National Motorcycle Museum Open Day 4/11/17

Once a year the National Motorcycle Museum, based in Solihull next to the NEC, has an open day where tight wads like myself can get in for free to have a nose about. I'd heard it was good, worth the £10 admission even, but it exceeded any expectations by quite some margin.

I'd only just arrived at the car park and here are a couple of Norton Commander Rotaries, a promising start...

And a Harris Matchless G80. I've wanted one of these for ages. First time I've seen one in the flesh, want one even more now. Even better the guy was about to leave, so I got to hear it running - it sounded superb. Do want.

I might have taken some covert footage as this was leaving a little later, bask in the glory here.

Yamaha Zeal, 250cc inline 4. Nice YSP stickers.

A lovely Le Mans.

Eventually I made it inside the museum. You know you're on to a good thing when you're reaching over the Manx Norton to get a picture of the amazing bike behind it - in this instance a "Silk" 660cc 2 stroke twin.

Land speed record thingies and special one-offs awaited a bit further on.

I don't often suffer from bike blindness but there are just so many bikes here that they all started to look the same. There are 5 halls like this, it's immense.

The brown thins is a Wulf. Nope, me neither..

This was built by a Rolls Royce engineer called Fred Marsh (I think). Sounded ridiculously good.

Race bikes and a couple of special road bikes were being fired up in the courtyard in the middle. Nice to see. This event seems to be heavily connected to the Brackley Festival Of Motorcycling, I might have to go to that next year.

A Z250SL, star of the show! Yeah right.. One and a half months on and I still hadn't bonded with it. Yuck.

So, in conclusion, the National Motorcycle Museum is an amazing place and it actually is worth paying the £10 to get in. But if they're having an open day then it's even better! Though Steve Parrish was there, rabbiting on doing some awful couples-questions game..