Dragon Rally 2011 – ‘Phew What a Scorcher’

I’d been waiting for this one for some time now, in fact since October 1st 2010 the first day tickets went on sale for the 50th Dragon Rally and the day I ordered 14 of them for the South Yorkshire contingent. It was a good job I ‘booked early’, as Fred Pontin used to say, as in just three weeks all the tickets had sold out and on Friday 11th February as we set off there were some on ebay around the £60 mark and climbing. Work and money had conspired against me to get to any rallies in January so this was to be my first of 2011. The Dragon is always held in North Wales, organised by the Conwy Motorcycle Club it is a Saturday night only rally but as this was the 50th we thought we’d do something a bit special and make a full weekend of it. The idea being to split the journey of 150 miles from Rotherham to Beddgelert and stop somewhere in the Welsh boarders, it seemed a good idea at the time and after much trawling of internet and phoning contacts, Micky Wheeler sent a txt, “I’ve got us somewhere sorted, it’s in the Welsh boarders but a bit further south, it’ll make a good ride.” “I’m in” I text back without looking at the map !.
Up till the day before departure I still hadn’t decided which bike to take, on the big BMW it’s just too easy, I like my Dragon to be a bit of an adventure so it was down to either the Dnepr sidecar outfit or the old faithful BSA 250 Starfire which I have used for many past Dragon trips. With no snow on the ground I plumped for the little single and with a quick adjustment of the chain and just a ride to fuel up, the first time she’d been out for 6 months or more, I loaded her up.



I’d arranged to ride over with John on his Kawasaki W650 and Chris on her Guzzi Breva meeting Manny on his stripped Guzzi California in Congleton.



Micky and the BMW mounted boys were setting off from Tickhill an hour after our supposed 9.30am start. By 10am we were on the road, Sheffield took an hour to get through but we were rewarded by a great ride up Ringinglow Road and into the Peak District National Park before descending into Hathersage then very slowly climbing Winnets Pass and on through Buxton before negotiating Wildboar Clough and dropping into Congelton for a late breakfast / early lunch. There outside the cafe stood Manny, we were only an hour late but even the women serving thought he’d been stood up. If you’ve seen Manny this is something you could easily think.



As we were remounting the first of many Dragonists passed by, ex army BSA, old BMW outfits, MZ’s a plenty and others rolled past and then just as we were leaving, Micky, Pete Wheeler, Tickhill Chris and others rolled past on their loaded GS’s. The little Starfire rumbled on through Crewe, Nantwich and on to Whitchurch where we deviated from our usual route and headed south on the great B5476 , it was here on one long climb as I slipped down to second then first gear that a grinning Manny kindly pulled alongside and gave the BSA a helping hand to crest the rise. After battling with Friday afternoon traffic through Shrewsbury we joined the A488 and with the mileage already around the 130 mark we continued south passing Bishop’s Castle and into Knighton were my myopic signpost reading put another 15 miles on the journey.



With 175 miles now under our belts, or should that be under my arse ( 1960’s BSA saddles are not the best ) we pulled into the car park at The Lion Hotel at Llanbister.



After an hour or so the Wheeler posse arrived, their lateness owing in no small measure to Ivan throwing his BMW GSA down the road after getting it wrong on one of the gravel and mud strewn corners that we had encounted over the final miles.



Bent crashbars and a few dents were the least of our worries as Ivan is still recovering from a major operation on his neck !. Micky was mounted on his new 650XC which drew some admiring glances even from the KTM enduro guys who were also staying the night.



Now I am sworn to secrecy over the price we paid for our lodgings as Micky had swung the deal with his mate and landlord of the Lion, Ray. We were treated to excellent food, superb ales and all served by Ray and Janet’s daughter Laura.The latter could explain why Pete didn’t leave the bar till sometime in the wee small hours.









Accommodation was superb and anyone wanting to explore this area of the country couldn’t go wrong spending a few days using this hotel as a base.



