THE FOOLS RALLY 1980

CHAPTER 59

THE FOOLS RALLY

1980

( Photo 1 ) My 1980 rally badge.

THE RIDE UP

The best way to describe this rally is after the Scottish 1980`s pop group Wet.Wet.Wet., I have been to other rally’s where it has rained hard, but those rally’s were never as wet as this rally.

It did not stop raining from the time we left Wales until we arrived back home again three days later.

That statement is not strictly true, there were a couple of periods throughout the weekend that it did not rain/with the same ferocity as at the beginning of the weekend, it did rain, but what we call picking to rain in Wales, where there are spots of rain that make you aware that the sky was still full of water, and was ready at anytime to dump a ridicules amount of water on your head.

You could feel the specks of rain on your head, or your helmet visor and see small singular spots of rain on the canvas tents that littered the muddy rally field, this break in the weather only lasted for a very short time and then it would hammer down again.

I was riding my Honda CB 550 f1, I have mentioned previously in a number of my other blogs that this particular bike was prone to misfiring, even if it was ridden through a puddle of water.

On the ride up to the rally, it was necessary for me to spray the Honda’s engine with W.D.40 while I was riding in formation with the group of other bikers, we were travelling on the M4 motorway, and we were all travelling at around 80 mph.

I would need to remove one glove, normally the left glove, as I am right-handed with one hand on the throttle, I found this a little awkward, to remove the glove I would need to first pull my scarf down from over my face and the bite each glove fingertip in turn, to slowly pull the glove off my hand and then the hold the glove with my teeth, I would then tuck the glove between my legs and the tank, I would then reach back and lean backwards towards my passenger which was my girlfriend Gaenor, me doing this also made her lean back over the rear of the bike, and then I would force my hand under the flap that covered my swagman sling-over saddlebags, and then root around in the swagman’s and try and find the trusty can of W.D.40, I was always aware that the misfire could happen so I made sure that the can was near the top of the bag and on top of the camping gear, while I was doing this procedure I still had to hold on to the throttle, I had to do this to keep up the same pace as the rest of the guys, and not cause havoc in the tight group we were riding in, it would not have been good to suddenly slow down making the other riders behind me, break their lines and wander around the busy road to avoid me.

Once I had the spray can in my hand I would proceed to spray the engine on both side by swapping hands on the throttle, I would spray the engine mainly around the spark plug area, and up underneath the tank where the ignition coils live, I would spray large amounts of this water repellent hoping to cure the misfire, all this had to be done at around 80 mph in the middle of a group of other bikers in poor weather conditions and on a busy motorway, and being sprayed by rain water by other motorists and riding at 80 mph over taking slower vehicles, when I had finished with the can I would hand it back to Gaenor, and she would hang on to it until I needed it again.

It was always a bit of a task to try and put a leather glove on at speed by using only one hand.

Thinking back on it now, which was over forty years ago, how dangerous it was doing this kind of thing on a fast moving motorbike in crap weather conditions.

Back then it never dawned on any of us that there was any danger in doing things like that, keeping one eye on the road trying to keep formation with the other guys and fumbling around in saddlebags while riding with only one hand on the handlebars.

Motorways are dangerous enough on a normal day.

On the way up to the rally, not long after we entered the M4 motorway, the rain increased its intensity and the rain came down in buckets, a heavy torrent of rain that refused to let up, it was raining before we left Bridgend, but this was more like a Monsoon.

The rain was bouncing off the road, we were not just getting wet, we were getting battered in the deluge, the visibility dropped to practically zero, luckily for us there was a motorway flyover bridge coming up, we all had the same idea, to take shelter under the bridge, and park up on the hard shoulder and wait the sudden down pour to clear.

There were around four or five bikes in front of me, one of which was ridden by Fat Mike on his Orange Honda CB 550, he was wearing bright yellow plastic looking waterproof leggings, the type that the local council would issue to its road workmen.

