The Norton Challenge involves taking an old bike to anywhere called Norton. It's basically Frank Westworth's monthly excuse for a ride. His first proper trip took him north to Worcestershire...

All excited, I was. Norton Challenge was Go! Which is like Thunderbirds, but less noisy. Usually less noisy. Where to go, though?

As soon as the Norton Challenge got a brief mention in the magazine, chaos set in. The postman and the ethers were laden with comms from The Reader (that's you) revealing hitherto unsuspected hordes of places with 'Norton' in their names. There are hundreds. Well … quite a few. Rather more than I'd realised, at any rate. My problem was which to visit first.

Local ones … as you can read somewhere else on this site. Because it was January, and even Norton riders feel an occasional chill.

Which is how I discovered that locations which appear on the usually useful GoogleMaps are not necessarily where they seem to be. Or in fact there at all.

Chugged about a wild windy January stretch of North Devon for quite a while discovering a fine array of muddy lanes, but no Norton. Hmmm. And this has proved to be not unusual. I did find traces of one in south Devon, though.

February, then. For February I decided to ride one of my favourite rides for the first time (but not the last time) this year. Off up to the West Midlands.

An Aside. When Rowena and I first met, she was truly A London Gurl, and believed that the West Midlands contained nothing but the depressing, collapsed remnants of our once-glorious industrial heritage and constant rain and fog, and was therefore a place to avoid. Ha! In fact, it is a beautiful part of the country. In places.

Mighty White Rotator* is not, to be entirely honest, a great long-legged mile-muncher. Its first custodians were the City Of London police types, and they persuaded the Norton factory to modify a couple of bikes - like this one - to better suit the needs of inner city police riding. So, as well as a tricksy engine cooling system (which works very well), the Interplod has lowered gearing. This makes it a real backroads blaster, but also finds it a tad thrashy on motorways.

Which is all to the good, in fact, because it provides a handy excuse for keeping away from big highways and to go a bit hooligan on A-roads. The gearing difference between the Mighty White and Big Red* rotators is interesting. Big Red is a fourt gear A-road cruiser (I stick mainly to speed limits; honest) whereas Mighty White runs at the same speeds in top. They cover the ground at much the same rate and use much the same fuel to do it. Interesting, as I said.

So it's off across Exmoor on Mighty White, aiming for Bromyard, a sleepy town in Worcestershire. Then a fly up the M5 to avoid Bristol (always a good thing), and then off and onto the parallel A-roads to hit on Gloucester. You can use either the A46 or the A38; very different characters, but not too much traffic, thanks to the M5.

Gloucester. Straight in, and straight out again on the A417 to Ledbury for lunch. Milemeister Tony Page has a place near Ledbury, so I parked Mighty White in the middle of town while I gazed optimistically at a frothy coffee and a tiny comestible, but saw no sign of TP. Probably fortunate.

Then off again, heading along the B4214 for Bromyard. Why Bromyard? No idea. Back a very long time ago, when I earned an occasional shilling in the music world, I was familiar with that town's annual folk festival. Always a hoot, although memory is happily unreliable and hazy on the detail.

And on the very splendid twisty B-road, I paused to admire a parked-up Morgan. Big vee engine ticking gently as it cooled. No sign of the owner…

Bromyard has a town square, as towns should. In that square there is a caff, as there should be. Teacake and coffee. All quiet; all calm. Finish coffees, contemplate a second teacake, decide against it and prepare to saddle up.

Afternoon silence split by the sound of a BSA; an A65. Then a Norton. An Atlas. Then the others rode in…

More coffee, much chatter with some well-travelled RC types, and then off in company with A65 and Atlas to find one of the famous Google Nortons. It's there on Googlemaps, but not on Planet Earth. Pleasant location, though.

Then off to visit a chum and to gaze in wonder at her soap factory. No no; really.

Then into the encroaching evening, heading east for my overnight at Evesham. Rotating gently through the settling dark and through the centre of Worcester, which I think is a city, albeit a small one.

Passed by Norton Juxta Kempsey on the B4084, but it was almost dark and I was running late, so no pics…

Mighty White is running very well. Like a lot of bikes, rotaries run better the more they're run, and we chugged through the traffic-locked, darkening centre of Worcester with a reliable tickover and all the other civilised features which riders of normal bikes take for granted but which rotarians revel in when they do occasionally appear.

In the Inn car park stood a Vincent. A famous Vincent. None other than PUB, author of the PUBtalk column in the magazine. Well, the words are written by Jacqueline Bickerstaff, but I think inspiration derives from PUB. I was late. Much amusement. Jacqueline had checked to see that I was booked into the Inn (I was, but not under my own name) and the restaurant for evening scoff (I wasn't booked at all, having a trusting faith in such things). But she'd hung on, savouring the gathering evening.

A small shiver of disquiet followed the discovery that Mighty White was leaking oil, but you can read about the cause in the magazine, and apart from one gentle slide it wasn't much of a worry, not really.

The evening flew by, as they do in convivial company, and soon it was morning and off to find the Nortons revealed by my faithful 1987 Little Chef road atlas. And there they were, on the B4088! Hurrah. As was Norton & Lenchwick, and the pretty church of St Egwin.

Then back to Evesham; prepare for rain and the ride home. Coffee would be nice, though. As I pondered the vexing coffee question, my quiet was shattered by the raucous blast of a BSA, an M33, in fact, storming past. We pulled up. I'd been early at the north-of-Evesham Norton, and had missed a small crowd of RC riders. Whoops.

Never mind, let's continue south and find a caff.

A Triumph TRW roared by on the other side of the A46. BSA and Mighty White pulled into the Vale Truckstop. Triumph TRW screamed (in a sense) past a moment or two later. Then returned. Toast and coffee. What a good spot for a proper meet-up, we decided.

Then back to the A46, before pitching north again to find Bredon's Norton, which I did, returning to the southerly haul. Getting late now and a couple of hundred miles to go, so I'm afraid that it was time for the M5. Mighty White sits at an easy 75-80; much more than that and fuel swills through the SU carbs a little rapido for my liking, and in fact while last-legging it down the A30 through Devon we switched to reserve. Must have been running a bit quicker than my favoured 80, then…

BSAs on B-S-eBay.co.uk

Back to the evening rain, purring out of Devon and back to the Cornish hearth.

To celebrate, the engine cut out on the right-hand rotor. Then it cut in again. Then out. Then in.

Then the rain stopped and both rotors did their things. Mutter, mutter; more time required in The Shed, then. But the whole point of the Norton Challenge is to get out and ride some miles. 480 of them in two days. Loads of RC riders, loads of places called Norton.

Cobwebs duly blown away, spirits restored. What it's all about, surely?

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*Mighty White, for anyone who just joined the party, is Frank's Interpol II, an air-cooled rotary-engined, fully-faired British built Norton. It's quite old and a bit cantankerous, which adds to its charm ('charm' being one of those things which is entirely in the mind of the beholder, of course)

*The Big Red Rotator is Frank Commander, a water-cooled, rotary-engined, fully-faired, British-built Norton. It's nearly as old as the Interpol and just as cranky. Must be something to do with the love and attention its owner bestows upon it…