Friday morning and I am on the A14 heading for the Hobgoblin Rally, the thing is do I go above or below Birmingham? With two routes in my sat nav I was going to decide at junction 3a on the M6. Finding out that there has been an accident at the road works on the M6 near the M54 the south route looks the better option.
Apart from the M42 between the M6 and M40 with the usual amount of traffic restricting the speed to 60mph its quite a pleasant ride with my route taking me via Clow Top, Cleobury Mortimer and Cleehill to take in the scenic views.
There had been a few arrivals on the Thursday, although one group seemed hell bent on trying win the long distance award and were seen riding around in circles and going in the opposite direction to the signs. The lead rider did have a sat nav, but unbeknown to the others this sat nav appeared to be loaded with maps for Outer Mongolia.
By Friday evening the field was filling up nicely; Dave was a little worried, being the first rally, but with the final numbers not far short of 40 I would say that is a good turnout and I am certain the weather helped. The children were well looked after and there were plenty of things organised for the little ones to have a good time.
Saturday morning and most went on the run out to Much Wenlock, one or two did their own thing and a few stayed on site. There were some day visitors, one who I was looking forward to meeting, this being Paul, who had been corresponding with me about the purchase of a new bike XVS1300. It looked super and, with the Manx chair, made a perfect outfit to take on the roads in the area. Not too big and plenty of low down grunt with the added bonus of being water cooled. Rebo returned after visiting Mitchell’s Fold Stone Circle, the mystical powers did have an effect as he did a chip run.
Lesley and I were just about to go out on a ride to get some ice cream, when an ice cream van came down the hill. Pearl and Lesley leapt up waving and screaming to get his attention so he would stop. Luckily for the rest of us they hadn’t removed their T-Shirts and used them as flags, because if they had I am sure he would have put his foot down and headed off back to Royston Vasey.
The awards and raffle took place Saturday evening; the trophies were very nicely engraved Hobgoblin glasses and the Wheels team came away with 3 of the 5. The rest of the evening was spent around the fire, we didn’t opt for the raspberry jelly, meths and agent264 mixture but used a couple of logs that were produced earlier in the day. For the cheating teachers, Mark must have produced their log on the run-out and at the end of the night had to poke it with a tent peg to get it to disperse. Boy, it was one hell of a log.
I know I was drinking all Saturday afternoon and returning to the field I am certain I saw the Crazy Frog in Pete’s sidecar, the only logical explanation I can come up with is that I hadn’t drunk enough.
The Wheels team would like to thank all at the Hobgoblin Club for all their hard work running and organising such a good event.
Martyn and the Wheels team.
GL1000 and Monaco
Paul's XVS1300 and Manx
Who said it wouldn't all fit in.
BMW R1150R and GP
Was snow forecast!