A GRANDMOTHER’S dream to feel the wind in her hair one more time while riding a motor- cycle became a reality on Wednesday.

Ninety-eight-year-old Vera Rosser used to whizz around country lanes to and from work on a motorbike as teenager.

Since she has been at Henry Cornish Care Centre in Chipping Norton for the past five years she has dreamt of doing so again.

Her carer Lynn Hancock posted an advert in the Chipping Norton News and life-long motorbike enthusiast and retired Hook Norton Baptist Church pastor John Taylor took up the challenge and offered her a seat on the back of his Honda 650 NT.

Seen off by sisters Jane Hobbs and Jo Coy, Mrs Rosser spent a thrilling 20 minutes whizzing around the back roads of Chipping Norton.

After getting her breath back, she said: “I loved it, I thought it was fantastic.

“It really took me back. I’ve got something to think about now, I will dream about it tonight.

“It was taking me back to something I did in the past.”

Mrs Rosser grew up in Eydon near Banbury and when she started work at the Alcan plant in Banbury in the 1930s she used to make the 22-mile round trip on her two-stroke motorbike.

She first got into bikes as a teenager when her brother Tom Coy let her ride on the back of his machine.

She soon got the hang of it, so much so that she admits taking a lot of boys for a spin on the back of her bike.

She said: “I used to take boys out on the back and then I would go faster when we reached a corner.

“They would say, ‘Slow down Vera, there’s a corner coming,’ then I would speed up and they would have to hold on even tighter!”

Mrs Rosser said she hopes to ride again before she turns 100.

Her daughter Mrs Hobbs, said: “She’s always looked for a bit of adventure. She used to do horse riding and drove a pony and trap.

“We are very impressed that she did it. We were very nervous beforehand.”

It seems Vera was always attracted to adventure. Her late husband Leslie Rosser, who died eight years ago aged 90, was an RAF pilot and flew Lancaster bombers and eventually Spitfires in the Second World War. The couple had five children and lived in South Wales before settling in Moreton-in -Marsh.

Mr Taylor said: “She had sort of given up on this wish but other people hadn’t.

“Once she got on the bike I think she remembered everything and remembered which way to lean and to just go with the bike.

“I had to keep looking round to make sure she was OK but she seemed to stay on OK.

“When you are on the back of a bike it’s the nearest thing to flying.”