Martin Haskell

DGR 2024 - the final blog...

Tuesday 28th May 2024

At the time of writing this – late May 2024, it’s been a couple of weeks since the Margate Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride, and I have to say it exceeded expectations in every way.

Since last year’s Hastings to Brighton ride, I’ve had my bike serviced and tuned at Harley – Davidson specialist ‘House of Thunder’ by Tom, just along the North Kent coast at Whitstable, and as a result it is not only running as sweet as a nut, but a lot cooler too.

When I say ‘cooler’ I mean temperature-wise, rather than in the Fonzie sense; when these bikes are imported to the UK they are set up to run ‘lean’, which is a weak fuel to air mixture to ensure they pass emissions regulations. Unfortunately, that makes them run hot, which is fine if you’re shootin’ the breeze on the freeway in southern California, but when you’re stuck in traffic in Canterbury city centre it can get pretty uncomfortable on a summer’s day.

There is a Brucie bonus to this because the tune means there’s more fuel in the mix, it has more power and runs much more smoothly – with Harley-Davidsons it’s all about the torque - the low down grunt - rather than speed.

In many ways my ‘mansplaining’ torque and the fuel mixtures on my bike is kind of ironic, because as far as I’m aware, out of my 30 sponsors, more than 72% have no connection with motorcycles.

Which to me makes the fact that this year’s sponsorship total - £932 - is by far the most I’ve - we've - ever raised. Thank you. That’s really quite a humbling amount.

But while almost three quarters of my sponsors are not, or never have been motorcyclists, I’m pretty sure that almost all of us have been or are currently affected by cancer and/or mental health issues.

The funds raised go to The Movember Foundation, which has made some incredible progress in setting up and funding research into prostate cancer prevention and developing resources to support mens’ mental health towards the prevention of suicide. You can find out more about their work and resources here.

As far as the ride was concerned, it was one of the best. I was accompanied (as last year in Hastings) by Stephen, who took this photo. I have to say I had some serious envy of his BMW R100T and would love to own one again – as well as my Harley of course.

We had a very pleasant early morning ride towards Margate via Stone Street, a 12-mile-long Roman road stretching from Lympne on the edge of the Romney Marsh to Watling Street in Canterbury.  

From Canterbury we rode out across open countryside through Sturry, Sarre and St Nicholas at Wade before entering Margate along the seafront past the famous Golden Sands and Dreamland.

The weather was good too, it started a little overcast and chilly (as is often the case in coastal areas) before the sun broke through mid-morning.

We rode across country to Broadstairs, stopping in the harbour car park before assembling on the beach for a photo opportunity.

We then returned to Margate in the sunshine on the coastal route, and as so often happens on these rides, we chanced upon some beautiful areas away from the beaten track past Joss Bay and Botany Bay before riding through Cliftonville and back to the seafront near the railway station.

Once we’d reached the end of the ride we joined hundreds of other bikes, riders and tourists before parking the bikes on the sea wall. We found a sea front café and watched riders preparing for the beach races, which are a spectacle worth watching, and like the Margate DGR also organised by Malle Mile.

While Stephen and I discussed the possibility of doing a DGR in Europe next year, we certainly wouldn’t rule out returning to Margate again, it was wonderful, one of those days that will stay in the memory bank, filed under ‘what’s the best thing about motorbikes’.

But once again, thank you so, so much to my sponsors, we live in difficult times financially, so to raise £932 is truly incredible.

 

 

 

I do like to be beside the seaside...

Monday 29th Apr 2024

Returning to Margate for this year’s DGR is going to be a real nostalgia trip. As a child on a chosen day during the summer holidays, my siblings and I would be taken by our parents Renie and Len to the top of College Road and across the High Street before walking down the hill opposite to Northfleet station, where after a short wait we would board the train, and by some excellent logistical planning meet Auntie Eileen with Cousins Jo and Rick at Gravesend station before heading off to Margate for the day.

Sometimes Dad was working so it would be just us and Mum.  

The clever bit that I didn’t appreciate as a child was that our Auntie and cousins would somehow be standing exactly where our carriage stopped before joining us on the train.

