be
part of it.
All morning now the noise of hundreds
and hundreds of cars and bikes has been
swelling across the rolling pastures with a
sound almost like surf on the invisible
shores of the sea far below. They began to
arrive with the dawn light, riding and
driving along the TT course itself from
their hotels and guest houses down in
Douglas and Ramsey, parking in orderly
clots in cul-de-sacs and settling in crowlike
black flocks on the grassy verges and stone
w alls. Now. not long before the start of the
Senior, they delineate the circuit as far as it
can be seen from here, forming a winding
black line across the brown hills.
I've antigravitated to the highest part of
the course, an elevation of 1384 ft. accord-...
13558-AL-7910-08