There is something slightly strange about featuring a bike which has not only been a denizen of The Shed for more years than I can actually remember, but which has appeared in these pages before – but never in a feature about itself. If the slightly less than pristine machine which you are currently gazing at with a mixture of awe and envy looks familiar, it's because it's appeared in The Shed from time to time down the years. Why? Because I bought it (very cheaply indeed) as a non-runner way way back in olden days, and have described returning it to hopefully active life a couple of times. Why? Because, believe it or not, I genuinely like the bike!
The main reason we decided to feature our very own Norton Navigator is in answer to the steady stream of unhappy correspondence we receive bewailing the supposed fact that even in these supposedly straitened times there are no affordable RealClassics. This isn't actually the case, gentle reader, it's more an excuse for a bit of a drizzle. Which is fine by me. I drizzle all the time, as you might expect.
My original intention was to compare this, Norton's handy 350 twin, with its AMC stablemate, the Matchless G5 350 single, with which it shares some components – but not as many as the endlessly grumbling pundits might have you believe. So why is Norton's singular twin here all on its own? Because I might write up the Matchless – which has also been a Shed inhabitant for centuries – on its own at some point. For much the same reason: they're both entirely practical machines which can provide oodles
