As if by magic, the beer truck appears

We hadn't camped up long when, whilst I was lying half in me tent, a voice quizzed "are ye bikers1"?, guessing it was unlikely to be the taxman, I confirmed his fears, it turned out to be Mac in Fife who by some amazing feat had recognised me boots, great observation skills mate. Mac camped up with us, never having met this rabble of random particles of wierdness before. By the end of the weekend we felt as if we'd all known each other for years. Surprising, not least due to the fact that I had in fact known most of the company for years.

For me at least, this is why I love the Farmyard, six thousand folk, but so laid back and friendly, ye always meet new mates here.

Of to claim my beer tokens courtesy of my "Flexible Friend", i.e my MAG memebership card, eight quids worth of beer tokens, ferchrissakkes, so £18 quid pre book and eight quid back, by my arithmetic that means me ticket actually cost me nine pounds four and thruppence ha'penny, result !

I hadn't made it out of the MAG tent when Pugwash introduced himself. His loverly bandit chop is featured here, he'd ridden 250 miles north on his hardtail, to get to the party, might have been more comfy on his bike methinks ;-) Folk from all ends of the country here.

Deciding that these pricks were too much bother we got the dragstar started and limped off making it to the "Punch Bowl Inn" by Borrowdale Beck. Where Andy (a biker) and his missus made us most welcome despite us unloading gallons of water on their carpet, big thanks to them for the hospitality and coffee and a big thanks to the car transporter driver who gave us a can of WD40 and told us to keep it, cheers, both extremes of humanity in the space of fifteen minutes.

On the subject of the better side of humanity, more big thanks to Sue and Chris for their kind offers of floors and to Mags (aka Harleybint)

cold and wet and went to bed, leaving me FJ motor stuttering along on two cylinders. One of Annie's dragstar's coils decided it too needed it's kip and gave up. The 650 motor don't climb hills so well on one cylinder and decided it just couldn't be bothered too climb the hill up out beyond Brough.

This is where It all turned surreal and we passed into a parallel universe and entered a scene straight out of "Deliverance" ! on the A66?

Annie's bike finally died on the roadside outside a house with a yard and a couple of JCB's in it. I figured we might score some WD-40 from the natives, no fucking chance, four inbreds appeared, one wielding a spanner and another rolling his sleeves up, now, how did it go ?

"get yer f*ckin' bikes away from here you b*stards, go on just f*uck off, get to f*ck or I'll kick your f*ckin' bikes over, go on f*uck off you c*nts, there's a f*cking layby a mile up the road, get to f*uck" Despite our protestations (and unholy ability to hold our tempers) the tirade of redneck abuse continued, "just f*ck off, we're waiting on a delivery" get to f*ck", hmmmm methink thou protest too loudly mate, what was the delivery, several pounds on uncut heroin?. Never mind, karma, they'll get theirs.

Well it's that time of year again, ninth to be precise, load up the bike, take far too much shit and head south for the best bikers party goin'.

This year we left on Thursday to stay in Yorkshire, pity it was flash floods, pishin' rain like the clouds had saved it all up for a year just for us and shit their load on the A66. Ye know when ye can't see a thing through yer visor, and ye don;t see the six foot wide, four inch deep flood on the road wot neatly delivers four million gallons of water over yer coils and para boots , the latter which had held up stoicly against the rain all the way down the '74 refusing to let the worst of the elements engulf me socks, finally surrendered, decided they'd had enough, rolled over and submitted, lovely ! ye know how para boots hold water in as well as they hold it out, about 2 pints in each. As if to add insult to injury one of my coils decided it was too

Friday saw the steady stream of bikes arriving, which turned into the near legendary Farmyard Party Queue. The site had been extended this year with bars and covered drinking areas at points along the site, niiice, not so far to walk for a beer ;-)

Firewood was piled along the site, no bark this year, proper big logs, speaking of which there were lots of bogs which appeared to get cleaned and emptied every ten minutes.