A MONMOUTH couple who first met during a chance encounter with a motorbike celebrated 70 years of marriage last weekend.

Roger and Sally Steer, both in their 90s, celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary on Saturday, March 20, at their home in Monmouth.

Over the years, Roger has been involved in fundraising for Monmouth’s Shire Hall as well as organising town carnivals in the 1970s and 80s.

The couple, who have also lived in London as well as overseas, first met during a calamitous encounter in which Sally fell over Roger’s prized motorbike outside the Co-op.

Motorbike enthusiast Roger had arranged to sell his ‘pride and joy’ in order to purchase another bike when disaster almost struck at a local dance.

‘‘I had parked my motorbike, my pride and joy, just outside the local Co-op during a dance organised by a bunch of youngsters, one of whom was Sally,’’,Roger recalled.

‘‘She had gone down to get a breath of fresh air and in the dark, had found my bike by falling over it. She returned fuming over a ruined pair of nylon stockings, which were irreplaceable at that time, and wishing to sort out the miserable guy who was responsible for parking the machine where she could fall over it.

‘‘I was equally upset to think of my bike being unceremoniously felled and no doubt damaged. I confess I gave minimal thought to Sally’s plight and dashed down to view the damage. Thus we met, I can’t remember how we ended the debate that evening, I do remember agreeing with her that it was a stupid place to park a motorbike and that we should meet again soon and thus we began a very long togetherness.’’

During World War Two, the couple both worked in London.

‘‘Journeys to and from work more often than not involved dodging the bombs and shrapnel, or detours from a normal route due to an unexploded bomb,’’ Roger said.

Sally worked in North London for the Home Office, which now operates from GCHQ in Cheltenham, in the communications department decoding messages, while Roger was in and out of London attending school and college as well as serving his apprenticeship. Hethen received his ‘call up’ papers in 1947, so he and Sally had to say their goodbyes.

On his military posting, Roger said: ‘‘I reported to the Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry in Bodmin, Cornwall. I arrived in Port Said and from there the 17th/21st Lancers were transported to northern Palestine along with the tanks we were trained on.

‘‘Initially I enjoyed the drills in driving the tanks although it all had a serious side, speed was one of them and they were cold in the winter, hot in the summer and I had seen they burn quite easily so I became quickly disenchanted with tanks and volunteered as a despatch rider.

‘‘Following the ending of the mandate in Palestine I was posted in 1948 to North Africa to another cavalry regiment 13th/18th Hussars.’’

When Roger returned to the UK in 1950, he and Sally were put in a difficult position by Sally’s family, who did not approve of their relationship.

‘‘Her parents had not approved of her dating anyone but thanks to her friend, Pauline, we were able to get to dances or the pictures without them knowing. We wrote to each other the entire time right through my demob in 1950.’’

Sally’s father had been gassed in the First World War, leaving him with only one lung.

With her mother also not in good health, they were against Sally marrying and moving away as they would have no one to care for them in their old age. But Roger and Sally decided to elope without Sally’s parents’ consent, and were married on Saturday March 20 1951 at a simple registry office ceremony with no reception or photographer.

Roger remarked: ‘We were both 21 and nothing did we fear!’

During that time, Roger achieved his HNC in mechanical engineering and found work as a projects engineer in London, while Sally continued to work at the Home Office.

Roger went on to have a 30-year career in engineering which took him oversees to Germany and Sweden, working as a hydraulics engineer and technical manager amongst other roles, before settling in Monmouth.

He has been a member of The Rotary Club for over 50 years, holding many positions in different clubs including president, and was ‘honoured’ to be made a Paul Harris Fellow by the Monmouth club.

He also served as a Shire Hall steward where he helped raise funds for its recovery and refurbishment, as well as organising Monmouth Town Carnival in 1979 and 1980, which featured horse-drawn carriages, hand-built floats and marching bands.

Roger and Sally’s son Andrew Steer, who lives in the Western Cape in South Africa with his wife, had planned to join his parents in Monmouth for their anniversary this month but were unable to travel due to Covid restrictions.

The couple, pictured above, have a total of four children, 11 grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and one great great-grandchild all scattered across the world in the UK, USA, South Africa and Australia.