I’ll be back with Kathryn later in the year that’s for sure.It's got to be better than sharing a room with Micky !



Saturday morning dawned bright, warm and dry and after we had fortified ourselves on a full breakfast it was time to push Manny’s Guzzi up and down the road a few times, it helps clear the head ! and sometimes even creates a spark !.



The faster lads, led by Micky, headed west to Devil’s Bridge before following the coast north whilst our group headed off towards the A470 and the heart of Snowdonia, this was rewarded by stunning views and clear roads with the little BSA thumping merrily along. I don’t think this was quite the view some of the car drivers stuck behind me would have had as I crawled up some of the steeper inclines but sod it I spend most of the year trying to get past slower moving vehicles and they never pull over for me !



Around 1pm, Manny and myself arrived at the rally check in caravan but without John or Chris who we had lost over the past few miles of small twisties and with no phone signals available we had little choice but to push on to the site, pitch up and wait. This year the Dragon was to be held at the site of the Sygun copper mines a mile north of Beddgelert, we approached the site with caution as the gate marshals told us to take it steady over the wooden approach bridge as one rider had already broken an arm and sustained other injuries loosing the front end on the slimy boards, once over we followed the tarmac lane until the turn off into a muddy field entrance, I expected no less this is the Dragon after all. I see Tarka’s Ural outfit parked up beneath a fluttering red hammer and sickle flag but with little room for our party I push on into the depth of the bog. After a few minutes of slipping, sliding and digging myself into ruts that the BSA just manages to free itself from I decide to head away from the swollen river and wet flood plain and find a spot on higher ground. Now normally 10 yards behind the marquee is not the best place to camp when there is a party going on but needs must and given that we are still waiting for another 10 or 12 motorcycles to turn up it seems the only place that will fit us in.



Much to mine and Manny’s relief John pulls on next, apparently Chris’s Guzzi had been a bit slow at starting from our last stop and they had dropped behind. Chris waits at the gate to get a hand guiding her Guzzi through the mud as Buckles on his Big Diesel sidecar pulls in



bearing new and unfamiliar markings !!!



followed by Kevin on his Ural outfit.



The pair of them having just returned from a 1500 mile trip to the Elefant Treffen in Bavaria a week earlier had ridden over from Rotherham in one hit on Saturday morning. Next GS mounted Daz and Ivan arrive, followed by Tim on his Harley 350 ( Armstrong ) and over the next hour or so all the rest of the team pull in safe and sound. I sit and watch the arrival of bikes, Vincents and Velocettes, BSA’s and Brough Superiors, Urals with engines from BMW and Reliant, Honda’s and full dress Harleys fight through the mud.



I can’t believe this is the Dragon as I strip down to a shirt and sweat as I put up the tent, it’s times like this when I love global warming but it does give the Dragon a very strange feel, for some reason I think we all expected the 50th Dragon to throw something special at us in the way of impassable snow drifts or at least freezing fog and ground so hard you can’t get a tent peg in. Well as usual the beer and whiskey flows followed by port and more beer.



After collecting our prized rally badges, slate coaster and 50th anniversary woolly hat we all head round to Tickhill Chris’s basher camp as he is trialling his new handmade stainless steel stove and it is superb, fitting on the pannier of his GS with telescopic sectioned flue pipe, damper, grate and all, it kicks out some heat. Jan who is a top cook had ridden over on the pillion of Martyn Wheeler and very soon steaming lamb shank stew is being handed round. It’s not long before it’s not just the stew that is steaming. We listen to the band, dodge Chinese lanterns that try to set the tents and the surrounding woods alight and try copious quantities of the special Dragon 50th ale, meet up with Tarka and others we know from various forums and past rallies before finishing the evening with Steve’s Welsh Whiskey ( should that be Whisky) and I retire around midnight. Buckles is already tucked into his Bivy bag underneath a very sorry looking basher sheet as I zip shut my tent and listen to the strains of conversation that float by on the breeze, a breeze that grew stronger through the night and is soon accompanied by heavy rain.