As Mike slowed down and pulled the bike up under the bridge, he prepared himself to stop as quickly as possible as he could in the weather conditions, he flicked his side stand out with his foot so it was in the rest position before he stopped.

He had done this manoeuvre many times before, and it worked perfectly well.

He would normally stop quickly, flicking out the side stand and switching off the engine in one motion, and then simply stepping off bike and walk away from it without looking back.

But this time when he stepped off the bike his waterproof leggings got in the way, and the bright yellow leggings caught on the forward foot peg.

He tripped up and fell forward and pulling the bike forward with him, which slipped off the side stand and rolled forwards, it kind of lurched a little, then fell over, luckily for Mike he had the bike packed up with saddlebags strapped across his passenger seat and a canvas tent with steel posts, the bike kind off fell on to its side, the gear packed as it was on the bike actually stopped the bike falling completely over on to its side.

The bike was leaning over at a strange angle, the handlebars did not touch the ground.

Meanwhile, Mike went arse over tit and ended up face down in a puddle of water, he immediately rolled over on to his back, he lay there on his back in a puddle of dirty rain water with his legs in the air, mimicking a dying fly.

We all pulled up, and hide under the bridge pressed against the concrete bridge wall, trying to get away from the spray of the passing cars and lorries, Mike picked himself up and put the bike back on its stand and joined the rest of us at the bridge wall, he was already soaking wet, he lite a fag up and said “ fuck it, shit happens “.

This was not the first or the last time mike would kick his side stand out before he stopped, sometimes he did not kick it out far enough to put it in the lock position, and the bike would fall over as he dismounted.

It was a great piety that we did not have helmet cams back then, nothing like that was invented at the time, the footage of mike falling over would have had many likes on YouTube.

The rain had eased a little, from the look of the dark grey sky it had no intention of ever stopping, so we pulled off as a group once again hoping to get to the rally site before it began to get to dark.

At the Coldra roundabout intersection, we pulled off the M4 motorway and on to the A449, which lead us up hill out of Wales, and in to the English countryside.

Many miles later travelling through small English towns after leaving the M50, we became bogged down in heavy traffic on the A roads, we snaked our way to the front of a traffic jam, in front of us there was a very large roundabout, from the look of it, it was the size of Caerau, it was the biggest roundabout I had ever seen up to this time.

The rain still hammered down, at this point even our waterproof gear was soaked through.

The roundabout had series of traffic lights all around it, at each of the junctions leading on to this bottleneck, and just to compound the situation there were traffic lights on the actual roundabout itself, all the traffic stopped and started several times even before it was possible to leave the roundabout, this type of traffic control is common place on the roads today, but back then it was in its infancy, and we were not used this kind of set up.

The traffic only allowed a few cars at a time to move onto the roundabout at a time, which seemed to causing the traffic jam, whatever was causing the jam, too many cars in one place or the road system, it didn’t help our situation, this system was not here when we came by this way the last time we rode in this area, it was a new development and it caused us to check where we were, and what direction we were heading in.

Two of the bikers at the front of our group had pulled over on to a section of road at the entrance to the roundabout that had white chevrons painted on the road in a wedge shape.

We all followed the two now stationary bikers, the triangle area was big enough to accommodate the whole group of us.

I pulled up alongside the two bikers, we only stopped for only a few minutes, but it seemed a lot longer in the weather conditions we were exposed too, the traffic jam of cars and lorries alongside us had hardly moved.

We were all slowly drowning sitting in an upright position on the bikes.

I could not see anything squinting through my fogged up visor, so I lifted my visor up a little, it was impossible to see anything through the visor in the down position.

The temperature had dropped and it had gone cold enough to see you breathe, and with the added misty rain, visibility was very limited.

The only time I could see where I was going was with the visor lifted slightly, just enough to stop the rain battering my eyes and avoiding the grey mist on the visor itself.

