A yellow card for Roger  
 

 

Having missed the Essex Rally as our daughter Sophie was getting married that Saturday, I was really looking forward to The Scrumpies 10th Anniversary Rally. The weather forecast for the weekend had started off not too promising at the beginning of the week, and by the time I went to bed on Thursday night, it had changed to being mostly fine all weekend. So I was really disappointed to find the skies leaden and the rain stopping and starting all morning. I had intended riding up with the main party meeting at Chieveley Services at 11am. By the time the ntl engineer had come to fix our TV and I had got the bike packed, it was way too late for that, so I rode round to Dave & Sarah’s for their noon meet.

I arrived a few minutes before Dave returned from work, and the first thing I noticed when he removed his crash helmet, was that he’d had his hair restyled and hi-lighted. Whilst it suited him, it made him look much younger. I said nothing, as anything from me on the subject of hair usually sounds like sour grapes.

From their house we rode the 200 yards to Tesco’s to fill up with petrol. Now, most of you know, I recently bought a Honda Deauville to commute to work on and as a result I am out of practice when it comes to riding the V-Max. When we left the garage, my brain was in Honda mode and as we moved off towards the first roundabout I was a little enthusiastic with the right wrist. I launched forwards very rapidly, hurtling towards the back of Sarah’s bike. At the same time as screaming a profanity at myself I grabbed a handful of brakes …… only to find they are not as good, (relatively) at stopping as the Honda. Certainly a good way to focus the concentration for the rest of the ride!

 

Because of the promising weather forecast, we were each expecting the rain to ease off at some point and the sun to come through. But it wasn’t to be. We were in rain, heavy rain, or very heavy rain most of the journey which together with the usual copious amounts of traffic around Winchester made it a thoroughly miserable ride. It seemed to go on for ever, and we were more than happy to find the camp site at the second attempt!  One of those situations where you think you must have gone wrong, only to find you were within spitting distance if you had only continued a few more yards.

 

We got the usual warm Scrumpies welcome and an audience as we gingerly made our way across to the camp site in the muddy tracks of a hundred other bikes. This was to be a record breaking weekend. By Saturday morning they had over 600 members there and the final tally by Saturday night was 657. Brilliant … well done Scrumpies! With the tents and flag pole erected it was time to hit the bar. Just then the heavens opened and Sean, Leigh and Josh hadn’t got their tent up yet. A few gallant souls lent a hand and got very wet in the process……  I sat in my tent taking photos of them and checking out my goody bag, complete with a cider apple.

  
 

Anne and Nick from South London were also having problems. They had arrived on site with their new tent, only to discover they had brought the wrong set of poles. Nick reluctantly rode home through the rain to correct the error, only to find they had the right ones all the time !!!!!

Once in the bar, the jibes about Dave’s hair started. No need to tell you that FfffPete was the main protagonist. Having milked the subject for every last joke he could make, Pete then shouted out to the hundreds of people in the bar,

  
 

that enough is enough and he wanted no more taking the P*ss out of Dave’s hair. Poor old Dave! Then to add insult to injury numerous request were made for Haircut 100’s Fantastic Day, and the DJ honoured them all.

Roger in the meantime had vowed to really enjoy himself, and he lost no time. In fact he enjoyed himself to point where he was to become a health and safety risk!. We got a message …. “Rog has ‘dived’ onto the dancefloor and he can’t get up. We duly removed him, so the dancing could continue and we sat him down at our table trying to make sense of the nonsense and bad language coming from his mouth. He then fell off the chair onto the floor, at which point Fffpete carried him back to his tent. During the night apparently, Rog’s tent leaked and dripped onto his jeans. The curious thing was it only dripped around the crutch area! The following morning they were washed and hung out to dry, whilst Dave and Rog both nursed king sized hang-overs.  I don’t know if Rog has yet realised why it took so long for his jeans to dry……….suffice to say someone had a water pistol !!!!!!!

