You could say that biking is in Phil’s blood, he has ridden legally on the road for the last 47 years and in that time has never been without at least one bike. Before that he had various field bikes and trials bikes as many of the children did back in those days.
As a child Phil was dragged around the tracks by his equally bike mad father and, although he didn’t know it at the time, Phil witnessed some of the absolute great battles between the likes of Agostini, Hailwood, Read etc. One of Phil’s distant relatives is Eric Oliver, an ex sidecar world champion so It was rather inevitable that Phil would end up racing himself and if has two or three wheels he has probably given it a go.
Phil has ridden trials (on two and three wheels), trail ridden in Nevada and Morocco, motocrossed, supermoto’d, drag races, circuit raced (on two and three wheels), Enduro raced, raced speedway bikes but it all culminated in racing the Manx GP in 2003 and 2004. Since retiring from competitive sports Phil was an IAM observer for many years as well as providing track training. These days its all a bit more relaxed working part time in a bike shop and organising his next bike adventure.
Phil, like many others, started on an FS1-E then an RD250 and onto an XS750 but has had literally hundreds of bikes over the years including some real exotic Ducatis, Laverdas and Bimotas.
These days his main mile munching bike is a BMW 1250GSA and for the weekends he has a Norton 961 Commando and a few ongoing and seemingly never ending projects such as a 1980’s Suzuki Katana 1000SV and a Ducati DS1000 Cafe Racer.
Since joining the PEMC Phil has been on many trips to countries including Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Spain, Morocco. On a recent PEMC trip to Turkey Phil rode through 14 countries on just that one tour.
Phil’s advice to anyone joining the club is to jump in with both feet, it’s a friendly and very active club and new members are always made very welcome.