We would then head east, through the tunnel leading to Higham, past the familiar sights of the marshes leading down to the Thames Estuary before passing Whitstable and Tankerton (still a great Spoonerism!) and eventually approaching the Isle of Thanet, with the sight of Reculver Towers a key indicator that we would soon be arriving at Margate station.

In these days of hopping on a plane to some far-flung destination it might be hard to appreciate that these days on the beach were our summer holidays.

The great thing about Margate station is that it was just a short walk to the beach, those famous golden sands.

First on the agenda was hiring some deck chairs for the adults, then once they’d been set up (hopefully without pinching anyone’s fingers) it was time to get changed into our swimming trunks (obviously the girls had cossies).

Auntie Eileen had a sort of long tubular towel thing that tied up round the neck to that she could stand up in it and get changed with a degree of privacy, which always struck me as a little odd as there were changing tents a short walk away.

From then it was all sandcastles, digging under the deck chairs to make them sink and having a dip in the nearest of the two tidal saltwater pools, filled with a change of sea water every time the tide came in. If you look on Google maps you can’t see them, as the tide was in when the satellite images were taken, but they are marked.

After a picnic lunch we would get an ice cream and then as late afternoon approached it was time to get changed again and attempt to wash as much sand off your feet as possible (never totally successful) before heading along the front towards the Clock Tower before walking down Belgrave Road to a little café (no longer there) for fish and chips.

Then it was into Dreamland for a few hours, rides on the dodgems, the caterpillar and the scenic railway, before a ride round the car park on a miniature coach and a trip on the little train that went along the back of the park, past the American Indian villages and other scenes.

Once the train had returned it was time to head for the real station and get the train home. Occasionally if there wasn’t a train that was stopping at Northfleet we would get taxis home from Gravesend, with Auntie Eileen, Jo and Rick getting in one, and us squeezing into another to head for College Road.

It was great at the time, occasionally we would go away for a week, initially by Maidstone and District Coach to Butlins at Clacton, and sometimes we’d all pile into our next-door neighbour Robin’s Humber Super Snipe where he would take us to a chalet at Leysdown, collecting us a week later.

Mum and Dad eventually passed their driving tests and bought a car (an Austin 1100) and we started to get adventurous, initially staying in a caravan at Foxhunter Park in Monkton, near Ramsgate, and then later to the now famous (for all the wrong reasons) Jaywick Sands near Clacton. It was later decided that as a round trip of more than 150 miles it was too far to drive.    

Eventually I decided that I didn’t want to go on holiday with them anymore (as most of us do at some stage) and went off on very different adventures with my mates, then girlfriends and much later with my own family.

And what of Margate? Well, we drifted apart. I didn’t go back very often, and when I did it seemed that many of the best bits had either been closed down and /or demolished. It was frankly a bit of a dive for many years.

But then the Turner Contemporary art gallery opened and now we’re told that its fortunes are on the up. I spent the day there in 2012 when I was covering the Beach Races for The Rider’s Digest, and returned again in 2021 when the Malle Mile held their beach races there (which is where this photo comes from)   

So I will be familiar with Kent’s answer to The Riviera on Sunday the 19th of May 2024, when I will be starting and finishing this year’s Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride in aid of The Movember Foundation there, and there will also be beach racing when we return, so I am planning to spend the afternoon there and get some photos of a place where I spent so many of my childhood summer holidays.

I won’t go into detail about the excellent work that Movember do, suffice to say it’s towards making sure that our sons, fathers, brothers, uncles, nephews, mates and other loved ones will be with us for as long as possible, so if you haven’t yet sponsored me, anything you can spare will be much appreciated – even I’ve sponsored me!  https://gfolk.me/MartinHaskell

In the beginning...

Tuesday 16th Apr 2024

It strikes me as strange that in the ten years (so far) that I’ve been taking part in the Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride, (DGR) nobody has ever asked why we do it or criticised it in any way.

The whole thing was started when the ride’s Australian founder, Mark Hawwa saw a photo from the TV series Mad Men, showing the character Don Draper riding a classic motorbike in a sharp suit.

At that time, bikers in Australia (and probably elsewhere too) had been getting a bad reputation, possibly due to the inspiration of the Mad Max movies; many folk would run for cover when a bunch of denim cut wearing oiks rode into town on their post-apocalyptic styled street fighter bikes; anti-social behaviour (ASB) would often follow. 