I had sprayed almost a complete small aerosol can of Bob Heath demister over the visor before we set out on the ride in to England, but to no avail, the visor still misted up, nothing could stop the visor form misting.

I could see PJ leaning over his tank talking to another biker, who I believe may have been Brian, it was hard to see who it was in the weather conditions, the second biker ( Brian ) was doing the same thing as PJ.

Brian leaned over his bike towards PJ, got close to each other so they could hear each other talk, it was impossible to hear what was being said with all the noise of our bike engines ticking over, and the traffic that was moving very slowly alongside us.

I could see by the way they were gesturing to each other that they were not sure on which way to go next, the road system had totally changed since that last time we rode this way.

I thought, great we are lost.

On this trip, I did not have any of the travelling instructions supplied in the rally pack for the rally, so I just followed everyone else, I had no idea of were we were going or even where we were, if the lead boys at the front of the group were lost, I knew I was definitely lost, I had no idea where I was, we all just waited patiently for someone to following into the grey misty rain.

I had to keep my Honda revving higher than it should, way past its normal idle speed, the bike was misfiring like a demon, there was no way I could allow it to idle on its own without me tweaking the throttle and keeping the revs higher.

The Honda kept popping and spluttering, the engine was in great danger of dying on me completely and then without a word the two lead bikers pulled off through a red light and on to the roundabout and hopefully in the right direction, we all followed with the traffic lights still on red, making the traffic stop on roundabout, we could hear angry blasts of car horns, but we kept going, and ignored the angry car drivers in their four wheeled boxes.

By this time my leather jacket had given up being waterproof and had now become a sponge instead, it was completely soaked through, my leather gloves were in the same state, if I made my hand in to fist, a stream of coloured water poured out of the gloves.

When I did take them off, my hands looked as if I had not washed them after stripping down oily engine, my Bellstaff wax cotton waterproof trousers did the job they were designed to do and kept me dry, cant say the same for my boots, they too had given up the fight against the constant spray off the road.

We travelled on for what seemed like forever in the rain, and then finally arrived at the rally site, which was in the middle of nowhere, we had made good time considering the weather, and we managed to get to the rally while it was still daylight.

THE RALLY FIELD

( Photo 2 ) . A very muddy Fools rally field, the photo is a little blurred, but you can see the state of the ground as Gaenor, Fat Mike and Galen walk across the field.

So we arrived at the rally site which was set up just outside the village of Dymock, this was really the beginning of the cold, wet, and windy weekend.

A single country lane with low cut hedges lead us to the rally field, the single track road was bordered on both sides with open fields, the road itself was raised almost level with the edges, so we had a good opportunity see the countryside around us, a little in the distance we could see a neglected barn with and old farm house nearby, and just open countryside bordered by more low hedges, the road ran past the rally site, leading to god knows were, all I could see was a straight rode that seem to go on forever and apparently going nowhere in particular.

There were many tents and bikes already in the field, there was only one entrance in to the field and with the passage of the bikers that had ridden thought the gateway earlier had churned the entrance up into a muddy soup.

The rally site even this early on a Friday afternoon resembled a ploughed field after the early birds had ridden through it, the site did not look to good for the future, with more bikes turning up throughout the day.

We all followed each other through the quagmire of an entrance, it did not help that our bikes were carrying all the weight of our camping gear.

Everything was wet and muddy, the bikes were saturated with mud, with bikes kicking up mud in all directions as they rode along.

The bikes only spent one night in the field, on the Saturday morning, we intended to go for a ride to a local town which is what we always did on a rally weekend, the approach to the rally site was now completely churned up with soft and sticky mud and these conditions made it impossible to ride out of the rally field just by sitting on the bike and riding out, the mud was far too soft, slushy and deep, the field gateway was only wide enough to allow a standard Land Rover type jeep through, modern tractors had no chance of getting through the entrance and as the field was lower than the road outside the rally field there was also a slippery muddy incline to negotiate.