I’m awake at 6am with the rain still hammering on the fly sheet and manage to doze until 7.15am when the Dragon wake up fireworks go off. I’m amazed, the rain has all but stopped but Buckles certainly looks like he’s given his Bivy Bag a thorough testing, I think really I should be glad of the rain as it’s then I notice that his paraffin lantern has been burning all night perilously close to the flapping tarp sheet adjacent to my tent !.



I still find it hard to believe that this is the same sleeping arrangement he used in Bavaria the week previous at -10 degrees, but that does explain his frost bitten nose.

After fresh coffee and orange juice we are packed up by 9.30am and begin to drift away from the site. After a few interesting diversions in search of lost riders and open petrol stations and after being passed by Micky and the GS’s we arrive in Llangollen and take breakfast at the ‘Bookshop Cafe’ our usual stop. Here the rain returns in anger and we are joined for our return ride by the outfits of Buckles and Kev who took a ‘secret’ route to get here.



We refuel for the final part of the journey at the little petrol station at Acrefair and are immediately welcomed by the owner who recognises the little red BSA from previous years expeditions, he won’t forget this year either as on remounting Manny’s Guzzi decides to pour clouds of black smoke and sparks from under his saddle as his wiring harness burns out. You should have seen the look of real concern on the garage proprietors face as Kevin un holsters a replic hand gun from the sidecar and aims it at Manny and the bike !!! 10 minutes with black electrical tape and no lights working and we are off.



The BSA decides to show sympathy for the big Guzzi as only a mile or so later as the rain still pours and the sky darkens my bike too decides to save on electricity and the headlight goes out, I’m sure it’s an earth wire come loose so push on. John and Christine drop back a little on the wet and greasy roads as we retrace our route from Whitchurch, my heart is in my mouth as we leave Congleton and pass the site where I crashed Bertha my GS in 2006 ( I think ) then it’s on to Buxton and into the Hope Valley, Sheffield and home a little before 4pm. A quick ring round the troops confirms all made it back o.k. and Buckles explains he’s been riding the last 25 miles on the diesel with no throttle cable and hand operating the governor unit. Well no snow, no ice, two sunny dry days but at least it pissed down on the way home. The 50th Dragon Rally, phew what a scorcher.

The 'Icy Ale' Rally - December 2010

I have a real soft spot for winter rallies, don’t get me wrong I love riding on beautiful dry roads, swinging through bends with hot tarmac giving seemingly never ending grip, pulling over by a slow running stream and pitching canvas under the shade of the arching branches of a large tree, anybody remember summer ? With my alcholic sinility I'm beginning to struggle.

But living as we do on a small island on the western edge of Europe and in this age of seemingly rapid climate change we have to learn to adapt our riding to the seasons, to simply plug in the battery charger and pull down the garage door for six months would be like giving up half my life. I guess I’m lucky as I have managed to gather around me quite a few bikes over my 30 years of motorcycling. My BMW’s are kept company by a few old Brit bikes and this year’s new comer to the ‘Sharrocks Stable’ is a Ukrainian Dnepr M11 combination called ‘Boris’.



Given the early onset of winter I had used the heavy snow fall of Wednesday 1st December as a good shake down test to get an idea of how the combo would perform in thick snow and on ice, the results were impressive to say the least.





It was with the last couple of day’s snow riding under my belt that I was now really looking forward to the ride to the ‘Icy Ale’ Rally with enthusiasm rather than the trepidation that would have faced me if I had been riding any solo machine, including my GS or even my little BSA.

