What a crazy thing to do to a perfectly good motorcycle…

Why would you design a vehicle which depends on leaning into a corner to turn…and then lock it to a large dead-weight that not only stopped it from doing what comes naturally but – with all the extra weight on one side – threatens to tip everything over each time you take a bend?

Well, after a few minutes of “ground school” and a quick trip around the block with David Griffiths of Moto Provencale in St Remy it all started to make sense. What I never realised is that you use the brakes and throttle to take you around the bends, taking advantage of the lop-sided design of the unit. As the bike and the sidecar can brake and accelerate as different units big handfuls of gas make the bike surge ahead faster than the sidecar causing the bike to turn ‘around’ the chair, effectively seeing the unit bite into the tarmac and rush around right-hand corners like a Porsche 911 on steroids (OK, maybe not steroids), whilst grabbing the front brake slows the bike but not the sidecar, gently taking us to the left (sidedcars sit on the right hand side in France). The footbrake operates the rear and sidecar brakes and David recommends adjusting the sidecar side a little more than the rear to ease us round right handers as we slow down. Braking in a straight line is easy – just squeeze everything!

All of a sudden a whole new motorcycling vista comes into view. The satisfaction of piloting a sidecar around the twists and turns of Provence with ever-growing confidence kept a silly grin on my face for the whole week and a long time after I came home. David warned us that sidecars can become addictive as you learn that you can pack a few extra books / clothes / water bottles / tools / beach towels into the ample trunk of the sidecar and also leave all your biking gear safely locked away when you stop off to view the villages and sights of the area. That and the sheer pleasure of cruising along with the bike burbling away beneath you makes the countryside come alive; the French have a word for this feeling of travelling for the sake of the journey not the arrival – “ballader” a word that we began to use more and more through the week.

The bikes on offer are wonderful too – but not for the shy and retiring; we spent many happy hours chatting (often without any common language) to bikers and non-bikers alike. We took the Ural Retro for the first few days, a Russian copy of a 1940s BMW, but making use of modern  japanese carburation, electronics and brakes to give a solid and reliable ride – but oh she’s pretty! The lustrous black paint with white BM-style coachlining meant that little boys of all ages stopped and gawped. Ladies out on bikes gazed enviously at the big leather seat of the sidecar and almost cried when we got our bags out of the trunk and tucked away our hats and jackets. The memory of one sportsbike rider prizing his unwilling biker-chick out of the sidecar made us laugh for hours (and smile inside with more than a little sympathy).

We also tried the Ural Ranger, a three-wheel Hummer with powered sidecar wheel and a high-up 4x4 SUV feel – very easy to drive and making us feel immensely confident on our one trip through traffic in Marseille old port. The little Royal Enfield Bullet with its beautiful Meteor sidecar was universally admired as a ‘ladies bike’, which I’m sure it accepted as the compliment it was meant to be. A fascinating story is that the original Meteor sidecar was reputed to be made from the under-wing fuel tank of a war-time Mosquito fighter bomber. The modern equivalent is made of fibre-glass but has a feel of quality with its leather trim and cast mounting for the little windscreen which reminded us of a racing bugatti.

Combining all of this with a holiday package covering airport transfers, hotels, GPS units on all the bikes (now there’s a real ‘ancient and modern’), a free French mobile phone – a great boon – and use of Solex scooters for our ‘days off’ around the beautiful old town of St Remy gave us a holiday with everything we could want. The staff of Moto Provencale always went that little step further to make sure we had a great time, including my wifes favourite touch – a smart shower room in their modern offices for use on our last day to allow us to ride out and still be fresh for the long flight home even after checking out of the hotel. These guys are relatively new to the hospitality business but seem to view it all from a buyers point of view, in Davids words ‘giving you everything that we would want from a holiday’. Go. Enjoy!

Sidecar Magazine (c) 2004