Congratulations on the web group.

In my case, this bizarre hobby started in 1980 when my mother
wouldn't let me have a moped. I was leaning over my old Raleigh
bicycle chatting at school and someone mentioned that a colleague had
an engine for a bicycle that would make the 8 mile ride home easier.
Needless to say, I spoke with him next day and the result was that
for £15 I owned 2 sackfuls of Cyclemaster engines & bits and one
Cyclemaster wheel.
I rebuilt one good engine out of the sackfuls, got it registered &
started riding it to school. My mother couldn't object as it had a
3rd brake that the Raleigh didn't have, didn't go any faster than I
could cycle and I had to wear a helmet (cycle helmets being unknown
at that time).

I met another lunatic at school who was rebuilding a Cyclemaster and
in the summer of 1981, we decided to ride over from the Suffolk coast
to the 3rd (I think) VMCC Cyclemotor Run in Warwickshire, a trip of
about 350 miles. There we met with and befriended Stan Greenway, Doug
Whittaker, Rody Sinclair, Peter Cornelius and other well known
cyclemotorists of the time.

By the end of the summer, I also possessed a BSA Winged Wheel and a
Powerpak that Stan Greenway let me have. I was thoroughly hooked.

That September, with the Cyclemotor Section's encouragement, Simon, I
and two others formed the East Anglian Cyclemotor Club. In 1986 it
became the National Autocycle & Cyclemotor Club although the original
club name has recently resurfaced with a new club. In 1982 some
jobsworth effectively stifled the VMCC Cyclemotor Section by
complaining to the VMCC central committee about their activities &
the NACC then went from strength to strength as the major cyclemotor
club in the UK.

The rest is, as they say, history.

Andrew Roddham