Friday had seen the snow over South Yorkshire consolidate and the phone calls had started, Manny and his Guzzi were stuck over in Hyde, his work had been held up by the inclement weather and with a penalty clause in his company contract he now had two twelve hour night shifts to complete, rewiring the NCP car parks of inner city Manchester, nice! Next to call were Pete Wheeler and his brother Martyn unable to get either of their BMW R1150GSA’s out of the garages in Doncaster they offered their services as sidecar monkeys on Buckles Big Diesel and my Dnepr and as there was little chance of me persuading Kathryn to join me on this trip they arranged to get a lift over to Rotherham on Friday evening. The phone went again, this time it was ‘Tickhill’ Chris with both his BMW and his Armstrong snow bound it looked like he was stuck but given the ‘unusual ‘ weather this year the rally organisers had given the ok to attend in cars and this was the option he told me he was going to take. I didn’t take the piss, honest.

I’d already had a good two or three hours in the pub on Friday night before I was joined by Buckles and sometime later by Pete and Martyn, the beer flowed and come to that so did the Jack Daniels and then the Absinthe hence the shout of “bivy, bivy, bivy” which went up as it was drunkenly agreed that it would add to the weekend ‘fun’ if we took a basher sheet rather than tents for the Saturday night accommodation!!!! It was with blurry eyes and heavy heads that the bike was pulled from the garage,



the minus 5 degrees showing on the thermometer did help to quickly pull us round though.

The ‘Icy Ale’ Rally is organised by the Druids MCC and takes place in the Vale of Belvoir a few miles from the castle, just to the west of Grantham, a run of around 70 or so miles from home. Last time I rode down was two years ago on my BSA Starfire accompanied by Buckles on his Honda C90 as part of his shakedown run for the Krystal rally in Norway !!!. It is based just outside the village of Woolsthorpe around a pub called the Rutland Arms better known as the ‘Dirty Duck’.

Buckles arrived at my house around 10am Saturday morning cracking his Big Diesel down the back lane





and after 10 minutes of packing we were off.



Heading out through Maltby I anticipated riding the ice covered roads we had played on only a few days earlier but (unfortunately for us) the ploughs and gritters had done their jobs and the roads were now just a wet, salty mess. Stopping for fuel a large crew cab pickup pulled in at the pumps along side, it’s occupants shouting abuse, it was Tim complete with friends Daz, Brian, and Tex. Tim is still nursing some serious leg injuries following his leap from a ladder in the snow last Christmas and the other lads, given the weather, had decided to join him in the comfort of the heated cab for the journey down.

We fuelled up and pushed on through Oldcoates and then into Worksop before passing through Clumber Park all eagerly anticipating a late breakfast at our regular stop, the café a few hundred yards north of the Ollerton roundabout. Much to our dismay it was closed and we were forced to lunch on pie and chips a little further down the road.



Through to Newark then south and the snow thinned noticeably,



it was only as we got to within a few miles of the rally site that ice and snow again covered the roads. Buckles was starting to play! Power sliding the Big Diesel and carving through the surface.We pulled up by a well flaming brazier and a crowd quickly gathered around the diesel outfit.



Buck wanted a bit of video filming, no no not like that, well not yet anyway, so before unpacking we swopped over passengers and Pete hoped into my chair so we could retrace our last few miles ride and he could film Buckles and Martyn having fun aboard the diesel.





As we arrived back at the venue around 2pm I must admit to being surprised by the solo's that had braved the conditions.



The journey along those last few miles on a fully loaded Triumph Rocket 3 that was parked up must have been interesting to say the least. Barry had run up through the snow from Essex, where he had been working, on his BMW R1100GS and not long after we arrived Steve pulled in on his 1200GSA having ridden down from Scarborough with his friend Al on a R1100GS.



They had made good time but over the last few miles his friend had laid down the 1100 a few times and the panniers were now showing definite signs of wear.

Ok, this is the point at which I whimped out, Buckles and the Wheeler boys starting tying up para cord to various points on the Big Diesel and in no time at all a shelter was up. With the three of them unrolling sleeping bags and inserting them into bivies, in the distance I could just see Ray Mears holding hands with Bear Grylls as they booked into the nearest hotel.