Whilst all of this was going on, I won two prizes in the raffle. A Carole Nash T Shirt and cordless power drill.  EXCELLENT (Apart from having to carry it back home on an already overloaded bike)

  
  I was up and about Saturday morning bright and early as the sun was up, the sky was blue and beautiful day was in store. As I walked to the club house for a shower, the bright sun was shining through a gazebo casting detailed silhouettes of the patio furniture inside.   
 

On one chair in the corner a guy was lounging, with his legs outstretched and his feet crossed. The shadow even showed up his boot laces. I wished I had my camera as it would have made a brilliant photo. From the Club House I walked to the Scrumpies HQ for a cup of tea, and whilst walking alongside the forest, I saw all the gorse bushes covered in dew laden cobwebs. They glowed silver in the suns rays and again I wished I had my camera. Tea in hand, I hurried back to my tent, spilling my tea in the process. I found it worrying that nowadays if I spill something my stomach always manages to be the furthest extremity and where the spillage settles. So another clean t shirt and I return to the gazebo with my camera, only to find the sun is now higher, the shadows less defined, my lounger gone and three people there in his place. I took a shot, but it is nothing to the original image. I then went to photograph the cobwebs, only to find them a soggy messy mass. Dave and Rog were in no fit condition to go for a ride, so a small group of us, Pete, Jan and James, Keith, Ash, Mr K, Haley and myself led by Ken went to a nearby Yamaha dealer and another accessory shop. Whilst there we spoke to a guy who offered to take us to a Custom Cruiser clothing shop, and we accepted his offer to lead us there. It turned out to be Roadware, who have invited us to attend their 1st Birthday BBQ on Sunday 19th September. I will put the details in the ‘What’s on’ page. En route we passed other Centre 12 members doing the same destinations in a different order. A bit of panic set in, as knowing Sue had already been to Roadware we assumed anything of any worth would have been snapped up! After free coffee and some lively banter we left there, Pete having bought a Dragstar badge. We then went to the cliff top at Boscombe for a baguette in a very nice, if slightly pricey ‘Bistro’ style café. It was here that Pete managed to break his new badge! From there the next stop was Poole Harbour. We toured the town trying to find a new gas cylinder for Mr K’s gas stove without success, then went for a pint in a harbourside pub and got into more banter with a couple of ladies on the next table. Mr K and Jeanette had a common interest in Mitsubishi Evo’s and so there was a lot of talk about cars and bikes, which culminated in him taking the other young lady for a ride on his bike.

 
  She had never been on a bike before, but with Haleys helpful advice and the loan of her crash helmet, they were soon riding off. A good time was had by all apparently and she now wants to get a bike and join us. In the meantime we had bullied Jeanette into inviting us back for a BBQ. This was before she realised there could be up to  600 of us!   
 

Stomachs rumbling again, so on Jeanettes recommendation we found the local fish and chip shop and sat by the harbour to eat it. This was where Ken’s bike became a bird puller!  At one point he had three starlings sitting on his wing mirror, saddle and screen. My bike was also ‘visited’ by one, which made a nasty mess in my left handle grip.
 

As we were about to leave, Mr K received a phone call saying there had been a plane crash at the airport next to our camp site and the roads were all closed. We made our way back, hoping we could bluff our way past the Police, but they weren’t having any of it. During the debate about which way we could go etc, the Police agreed to give us an escort. Two motorcycle cops on Off Road dirt bikes led us round