We did manage to get the bikes out by one person riding the bike, staying in first gear with the riders feet on the ground, and at lest one or two other people pushing the bike from behind.

After a while all the bikes were back on to the single track lane.

The tents were already wet as we put them up and placed them down on to the soft muddy ground.

We never brought spare clothes, we just wore the same ones we rode up in, wearing them all weekend and on this particular rally we were soaked through even before we arrived at the rally, they stayed damp all weekend until we arrived back home, and then we changed them, except Wobble of course he wore the clothes until they dried out naturally, he always smelt a little on the damp side.

If any of the bikers had thermal under-helmet head covers, the helmet head covers were like thin balaclava’s, a type of headgear made from modern thin insulating material, the balaclava’s helped to keep your head and face warm in the cold weather, many people who had worn them on the ride up to the rally, kept them on their heads all weekend.

The rally field was populated with what looked like an open convention for bank robbers.

We all tried to dry out and warm inside our tents, the only thing I could use to stay warm was to put my gas camping stove on inside the tent and Cwtch ( huddle ) around the little blue flame and make a cup of tea or a cupa soup, lighting the stove didn’t really help, but there was always tea to drink which always tasted terrible with dried milk, but at lest it warmed our hands up.

It was raining so much that inside the tent was even wet, I had a pool of water collecting at the back of my tent which never seemed to go away, and the front entrance of the tent was as muddy as the field outside, luckily my tent was a four man tent, so we had some room in the middle of the tent to try and stay dry.

The wind had picked up, and was blowing so hard that it pushed the waterproof outer canvas tent up against the cotton fly screen of the inner tent and soaked it right through.

It was so wet we had a constant series of drips dropping all over us at Random times.

It felt like it was raining inside the tent.

Every time a gust of wind came, it shook the tent violently and this then would result in us being showered with multiable drops of water.

At one point at the weekend there seemed to be as much wet mud inside the tent as there was on the rally field outside.

All the bikes were now left on the grass verge of the lane that bypassed the rally field, no-one would risk bring them back into the field, by Saturday the rally site resembled a picture from the first world war battlefield, the Somme.

( Photo 3 ) . A very poor quality blurred photo taken from the cine film taken at the rally showing PJ pushing Wobble out of the muddy rally field on his Honda 400/4 with the rally beer tent in the back ground, you will notice there are no camping tents near the beer tent, everyone had enough common sense not to camp to close unless you want a series of drunk bikers falling on to your tent in the early hours.

( Photo 4 ) . Another blurred photo of PJ pushing Wobble through the narrow field gate.

( Photo 5 . ) The rally field with the beer tent in the back ground.

SATURDAY

At around midday a bunch of us rode to the nearest town, which was a small town called Ross-on-Wye, this was a normal thing for us to do at a rally, on Saturday morning we would always ride-out to see something of the local countryside, and also with a bit of luck to buy some hot food.

When we were in town we spotted five other bikers from the rally, we knew they were at the Fools rally because they too were covered in mud, one of the bikers was kissing a mannequin in a shop window through the glass, to the horror of the town's passerby’s, we said Hi and laughed at the antics of this biker and then looked around for a chip shop.

I remember seeing a pub sign with a picture of an American moon lander instead of a bird of pry, the pubs name was the Eagle, ( The moon lander’s name was the Eagle, one of the yank astronauts declared that the Eagle as landed when the spacecraft touched down on the moon surface ).

As a group we were always curious of new places and things we had never seen before or if something caught our eye we would wander into a shop for a quick look around.

We came across a shop that sold Nik-Naks, unusual ornaments and stuff you really didn’t need, but looked interesting, a bit like a shop that was in Bridgend called the Wyndham gallery in Wyndham street at the center of town.

We must have looked a right state, we were damp, covered in mud and had just slept in wet tents.

