Salt Box cafe

K

Kernow

Guest
Does anyone remember the Salt Box Cafe at Biggin Hill? Used to be a sort of southern Version of the Ace in its day. Mainly Cafe Racers. I only got there on pillions a couple of times back in the very early '60's and wonder what happened to it. :60277EB7B04744289C0
 
Re: Salt Box cafe

Yes I rember it ,I lived in biggin hill in the 1964 and went to salt box cafe many times,showing my age as I watched scrambling on salt box down in the valley below or as you call it now moto cross .As for the cafe it has been pulled down many years ago. Do you remember the nightingale cafe in bigginhill ,I used to go there most saturday nights years ago.

micktheblade.
 
Re: Salt Box cafe

micktheblade said:
Yes I rember it ,I lived in biggin hill in the 1964 and went to salt box cafe many times,showing my age as I watched scrambling on salt box down in the valley below or as you call it now moto cross .As for the cafe it has been pulled down many years ago. Do you remember the nightingale cafe in bigginhill ,I used to go there most saturday nights years ago.

micktheblade.
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Went to the Saltbox a couple of times but was a Nightingale bloke myself. Would have been going there from about 1962 ish.
Got fond memories of the 'gale'. Used to do sprint races from the 'gale' to the Saltbox which included push starts like the old Grand Prix's, great fun. :)

Never scrambled the 'Saltbox' but did at the track that followed on from it. Twas on the Biggin Hill road just outside New Addington in 1968. I think it was organised by the same ACU club.
 
Re: Salt Box cafe

i was a member of the slatbox back in the late 60' early 70' and i still have the arm patch!!
 
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i visited the saltbox a few times and the nightingale but johnsons was my everynighter as well as chelsea bridge.anybody here remember johnsons and 1 bike in particular called voodoo.pre unit bonnie the blade of yesterday.:169B9ADF431545348BC
 
Re: Salt Box cafe

loved looking thru' the pic's on the nightingale site,

i would've been just born at the time of some of the pic's ( 61),
its really cool as none of our family pic's seemed to have survived from then, so its prob' a fair indication of how daft my old man wouldve been dressed then and my old dear for that matter but i think he might have been a Johnny Cash kinda dude tho'.
Spose the only Harleys would've been ex-service then? -no?
If you did have a Harley then what flavour would've it been? and what would one have cost compared to the Brit' bikes, would you have been cool if you rode a Harley? or a wanker? were the Jap bikes making an appearance yet?

soooomany questions
need a condensed history of the era for us not so young pups:wink:
 
Re: Salt Box cafe

chenga said:
i visited the saltbox a few times and the nightingale but johnsons was my everynighter as well as chelsea bridge.anybody here remember johnsons and 1 bike in particular called voodoo.pre unit bonnie the blade of yesterday.:169B9ADF431545348BC
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I was Chelsea Bridge,used to do Johnsons some Friday nights,leave there for the bridge then on to the Ace.
Re Voodoo,I saw him a few years later with a Triumph 3 in a Rob North frame,letterbox fairing,the works.Called it Voodoo 2.
You may know me from then as Leroy.Used to hang with Len Paterson,Hattie,Dave 90,Mitch,Keith (12 volt),and Tommy (dropsie)
Harley riders were Tiny (Simon) and Steve on 45's and Ian on purple Duo-Glide(he's now in Canada).
 
Re: Salt Box cafe

Some brilliant pictures on the Nightingale site - I would have been about five when it closed. :eek:.

Those back patches would raise quite a stir now. Pity really as there used to be loads of back and side patch clubs around who used to get on with each other with the minimum of serious hassle.

I'm from up grim North in West Yorkshire so we had different biker meeting places (mostly gone now due to the invasion of Little Chefs and other chains) and different clubs (also almost all gone, swallowed by other clubs or erm.... "closed down").

Anyone answer ochstephens questions on perception of Harleys in those days? Presumably almost every Harley then would have been a 45.
 
Re: Salt Box cafe

used to go to the salt box in and around 1963 the guy who ran it called himself BATTLER BRITAIN he would fine anyone he fancied for anything he thought was worth a few pence and the money went towards the swimming pool he was building for the club members. the members actually got roped in to digging it at the weekends. i stopped going there in 1964 till 1971 and the place was then called salt box country club, it turned out that Battler had feathered his nest from the hard work that the saltbox club members and sold it as a country club. we then
went to the more important WW2 cafe, still visiting our youth in 1971,the "NIGHTINGALE" and that was then a wood yard, life goes on ime afraid but generally
forum
the whole area hasn't changed unlike the towns, you can still see the saltbox site, although empty and fenced, and the nightingale site is still there it could quite easily be turned back to a cafe. god knows what happened to the "country club:169B9ADF431545348BC:169B9ADF431545348BC
 
Re: Salt Box cafe

dodgyloner said:
Anyone answer ochstephens questions on perception of Harleys in those days? Presumably almost every Harley then would have been a 45.
Click to expand...
Obviously I'm way too young for all that 60's stuff. At the start of the 70's I used to hang out at Chelsea Bridge with the odd trip to Johnsons when visiting my folks in Kent. My Harley was a 45 and generally the attitude was much the same as now. "Don't 'andle do they Mate, bit slow, I 'ear the brakes are shite."
Along with the predictable "Aw much? ?250? Bleedin' 'ell you could have got a Norton or a Vinnie for that and had change." Things haven't changed that much.
 
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