Mark hit upon the idea of creating an annual run, inspired by the Mad Men photo that would demonstrate that not all motorcyclists were into ASB, and that we could behave like gentlefolk, dressed smart and riding classic machines.

The first DGR took place in Sydney in 2012, but by the time the day came, word had spread throughout the international motorcycling community, and brought together over 2,500 riders across 64 cities, with the success of the event encouraging Mark to consider how it could be used to support a worthy cause. The rest, as they say, is history.

Of course, in those days, 2,500 riders in 64 cities sounded impressive, and for such a fledgling event it was. By 2019 those numbers had grown to 116,000 riders in in 678 cities around the globe.

In 2020, Covid changed the world; the DGR continued but in a different way, with participants encouraged to ride solo, and while the number of participants halved to 56,000 riders, (in 2,531 cities) we still managed to raise $2,700,000 (funds raised go to the rider’s own country in case you were wondering).

Now things have returned to a form of normality, the numbers are once again on the increase, and by 2023 106,000 riders in 893 cities in 107 countries raised $7,450,000.

Such an event takes a considerable amount of effort to organise, and in 2016 The Movember Foundation became the official charity partner for the ride. Funds raised by The Distinguished Gentleman's Ride have led to life-changing research in prostate cancer and life-saving mental health and suicide prevention programmes.

These days the foundation also recognises that there is growing evidence that firefighters, paramedics, police officers and military veterans are at increased risk of poor mental health and suicide and has put programmes in place to work towards supporting them.

We lose fathers, brothers, uncles, nephews, sons, family members, colleagues, neighbours and friends daily. On average, around the globe, a man takes his own life by suicide every 60 seconds. That’s a shocking statistic.

And then there’s ‘the big ‘C’.

I can’t think of anyone I know whose life hasn’t been affected by cancer. Friends undergoing often brutal treatment, some friends who don’t make it. We recently found out that a family friend is undergoing treatment for stage 2 cancer.

1 in 2 people will develop some form of cancer during their lifetime.

I wish I could prevent this horrible disease. Sadly, I can’t.

But researchers are making breakthroughs every day, I personally know many friends and acquaintances who have successfully beaten cancer.

So, I will do what I can to help those who can work towards preventing it.

I can’t swim the channel, and any thoughts of doing a ‘tough mudder’ or running a marathon at my age are likely to result in needing medical resources and ongoing treatment rather than assisting them.

So once again, as I have a classic styled motorcycle (which is now 14 years old so it’s fast becoming a classic) and a few smart clothes, with a few likeminded folk I will be riding to Margate Harbour Arm on the morning of Sunday 19^th May to take part in the Margate DGR.

If you have a classic or custom styled motorcycle or scooter it would be great if you could join us. When we return to the starting point later in the day there’s the added bonus of the Malle Mile Beach Races taking place – what’s not to like?

Looking back over ten years of the DGR, looking forward to the 11th...

Wednesday 3rd Apr 2024

According to where you look on my page, this years Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride (DGR) is either my tenth or my eleventh. It’s the latter.

My first was in 2014, in London. The bike I had in those days was deemed unsuitable for the ride, as it was a fairly modern looking BMW sports tourer, the R1100S.

Fortunately Andy Tribble, along with Paul ‘Blez’ Blezard was a fellow rider on several of these jaunts, and generously loaned me his bright red Ural, a bike where the engine configuration was similar to my BMW, but everything else was very, very different.

Full of character but with some very quirky traits, the main thing was that it completed the run with unmistakeable style.

For this ride Andy was riding his trusty MZ250 while Blez was piloting Andy’s Peraves Ecomobile, which looks like a glider cockpit but without the glider. We were also accompanied by Andy’s partner Julia on a Kawasaki custom that was having a few issues and needed frequent breaks.

We met a Borough Market, which was bursting at the seams, and having been organised by Dutch from The Bike Shed in London, his requests to keep the noise down due to a service going on at the cathedral next door went largely unheeded.

In 2015 Indian Motorcycles loaned me a brand new Indian Chief Vintage from their press fleet; a huge and magnificent cream and mint green chromed beast that I had to collect from their depot in Birmingham.

