The Honda C110, Honda's offering in the teeny bikes market if you couldn't run to a Benly. I started my biking life on a blue 1964 model, complete with un-matching red full fairing.

Pressed steel frame, weird leading link front forks, big valanced mudguards. Fully enclosed chain lasted forever. Gears, proper clutch .... I say proper clutch - it was an engine speed job so made learning clutch control interesting!

Whatever the shortcomings, for £60 second hand it was a reliable and reasonably speedy little bike and opened up the world (well, a bit of it) to adventurous 16 year olds. On the recommendation of my dad I rebuilt the top end after a few thousand miles; seems this was de rigeur for old Brit rubbish but the Honda didn't take too kindly to the new valves and rings, it smoked a little bit ever after. At that time older bikers used to English stuff didn't understand the wonder of Japanese engineering.

More used to things like the James Cadet. Couple of my mates learnt to ride on these. A classic amongst Villiers engined strokers, the Cadet had a 3 speed 122cc motor, plunger rear suspension and primitive, undamped sprung forks. It was awful. Quite why the English felt it necessary to produce such rubbish was beyound me even in those days. Coming off a Japanese bike onto a James, or Fanny B was a real techno shock.

Easy to see why the Japanese factories took over the market. Their bikes were just built with so much more care for the owner. And they got better every year as the manufacturers improved materials and design.

The Cadet, Triumph Tiger Cub, BSA Bantam - these are obviously learner machines, designed for the new rider, not scary. Dreams may have been full of fire-breathing, snorting Rocket Gold Stars and Black Shadows, but in reality we all rode around on wheezing little pocket-money putt-putts which could take the inevitable crashes much better; and didn't cost a year's wages to maintain.

A 1950s stroker that many of us learned to ride on. The Bantam was used as everyday transport and was often fitted with an awful perspex screen and leg shields We ripped these off and pretended it was a Sports ... ooh! Mega comfy seat made up for the completely rubbish suspension, although it was so light (and slow) that handling wasn't much affected.

The engine was a BSA unit based on a DKW design pinched off the Germans at the end of WW2; spoils of war - or reparations as they are more politely known. Harley, Yamaha, Morini and some other Russian oddity all used this design as well.

The Bantam competed with a string of small strokers using the ubiquitous Villiers motor - James, Francis-Barnet, Greeves and others too embarrassing to remember. I particularly recall the Francis-Barnet Plover. You had to be a hard bastard to ride a bike with that moniker!

Ghastly primitive 150cc engine gave about 5 bhp - you could get the thing to run backwards if you advanced the ignition enough. Brakes didn't do much so in extremis it was best just to jump off.

No-one ever bought tyres 'cos they never wore out. You could used the Bantam for just about anything - off-roading, trials, sheep-herding .... The Sports was much flashier than the D3 shown here, it had chrome bits.

Started life in 1958. The C15 replaced the terrible C12 and was a pretty reasonable bike by rather low UK standards. 250cc OHV 4-stroke with a 4 speed gearbox, the thing would do 70 plus on a sunny day with a following wind. Nice gearbox, decent brakes. Suspension was good, with oil damped tele forks and a proper swinging arm out back. The classic learner's tool before Japanese power, especially their bonkers two strokes, made 250s a bit too mad for L plates.

The big hit was the engine/gearbox. Up 'til the C15 bikes had separate units but this bike combined them for the first time, making the whole plot easier to maintain and more reliable. The motor still suffered from a dodgy plain-bush big end and chocolate main bearings. Combined with the more primitive oil of the day the bearings tended to fail prematurely, giving the bike a reputation for unreliability which it didn't deserve. Well, alright, yes it did.

I bought mine, a '59 model in an attractive mottled green, to pass my test. Having ridden a Japanese 90cc Honda the performance of the BSA came as a bit of a shock ... it was bloody awful! I thought of 250cc as a big engine, so was expecting some serious performance. This was my first lesson in English bike design philosophy: if it just about runs then cut a few corners and market it.

The bike test in those days consisted of bunking off school, riding round the town centre a few times until the examiner, a miserable git in a rumpled grey suit, stepped out in front of you waving his clipboard. This was the sign to perform your emergency stop. As long as the bike kind of rustled to a halt somewhere in his vicinity then you passed - brakes were so useless that a sudden and controlled stop was not expected. Lots of fun could be had by misunderstanding his instructions, so he spent most of the test wandering around trying to find you, whilst you gaily banged and popped your way along the wrong streets leering at all the mums.

Test passed and L plates discarded, a mate and I celebrated the next Sunday at the pub. It was nice and sunny and everyone was sitting at little tables out the front. Nick, for that was his name, decided that we should leave in style. He would remain seated at our table with his shades on, looking as mega cool as a 16 year old in his dad's sunglasses can look, while I went round the back, got the bike started and rode slowly past the pub. At the opportune moment he would leave the table, run lithely to the road and leap onto the back of the bike, whereupon we would accelerate smartly away, leaving everyone in awe. 'Course it was not to be - Nick leapt onto the bike with such exaggerated enthusiasm that we immediately fell into the road in a heap and looked a right couple of prats. Still, it gave everyone a laugh. Nick was pissed off because he snapped his sunglasses. What about my bike?!

Tiring of the C15 I bought a Royal Enfield Crusader Sports - a bit like the GT Continental but crappier. I bought it mainly 'coz it had Ace bars and the dualseat looked a bit like the Vincent's! It had a bit more go but was forever blowing oil everywhere - and it couldn't keep up with my mate John's Matchless 250.

Another mate and I went to visit some girlies. On leaving he wanted to impress them. While we were sitting at the traffic lights with the girlies waving us goodbye, he shouted in my ear, "Nail it when the lights go green!"

As bidden, as soon as there was a suggestion of an amber light I revved the motor and dropped the clutch. The bike shot forward .... Now we had spent the weekend with these girls and, lads though we were, we had taken some basic supplies and a change of clothing. This was all stuffed into a large rucksack and strapped to his back. The combined forces of rapid acceleration and a top-heavy rucksack had a profound effect on his centre of gravity. The first I knew of impending doom was a pair of feet flying past my ears as I gassed the bike away from the lights. I hit the brakes and turned to look back - poor sod was lying in the road like an inverted tortoise, arms and legs waggling in the air while everyone was laughing. He never forgave me.

I lost count of the times I had to strip the engine to replace worn bits. It surprised me, after working on Jap bikes, how complicated English ones were to work on. They seemed to need endless 'special tools' to remove the most basic parts, whereas the only special tool my Honda ever needed was a clutch puller!

The sporty race version of the Crusader was the GT Continental, the RGV250 of the 1960s. This was dead trick and came with clip-ons, slightly rearset footrests, race flyscreen and mega impressive (but useless) front brake cooling disks. Front suspension was pretty hopeless with the undamped forks and ground clearance poor; a centre stand on a race rep? But the huge crankcase breather pipe looked well hard.

The 250cc OHV motor sported 5 fragile gears and produced 20 bhp at a heady 7500 rpm with its 9:1 compression and big-bore Amal carb, good for 85mph flat out.

Gearshift was lighter than anything else around, but the gears had been shaved to squeeze them into a 4-speed box. They weren't too strong and the gearchange needed constant adjustment to avoid a box full of neutrals. The 4 speed Crusader box was better.

In its day this was Enfield's last gasp answer to Japanese sportsters. It looked the part superficially but in true Brit tradition was built down to an unfeasibly low price, even though it cost a fortune to buy!