Ever get that feeling on a Friday, y'know, come home from work (if you're a mon-fri type person, worse if you're a night shift nurse, ask my missus) and do the "home from work" routine, jeans on, couch on, coffee on, roll-up on and that dangerous "can't be arsed feeling" comes over you.

The one that says "come to me, I'm a nice soft warm couch, there's 10 can's of shit lager within reach, so don't go doing anything that might require a little effort". You KNOW the feeling!. If it didn't exist rally fields would be ten times the size coz everyone would go.

So with that feeling, 'cept it was thursday night as we were of on holiday, we thought f*%$ it! let's do the ol' 600 mile round trip to this 'ere "into the valley rally" in Fridaythorpe, well it's the right day anyway.

 

 

 

This rally was touted as being organised by the same folk who do the Farmyard, our personal favourite rally/party/fall over.

Annie only passed her DAS last August, in time to make the inagural run of her 650 dragstar to Stormin' last year at 9pm on the Friday night! (Drive F%$£"ng faster, chants Mr Broon, who's chummin' her down the road), Annie aquitted herself well, 85 on a dragstar
keeping up with the FJ motor for 200 of the miles, ye need strong arms !

The weather decided to not be such a 'bastid' and we only
saw a few short showers as well as loads of MotoGuzzi's
heading in the opposite direction to a Guzzi Club rally in
Scotland, in fact yards from our back door.

The site that East Yorks MAG have is rare, a narrow valley
with chalk hills either side, vey "pickcherskew". Of course hot
air rises.

Heather the weather said "it would be a bit parky round her
isobars", which meant that overnight, the temperature took an
overdose of valium and got so low it fell over.

I've never been cold in my 3 season (tested personally by Chris Bonnington don't ye know. Wish he'd washed his feet though, it's stinkin') but me being well aquainted with Jack and Annie with Ms Breezer it was time to pile the leathers, combats, panniers, tent bag on top of the sleeping bag just to keep ice from forming on the inside of the sleeping bags!

A quick visit to the bushes at 4am confirmed that tents and
bikes alike were covered in ice! Nice bushes by the way.

 

We arrived at about 5pm on Friday, having missed a turn and fighting with Bank Holiday Scarboro' traffic. The site was already busy, I think there were about 1500 folk by saturday night, can't be sure as I lost count after four. Most of the club flags were from around Yorkshire, We only found one other Scot. We were camped next to the Whitby 77 Club which meant that there were some tidy bikes around.

Friday night's entertainment was a band called "can't remember I wiz gassed",
they seem to play at a lot of rallies. I have to admit we made it into the beer tent only to leave and sit next door in the "chill" tent where you could get a blether. We bumped into Chris from Yorks MAG who aquainted me with the "Rufforth?" autojumble, insisting that
it was worth driving 270 miles for.

Saturday afternoon, loads of folk went off on the ride out or wandered off
to the pub. There were few people left to have a go at the silly games.
In desperation the MAG bloke with the spacehoppers press-ganged
whatever women he could find to take part in the spacehopper race
(including Annie, but it's ok, she won ;-)

If it had been cold on Friday night it was soddin' freezin' and Saturday
night. The MAG boys drove down the field with a pick up full of logs, It's
amazing how grown bikers turn into kids chasing the Ice Cream van as
the pick up drove back up the field with folk chasing it, grabbing what wood
they could, they were gonna need a good fire to keep warm, they'd learned the
lesson on Friday.

 

Late Saturday night and the "Penetrators"? were doing thier thang in the the beer tent. Excellent renditions of old favourites, we returned to our fire to chill. I'm a real sucker for rallies where you can have campfires, it really add to the atmosphere, the sun going down, glowing faces, plumes of smoke from between the tents. Reminds me of the Farmyard ;-)

We'll be doing this this rally next year for sure, well done E.Yorks Mag, even the bog's were clean.

 

Words
& Pics by AL
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