This ride was also in London, starting from a demolition site in Southwark, again accompanied by Andy (in the Ecomobile) and Blez riding the bright yellow Mk2 ComforTmax. We were also again joined by Julia, this time on her new Kawasaki Vulcan and Carla on her Ducati Scrambler.

My third London ride was in 2016, for which (still having an unsuitable BMW) I borrowed a brand new Harley-Davidson XL1200CX Roadster, a sort of uncustomised Sportster with flat bars and USD forks. While this time I was riding solo I once again met up with Blez, who was riding a Honda NM4 Bat Bike and Neil 'Woffy' Waugh on his Moto Guzzi.

Something very strange happened in the lead up to this ride, I was bemoaning the fact that I would have to ride my (by then increasingly unreliable) BMW to Gloucester to collect the Harley from their press fleet, and my long suffering wife Jude said I should trade the Beemer in for a Harley, which was the start of a long standing relationship with my own lump of American iron.

By the time 2017 came around, I was getting fed up with the overcrowded London ride, so after chatting with Andy and Julia, along with my son Ben, we decided to ride to Amsterdam and take part in the ride there.

The Amsterdam DGR was to date the best organised of all the rides I’ve attended so far, with the Dutch cops riding in relays to stop the traffic – including trams – in the city centre, while the second part of the ride snaked through parks, past windmills and alongside canals.

Despite a chilly and misty start it soon warmed up and was one of the most enjoyable DGRs. Julia was riding her Kawasaki Vulcan, while Andy was on his MZ Skorpion 660 and my son Ben was riding his BMW RNineT 1200; for the first time I was on my gleaming red metallic Harley Davidson FLD.

In contrast to the 2017 ride, I decided to stay local in 2018; Andy and Julia were in Europe and Ben was unavailable, so I took part in the Maidstone ride with a friend from my photographic club – John - riding his Triumph Speedmaster.

Also in contrast to the Amsterdam ride, this ride was a complete shambles, organised by the local bike dealer, they added a diversion and an additional stop (soon after we’d started) at the local Harley dealer, which they also owned. The halfway point was at Chatham Dockyard, with barely anyone following the prescribed route, involving the organisers forcing everyone into an illegal right turn. The remainder of the run was equally disorganised, with few taking the same route.

The finishing point was West Malling High Street, busy at the best of times, but on a Sunday afternoon there was nowhere to park several dozen bikes, so everyone just went home. Disappointing.

2019’s ride was also disappointing, but for a different reason. With my nearest ride having been such a letdown, I opted to join the West Sussex DGR at Shoreham Airport - this time riding solo - which was great except for the appalling weather, wet and windy in the extreme.

This was a shame, as it was well organised, complete with a mobile photographer in a scooter sidecar taking some great shots of the participants. Aside from the weather it was enjoyable, complete with food and coffee vans assembled at the finishing point at Chichester, with a band playing to raise the dampened spirits.

By the time the 2020 ride came around, Covid had reared its ugly head, and while the global organisers were keen for the event to continue, having moved the date to May, riders were encouraged to ride alone, and despite the inevitable lack of comradeship, I somehow still attracted some very generous sponsorship.

I opted to ride across the Romney Marsh to Dymchurch, before taking the coast road to Folkestone, then riding to Ashford, Tenterden and Dungeness before returning home via New Romney.

Unfortunately, the weather was again cold, damp and very windy, and as I sat on a railway sleeper miserably drinking coffee from a paper cup at Dungeness (the café was of course closed) my sandwich blew away.

Little had changed by the time the 2021 ride had come around, I opted to do the same route, but the other way round, and this time the weather was much improved.

I was joined for coffee in Tenterden by my friend Mark with his daughter Maude and son Dougie; it was once again very much a solo effort, but my incredible sponsors didn’t let me down.             

With Covid restrictions lifted I rejoined the West Sussex Ride for 2022, and the weather had once again returned to its glorious best, with the ride across Kent and Sussex just after dawn being one of those that go down in the memory as being what motorcycling is all about;  beautiful weather with occasional patches of early morning mist as I headed towards Shoreham, the other side of Brighton.

