Two Cwmbran sisters have paid a touching tribute to their late dad and want bikers to join them at his funeral.
Clare and Rowan Luxton grew up being ridden around on the back of Michael’s motorbikes and struggle to remember him driving a car.
The 67-year-old passed away in July. They invited me for a drink in Coffee#1 in the town centre. The sisters shared brilliant stories of his life and then pulled up their jeans to proudly show me matching tattoos of a motorbike on the back of their left legs.
Rowan told me: “His dad was a biker, so he’d watch his dad build them and take them apart and put them back together, and eventually learned to do the same.
“Funny enough, in his garage in Cardiff, he’s got two of the bikes he used to ride, which are obviously no longer in use, and then one that he was building from scratch, which was literally just like a shell basically.
“He loved everything about bikes, literally everything. His favourites were Kawasaki and Yamaha. I think it stemmed from his dad.
“He used to live on Waun Road in St Dials. The first time we went on one was up the hill in Waun Road, he stuck me on his tank when I was about 18 months old.
‘Faster dad, faster!’
“I loved it, I used to say to him, ‘faster dad, faster!’.”
She said her dad was “quite poorly” with several infections and a disease in his heart.
“His body wasn’t strong enough to fight them off. He slipped away in his sleep. He needs to have one last good send-off,” said Rowan
Michael Luxton moved to Cardiff from Cwmbran “about” 30 years ago.
Clare said: “Even when we lived in Oxtens, we’ve got photos from when we were like eight, even younger than that, we’ve got pictures of us on his bikes in the back garden.
“Our mum still lives in the same house. He’d take us up the road [on a bike] to get us used to it, and then when we were old enough, he’d take us out. I miss it so much.
“He did drive a car, but I don’t think I ever saw him in one.”
Rowan then jumped in and laughed as she reminded Clare of the time the family went to Tenby in a “little Panda” driven by her dad.
Hornblower pub
Rowan said: “He used to drink in the Hornblower [a bikers’ pub now closed] in Newport.
“We spent most of our childhood in that pub. He knew the owners, we’d be upstairs with the owners’ kids watching like ET on the telly.”
Rowan remembered how her dad would do two return trips from Cardiff to Cwmbran, to pick each of his young daughters up to visit his house.
She said: “We’d both go down there on the weekend. He’d ride down, pick Clare up, take her down, pick me up, and then take me down. So none of us missed out on going on the bike. It was lush. Bless him, every weekend.”
Clare joked that they used to “argue” over who would go on the bike to Cardiff first, as the other sister would have to wait until he got back.”
Rowan said: “Bikers are like one big family, so I think, I hope, when someone passes away they all come together.”
Clare said: “If we could give our dad a good send off, he would love it, he’d be really happy.
‘Sound of motorbikes’
“I’d love it as well. It would make our day, well, his more than anything, to hear the sounds of motorbikes following behind him. I wish we could ride one behind him.”
Rowan recalled one bike her dad owned, a powerful Yamaha, and would “hear” him riding through the Henllys lanes from her mum’s house in Oxtens.
She said: “I’d sit in my bedroom waiting and I’d hear him coming out of the lanes, and be like, ‘mum, dad’s here.”
Michael had five grandchildren and a great-grandson. He worked as a fabricator welder, a job that took him all over the world, including Japan and Cyprus.
Michael Luxton’s funeral details
Michael Luxton’s funeral is at Gwent Crematorium on Wednesday 27 August 2025 at 4pm. The family and the bikers that join them will leave Oxtens in Coed Eva (opposite the Blinkin’ Owl pub) at around 3.30pm.