Martyn took up his space in the middle and from then on the shelter became known as the ‘Ski Lodge’, I’ll leave you to work that one out. I on the other hand decide a tent was really required and pitched the Vango Force 10 I had borrowed from work on Friday. My new Alpkit (-20) bag was sorted out and the first bottle of ‘Icy Ale’ opened.



Standing around the tents the usual banter ensued as people rolled up to say “hello” others just rolled up !.



In the distance the strange rhythmic beating of a drum could be heard and we looked round to see Al reshaping his ally panniers with a large mallet! As darkness descended and now with quite a nip in the air we made our way the 20 yards to the brazier.



This was a mistake, the ‘cheery’ landlord proceed to complain to one of the rally organisers that whilst it was acceptable to drink your own alcohol in or around the tents, crossing the path and moving into the car park brought into play the rule of ‘only drinks bought on the premises can be consumed on the premises’. Hey this may be appropriate sometimes but a few lads stood round a fire finishing their beers before entering the pub and his complaints were viewed by us all as really out of order. I could see Buckles about to bite but instead he decided to help out chopping some fire wood he picked up the axe and proceeded to snap the handle in half, better that than snapping the landlord in half me thinks.

It then started to rain and freeze so we decided to move inside the pub, and a great evening followed I think,



we drank the ‘Abbotts’ ale till it ran out,



we drank the ‘Speckled Hen’ till it ran out



then I’m not sure what we drank.



I’m just glad that the full 250 people booked to attend hadn’t turned up or I could have been on mineral water by 9pm.



Buckles dined from the good but pricey menu.



£11 for a lamb shank wasn’t bad but portions were a bit on the tight side, then party streamers and balloons followed





before a tight band took to the stage.The band had been moved from the old stable block across the car park as it was decided that with the lower than expected numbers everyone could fit in the main pub buildings, it proved a bit of a squeeze at times but added to the atmosphere and also meant the barn was now available for anyone who didn’t fancy a night in the ’Ski Lodge’ or under canvas to unroll their doss bags under cover with tea and coffee available through the night from the adjacent kitchen.

By the time the band had finished and the raffle was being drawn I was a little ‘lost’ and so was my ‘Rab’ jacket, being pissed and trying to search the bar for a small black coat was never going to happen so before I lost the plot totally I retired to the security of the Vango. I think Martyn should have tried to leave around this time too!



Only a few minutes later I looked out to see the drunkest man in the world doing a good impression of Buckles,after a quick smoke I watched him try and negotiate the big diesels front wheel as he retired to await the comforting arms of Martyn and Pete.



Next morning a thick frost covered the tents and bikes,



the ’Ski Lodge’ had ice on the inside but all assured me they slept well.



Bucks only concern centred around how Martyns head torch had found its way to the bottom of his sleeping bag? By 8.30 ish we were all up and Chris, Martyn and I went in search of breakfast ( and my jacket ) in the pub,



Buckles choose to join Tim and the other lads for an impromptu barbeque breakfast on the pickup bed of Tim’s truck.



My jacket secured from a huge pile of mislaid hats, scarves, coats etc by 11am we were packed away and heading off over a car park of thick ice.
We followed the back lanes through to Newark, and there were a few butt clenching moments as pushing the chair into a series of bends everything stepped out on large areas of black ice but I was amazed at how the old Russian tyres grip and pull everything reasonably straight. We are forced on to the A1 for a couple of junctions but as 55mph is about top cruise speed fully loaded we left as soon as possible and followed the Trent up to Retford, from there it was Bawtry and into Doncaster to drop of Martyn before the run home.



The back lane is still thick in snow and ice but Boris makes easy work of it, reverse gets me out of the thick drifts and I reward the combo with a quick wash to remove the thick coating of salt.



Summer may be a great time to be out and about riding and camping on a bike but there’s something about the mercury freezing in the thermometer that brings riders together in the face of adversity actually thats bol**cks it's just an excuse for a pint !!!