An island story
Alan Winter, owner of this Ariel KH 500 Twin with full patina and history, is a big man. And a character. He’s also a precision automotive engineer, originally from Northern Ireland. When I noticed the Ariel’s cracked mirror (rescued from a skip) and asked if he was superstitious, Alan came back swiftly with: “Wasn’t me that broke it!”
Alan’s pursuit of this KH was as chequered a story as the bike’s own registration – being built in 1952, sent to fulfil an order on the Isle of Man, and registered there in 1953. The order, originally intending to use the KH as a sidecar tug, fell through, and the Ariel, stripped of its dynamo, battery, headlamp etc for lightness, had been used as a marshal’s bike for the 1953 TT, ridden by recently retired 1949 350cc world champion Freddie Frith.
When the KH was sold on to Northern Ireland in 1957, with the headlight refitted but not the dynamo, it had to be reregistered, as no IoM registrations are allowed off the Island. And that, after a while, was where Alan came in.
Winter is coming
In 1965 the farmer in County Armagh, Ulster, who
