Mike Packwood

  Triumph Tiger T90 This is the Tiger on the day it was removed from its garage home where it had sat since 1980. It went to a dealer for a month or so before coming to me in the Autumn of 2022. Welcome to the Repair shed our latest recruit, a 1965 Triumph Tiger 90 350. Back before dad met mum he used to ride bikes. His last bike before moving onto cars was one of these, a Triumph Tiger 90. So when it came to selling the scooter and choosing my first classic bike there was only ever going to be one candidate. I spent ages looking for one and then out of the blue this appeared only 10 miles away. So as soon as we got there to have a look I knew I was going to buy it. The fact that it started and sounded like a Spitfire ticking over only helped to seal the deal. The very nice chap delivered it in a van a week later and here it is. What do we know about this bike then? Well it's local to Cardiff as far as I can tell - so will have come from Bevans when they were situated opposite the

Three Cliffs Bay in the Gower. Been here lots of times over the years. When I was small, the Gower was a favourite holiday destination for our family - and travelling from Northampton pre most of the M4, it was quite a trip. I'm pretty sure that three cliffs was the scene of the only abandoned Packwood family holiday. We were in a tent and three days into our two week family summer holiday my mum and dad just gave up. It literally didn't stop raining for the entire time were there, so we packed up and went home. An absolutely beautiful spot though if you're ever down that way.

Like most people my age, holidays as a youngster didn't feature aeroplanes flying off to foreign parts. More often than not they included a tent, or if you were really posh, a caravan. Some of my earliest recollections are of holidays in a static caravan at a windswept site in Hunstanton on the Norfolk coast. I can still smell the smell of the gas lamps been lit. Generally these holidays would have been me, my sister Heather, our mum and her mum. That was it at the time. So, here we have just a few pictures of caravans and cars. I haven't been through mum and dads entire photo archive yet and if any more pics turn up I'll include them later. So for now this is your lot. Me in specs, my mum and my sister Heather, Hunstanton circa 1965 . The car is mums district nurse company car, an Anglia. At the time it was one of only two cars in our street. The other was a Vauxhall Cresta After decades of mostly rubbish British cars Mum and Dad swapped to Datsuns. This was one of the fir