This was another solo effort, but as always when motorcycling you spend most of the day chatting with others about bikes and life in general. I met a friend John, known on Youtube as ‘Old Bloke, West Sussex’ who turned up on his Harley Sportster at the end and joined me for a cup of tea and a burger. A marvellous day, as most DGRs have been.

For 2023 I noticed that a new ride had popped up, at St Leonards on Sea, about an hour away. Thanks to the power of social media, I managed to contact Carla, (who’d joined us for the ride in 2015) now living in nearby Hastings. Carla invited Blez along, and respectively riding motorcycling icons the 1970s Norton Commando 850 and an extremely rare Quasar, we were also joined by Carla’s friend Steve on a vintage 1954 Moto Guzzi Falcone and Steve’s friend Andy on a 1970s Moto Guzzi V1000 automatic, so between us we had quite a collection of rare and unusual motorcycles.

The weather was once again excellent, the ride involved meeting Steve and Andy at Dymchurch Martello Tower and heading through to Rye, and then on to Hastings before rocking up at J S Gedge Triumph - where we were joined by Carla and Blez, setting off on a very enjoyable ride to Madeira Drive in Brighton.

On the way back we stopped off at Beachy Head before heading back to Carla’s to meet her partner Mark and have a look at more Quasars and another (extremely rare) Ecomobile, this time fitted with a Turbo.

The 2024 DGR is now taking shape, the Hastings ride doesn’t seem to have materialised, so Steve, Andy and myself have registered for the Margate DGR, which starts off from the lighthouse on the harbour arm before heading towards Broadstairs and back. We’re hoping to persuade others to join us, and once again remain optimistic for some enjoyable riding weather!       

    

MAYMA!

Saturday 30th Mar 2024

That stands for ‘Martin’s After Your Money Again’, but it’s all for a good cause, so that’s OK isn’t it?

If it isn’t, read no further, I won’t hold it against you, and I certainly wouldn’t blame you.

A lot of people are struggling financially which can make life pretty miserable and in turn cause issues with your mental health, something most of us struggle with at times, even though we don’t like to admit it.

The answer can be as straightforward as talking to someone, and if you know me, you know I like to talk.

But sometimes it’s not so easy to talk, and even if you know what you want to say, you can’t always find the right person to talk to, someone you can trust to be a good listener, and importantly keep a confidence and not broadcast the problems you’ve entrusted them with to others.

At this point in an ideal world, I would link that point smoothly to the great work that Movember do in supporting men’s mental health, but I’ve never experienced that, so I’ll give it a miss.

But that’s just one part of the work they do, they also put the money to work in researching cures for cancer, a devastating disease that most of us have been affected by, and while the treatments and survival rates are better than ever, we have friends who are currently receiving treatment, and it must be very difficult to remain positive while seeing others losing the battle.

My thoughts are with you. And you know you can talk to me, if you haven’t got my number, you can DM, WhatsApp or email me, I will always find the time.

Oh, and I thought I’d better mention the ride, you know the one where we dress up like eejits on our shiny motorbikes and ride along the coast somewhere. This year it starts at Margate, the one last year from Hastings was great, but that doesn’t seem to be on offer, so Margit it is.

I have ties with Margate, my family used to go there for day trips, all donkey rides, deck chairs and ice creams, then spending the evening in Dreamland before getting the train home.

On 19^th of May I’ll be riding my shiny American motorbike there, hopefully with a group like we had last year, which was great fun. I’m looking forward to it; I hope the weather’s good, but we’ll still go if it isn’t. But anyway, it’s not exactly an onerous task, like swimming the channel or running a marathon, but I am 65, and the bike weighs about a third of a ton, so if you could see your way to putting something in my collection that would be great. Thank you.    

I'm Riding for Men's Health in The Distinguished Gentleman's Ride

Monday 25th Mar 2024 On Sunday the 19th of May 2024, I'm riding in The Distinguished Gentleman's Ride with fellow men and women across the globe to raise funds and awareness for prostate cancer and men's mental health on behalf of Movember. Men die on average 6 years earlier than women and for largely preventable reasons. The number of men that are suffering is growing, and we need to do something about that. So, before I press my tweed and polish my boots, I'm asking you to join me in raising funds and awareness for these causes by donating what you can for this meaningful cause and to help the men we love, live happier and healthier lives.