the airport perimeter, down country lanes with a 40mph limit, which they meticulously ignored. I was at the back doing about 70 to keep up !  Even at this pace, another group of VSOC members caught us up. I wanted to tell them not to overtake us as the Police were ahead, but of course we were not stopping at road junctions or roundabouts, we were being ushered straight through each time. Suddenly the lead rider of the other group pulled alongside me and called out “Hello John”, I turned to see it was Axle from Peterborough. I shouted back, "Great having a Police escort isn’t it?”  “Yes” he said, not having clue what I had said and zoomed off down the outside of our pack. As he reached the head of the column, he suddenly saw the Police, grabbed a fistful of brakes, pulled back into the line and nearly wiped FfffPete out. One of the Policemen turned and wagged a finger at him!  As always, I really loved riding with the Police, and you could tell they really enjoyed the ride too….  It was brilliant.
  Back on site we learned that Rog’s behaviour was deemed unacceptable, and he had been awarded a Yellow Card by The Committee. One more infringement and he was to be asked to leave. Poor Rog was already embarrassed enough, especially as he had no recall of what had gone on. There was a look of genuine painful disbelief on his face as we went through the catalogue of loutish drunken behaviour of the night before. He vowed to behave himself and spent the evening apologising to anyone and everyone who passed by, just in case he may of offended them the night before. It was several hours before we let on that it was a wind up!  Still it kept him sober enough to enjoy the Madness tribute band who played two fantastic sets. Shortly after it was the turn of the Solent boys and girls to misbehave. They may as well just leave their fancy dress off altogether as they usual end up in the all together anyway!  What a great bunch they are. See photos below ONLY IF YOU ARE NOT EASILY OFFENDED!
 

 

The firework display celebrated 10 years of the Scrumpies, then I hit the sack, knowing I needed a clear head to ride home on Sunday. In Bank Holiday traffic I couldn’t afford to relapse into Honda mode!

I had a wonderful weekend, with some of the best friends anyone could ever wish to have and I can’t wait for the next rally. Unfortunately that will be next year now. Oh well, we have lots of fond memories to tide us over.

Take care,  John Stevens

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Rog finds out who his friends are!

Got up early on Friday morning to be greeted by rain, Jan said it would stop, but I knew we had it till midday, so we loaded up the bikes in the rain and then set off to meet up with Baz, Irene and Ken. 9.30 Sharp we set off to meet the others at Newbury services as arranged. The ride down was OK, a bit damp, but the traffic was light so we got to the services in good time and had a hot mug of tea to warm up.

Paul was already there [on his bike] with a big grin on his face and Roger turned up a short time later to tell us that Nick was waiting for the rain to stop because he had just cleaned his bike and did not want to get it dirty! After laughing our socks off and chatting to some of the scooter boys who were going to the Isle of White, we set off to find some Scrumpies.

Got to the site very easily due to good signs, signed in at the control desk and then we had to make our way to the field in thick mud, as the rain had made the entrance very boggy. The rain soon stopped so we managed to get the tents up in the dry, and parked the bikes in the bike park just as the rain started again. Sean and Leigh from C19 turned up so I helped them to put up their tent and got wet through, but Sean said "many thanks" for my help! After drying out I hit the bar for my first drink of the weekend with Roger and some of the others. Whilst we were drinking, the rest of Centre 12 turned up and got their tents up and were soon ready to party themselves. Friday night Dave and Roger got pissed out of their heads and missed everything that happened on the ride out the next day. During the course of Saturday I came up with a cunning plan to make Roger feel guilty about getting out of order and drunk on Friday night. This involved an imaginary yellow card which we told him the Scrumpies had issued him because of his outrageous behaviour the night before. If he got into anymore trouble, he would be issued a red card and would have his membership taken away. We kept this joke going for several hours before finally letting on the whole thing was a joke. Luckily Roger saw the funny side of it. Sunday night Centre 12 was proud to be the loudest Centre in the club house due to a funny and friendly argument between us and a very loud welsh man who I think was from Centre 9. We then got into a singing competition which was very good fun and ended up with several people singing solo. After a lot more drinking and shouting we were finally thrown out of the club house and made our way back to the tents to try and get some long needed sleep. We awoke Monday morning, had a good breakfast, said goodbye to everyone and then headed home. Once at home we unloaded the bikes, packed all our stuff away, then sat down and passed out. This is just a brief outline of an excellent weekend and anyone that has not tried a rally should try next year! I recommend it 100%.

Many thanks Pete (Deputy Rep)