Old Rally Memories

[FLATTOP]

I dont know whether any body used to atttend any rallys in the past but i was looking on e-bay for old rally badges and i see one that jogged my memory, it was a badge from the Hailsham Motorcycle club for the Red Lion Rally after a bit of research i discovered that they disbanded in 2007 shortly after the Red Lion closed down. There were some interesting characters, one that i will never forget was Brighton Bob who used to wear stockings and suspenders under his leathers and used to strip down to them when he was pissed, good memories that will stay with me for life,here is a very interesting link that i discovered have a good browse through you never know some of you older members might remember some of the rallys all the best Bill.

http://www.lpmcc.net/rallies/rally_index.htm

[PDS]

when i was about 14 or so I used to get dragged along to "wing Dings" Honda Goldwing club do's with my step father, and i remember thinking what a boring bunch of............................ :)

[Grumpy]

The last 'old style' rally I went to was Storming the Castle, held near Durham, about 9 years ago.
It started raining on the friday night and didn't stop until sunday morning!
The beer was great, the entertainment was fun ( the main act was John Otway!). The jinx that went on are not repeatable on an open forum!!
I remember waking up on sunday morning smelling burnt burgers being cooked, with dew on my face, freezing with a major hangover!!

[Blah blah]

I found a load of old 'star bikers' egg run badges in a box recently, together with a Bulldog Bash T shirt in a drawer, both from the 80's.

I used to love the Bulldog Bash, bikes 'n' beer for a weekend, brrrrrilliant

[scrapps]

Yep used to do a few in the past.
Found my old jacket with its "lock up your sheep" rally badges on it.
A great rally near bodium castle run by southeast MAG. Great memories of crap food warm beer and leaking tents but the most laugh's.
Even had our picture in AWOL magazine after fitting 8 people on a bandit and riding around the field(while very pissed) did not seem to rain as much then !

[FLATTOP]

Brilliant keep them coming some of the things i used to see at the early Kent Custom shows were lets say eye opening,one rally i attended we had quad bike races pissed, not a good idea i rode into a rope boundry and burnt my self and another time we were all gathered round talking and a tent blew up and burst into flames someone had been cooking inside with one of those small calor gas canisters, we bundled him into a side car and whisked him off to hospital with serious burns great memories lol.:biggrin:

[alan c]

I was in a club called Bexley gropers mcc and we used to attend Rally,s and we had our own Rally called The wandering hand.
Great times ! i just went and found my cut down with various badges of rally's attended.
Ox rally, Cornwall - Oosser rally, Dorset - Monkey hangers, Hartlepool - White cliffs, Dover etc etc.
loads of fun and memories, leave work asap on a Friday, ride to Rally sometimes miles away! get pissed and do stupid things for a few days then ride home !

[scrapps]

Cracking photo Alan :eyepopping:

[Darkness]

I'm still waiting for Old Rally to come up with some memories?

[He11cat]

@ Flattop Brilliant keep them coming some of the things i used to see at the early Kent Custom shows were lets say eye opening,one rally i attended we had quad bike races pissed, not a good idea i rode into a rope boundry and burnt my self and another time we were all gathered round talking and a tent blew up and burst into flames someone had been cooking inside with one of those small calor gas canisters, we bundled him into a side car and whisked him off to hospital with serious burns great memories lol.

Guess who was camped right near you then!!!
That scared the crap out of me...
I was at that one as I was really close to that tent!!!
Was that the same one where the weather was hell?
It turned into a mudbath and sadly there was an accident where a rider lost his leg and his female pillion died just outside on the road outside the site?

I was soaked all weekend and had to buy all new clothes and boots from army surplus.
Getting bikes out was hell..
They chucked down straw which clogged in the wheels making things worse for us all.
Was horrendous.

I think the explosion year was http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/qq3/helsinkvampire/93B6E264-9D1E-4859-9293-3A677604D8F9-700-0000009E72D199B4.jpg

That's my badge !! I still have it :)

Also Magna Carta was one I used to go too.
http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/qq3/helsinkvampire/EDD5108F-EBBB-4D2E-8C04-6752D982A55F-700-0000009E95BA4044.jpg

[He11cat]

My trusty 1st rally bike http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/qq3/helsinkvampire/Old%20stuff/pig.jpg

1993 ( after I left my husband who was at Kent with me )
These where the Bedford gangs rally bikes :)
http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/qq3/helsinkvampire/bikes/rally93bikes.jpg

Luckily a fairly local rally I came back via back roads.
I had to stay most of the day to recover I was so hungover and felt so sick I couldn't even be arsed to pack well :(
http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/qq3/helsinkvampire/bikes/hungoverpacking.jpg drunk.
http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/qq3/helsinkvampire/05EA0116-FD69-46B7-8BF0-9B84FB04FA2A-700-000000AE60851C51.jpg

And with the boys http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/qq3/helsinkvampire/A7118934-F253-4475-A34B-4776D009AE98-700-000000AC1D898B5D.jpg

[scrapps]

Arrr yes the Kent custom rally I used to watch the bikes heading to this when I was young and dreaming of getting my first bike :)
I like the picture of dodgy packing of bikes as I remember trying to get a whole weekends camping/cooking stuff on the back of my mk1 gsxr750 slabside (no panniers) that's why I still travel light with only one tail pack for a week :eyepopping:

[He11cat]

Great conversation between some bikers the other night .
Packing light how many days can you get out of one pair of pants ( no going comando).
That's grim .
I draw the line at dirty kecks.
I nearly said just buy a bottle of travel fabreeze ...

[scrapps]

Yep less clothes packed more room for drink. we also had a small gas can on a fire incident.
Guy thought it was empty as his gas lamp went out so tossed it on the fire in the middle of our circle of tents :fou: it was Not and shot a 20ft flame out until it was:flamed:
Lucky for us it landed with the hole pointing up into the sky so nobody hurt.

[utopia]

My earliest rally memory is of the Dragon Rally in 1974.
Thirteen of us set off from leicester late on the friday night, the plan being to get to the 24hr truckstop cafe on the A5 at cannock and spend a couple of hours eating fry-ups and playing pinball before continuing on to an early morning rendezvous for an organised scenic route ride-in to the site. I don't know when we planned to sleep.
It was there that I learned that "froyd sloyce" was black country speak for a crispy golden slice of fried white bread, juicy with grease.
The gents toilets at that place were unspeakeably awful, and the car park had potholes which could swallow a bike whole.
Continuing on into the small hours, with the inevitable juke -box status quo ringing in our ears, we hit rain as we crossed into wales and it just got steadily worse until we were all thoroughly drenched by the time we reached the rendezvous point at about 7.00am.
The ride-in was worth it though. The organisers must have been very local because they lead us along narrow, twisting mountain tracks, green with moss in places, and in others cobbled and glistening treacherously in the rain, with steep, unguarded drop-offs down to the valley floor. This made it particularly tense to pilot my cb500-4 honda with heavy pillion passenger, extensive camping gear and turbo-lag disc brake (for the younger reader, you squeezed the lever but nothing much happened at all for a second or two while the water cleared). I was following a guy on a triumph engined kneeler sidecar outfit painted in bronze metalflake. My eyes were on stalks.
It had apparently been raining in wales for days and the surprisingly flat campsite on the banks of the river conwy had a layer of standing water lurking between the grass. Being some of the first to arrive, we selected a slightly drier raised area and got out the tent, only to discover that one of its two poles was still broken from a previous festival outing. By that time we were knackered though, so we pitched it as best we could and grabbed a few hours sleep amongst the folds of canvas.
When we awoke at around midday, the tent floor was half covered in water. We peered out of the doorway. It was like a bombsite out there, ankle deep in sloppy mud between mud spattered tents, with bikes being pulled out of the gloop all around us. By this time very few bikes were able to remain upright between the field entrance and their chosen pitch, which amused us while we made tea and tried to fry bacon.
Later, there was a huge bonfire and we all ruined our sodden belstaffs by suspending them on a stick, scarecrow fashion, as close to the heat as we could get, where they were dry and slightly crispy in no time. We then set off to the pub.
As we walked along two ducatis rumbled past, exhausts booming under the overhanging trees and echoing off the heavy mountains. One was a 750GT, the other a 750S, and I was immediately and completely smitten. As a student of engineering, I also knew that this was no passing infatuation.
Those round case bevel motors really were a thing of beauty, but ducatis of the day were expensive and unreliable. Quoting from Motor Cycle Weekly, june 1977..."Engine and frame are beautiful, the rest is largely rubbish".... and so the passion remained dormant for many years and nearly expired altogether during my decade away from biking in the 80s/90s.
When I returned, the monster had been born. Now not only reliable and relatively cheap, the power sapping and complex bevel gears had been replaced by simple, efficient belts. It also sported the integrated trellis frame/stressed engine/monoshock combo, usd forks, effective discs all round, fat sticky tyres on cast wheels, cdi ignition, more power and less weight.
There was no contest and that, dear reader, is how I came to own my M750.....the scratching of a thirty year old itch.
There is absolutely no question whatsoever that I will ever part with it.

[scrapps]

Great write up Utopia,makes me fancy going to another bike rally camping with basic kit and re living the past. But it raises the question would I enjoy it as much now I am more used to staying in hotels and b&b.
Maybe it would be fun as a change is sometimes a good thing ?

[FLATTOP]

@ Flattop Brilliant keep them coming some of the things i used to see at the early Kent Custom shows were lets say eye opening,one rally i attended we had quad bike races pissed, not a good idea i rode into a rope boundry and burnt my self and another time we were all gathered round talking and a tent blew up and burst into flames someone had been cooking inside with one of those small calor gas canisters, we bundled him into a side car and whisked him off to hospital with serious burns great memories lol.

Guess who was camped right near you then!!!
That scared the crap out of me...
I was at that one as I was really close to that tent!!!
Was that the same one where the weather was hell?
It turned into a mudbath and sadly there was an accident where a rider lost his leg and his female pillion died just outside on the road outside the site?

I was soaked all weekend and had to buy all new clothes and boots from army surplus.
Getting bikes out was hell..
They chucked down straw which clogged in the wheels making things worse for us all.
Was horrendous.

I think the explosion year was http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/qq3/helsinkvampire/93B6E264-9D1E-4859-9293-3A677604D8F9-700-0000009E72D199B4.jpg

That's my badge !! I still have it :)

Also Magna Carta was one I used to go too.
http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/qq3/helsinkvampire/EDD5108F-EBBB-4D2E-8C04-6752D982A55F-700-0000009E95BA4044.jpg

Brilliant pics Hellcat love the one of the badly packed bike shocking lol, i have a Kent custom badge from 1989 it was the year Suzi Quatro played there i went to many custom shows i cant remember what year it was when the explosion occured cos i was mostly pissed lol but i used to go before they used to hold it on romney marsh it used to be held at a halfway house in a couple of fields somewhere but damn if i can remember, i suppose the weekender is the modern equivalent of the old style rally maybe i should come this year and pitch up a tent in the hotel car park lol hope to meet you one day you are definetly an old school Biker ride safe Bill.

[alan c]

Halfway Cafe on the A20 at Harrietsham, got a patch on the back of my cutdown !

[alan c]

16860

Had to get new cut down many years ago as old one worn out/smelly !