The shelves in the shop were made of glass and displayed Snoopy and Charley brown ceramics with springs attached to the base of their heads and the same spring attached to the base of the ornament inside the body of the cartoon figure, when you moved them, the head would rock back and forth.

A large A4 size card leaning at the back of the self declared a warning.

DO NOT TOUCH

ALL Breakages

WILL BE PAID FOR.

There were two middle-aged female shop assistants who were keeping a close eye on us.

I started flicking the Snoopy dog head with my finger, and then the springy head shot across the shelf, I didn’t use a lot of force, but the head hurtled right across the shelf hitting other ceramic ornaments, the detached head bounced off another snoopy and cracked it in half and knocked down two others springy things, sending them across the shelf like a set of skittles.

Wobble seeing this mishap, burst in to laughter, One of the shop assistants said to the other assistant, loud enough for all of us to hear ( OMG, HE AS BROKEN SNOOPY ).

She had a hand over mouth with an expression of horror on her face, you would have sworn that I had just bitten a chickens head off in front of her.

I looked at Wobble and laughed, I then looked at the shop assistants and said, “ you have nothing we want “ and then we promptly legged it out of the shop, laughing all the way and made our escape, and the mixed in with the other scruffy long haired mud covered bikers that were in town, before the police came and started to search for the snoopy murderer.

It was an accident on my part and the reaction of the women in the shop was way over the top, well in my opinion it was, I had no intention of paying for a broken head bouncing springy thing, they should make the out of more sturdy material.

When we arrived in Ross-on-Wye, we parked up in a small open car park on the fringes of the old town not far from a pub, actually it was across the road, so a handy place to park.

After we found a chip shop and bought pie and chips to ward off our hunger and to help us warm up a bit we headed for the pub near to where the bikes were parked up.

We popped in for a quick pint and to get out of the weather, the landlord didn’t seem to mind us being there traipsing mud though his bar, there was no carpet on the floor to worry about, just the bear base of the concrete flooring, and as long as we kept drinking he was happy.

After a little while and a couple of pints, we went back to the car park across the road, it did help the to avoid the police hunt for the Snoopy murder.

While we were in the car park, riding past was Mike and Anne Keen, Mike was riding his black Suzuki GS 750 and Anne riding her chocolate brown Honda CB 500, ( The same bike that Brian and myself owned at separate times, for short periods, and sadly the bike that Geraint was killed on ).

The bikes were both loaded down with camping gear on their way to the rally, why they had come through the town on the way to the rally I have no idea.

We called out to them and called them in to the car park and chatted to them for a while, and then they headed to the rally field.

They did the sensible thing and parked the bikes outside the rally field, they missed one day of the rally, but again they did the right thing by not leaving Wales in the torrential down pour and waited until Saturday when the weather starting to change for the better.

( Photo 6 ) . A photo of the some of the guys on the lane that runs past the rally field, from left to right, PJ and Sharon, Mike Keen, Gaenor, Fat Mike, and myself on the far right, how mike Keen stayed so clean i have no idea.

( Photo 7 ) . Some of the bikes parked on the grass verge in the lane, left to right Suzuki GS750, Honda CB550 and Honda CB4004/4.

( Photo 8 ) . Brian parking his Suzuki up on the lane outside the rally field.

The rally was run by a club from the Cotswold and dales in Gloucestershire, England, I can't for the life of me remember what the exact name of the club was, but take your hats off to them they did everything they could to make the rally a success, considering the weather conditions they did a great job.

They even carried on with the rally bike games.

The rally marshals searched the rally field for a relatively un-messed up area of the field to have the first game, which was going to be the Slow Riding game.

Basically the slow riding game is what it says on the can, you ride as slow as possible across a set distance without putting any of your feet down on the ground, which was made even more difficult with the state of the field, it was almost impossible to walk though the sticky mud without sliding face down in to the mud.

The winner was the rider that managed to ride over the required distance in the slowest time, there were penalties for putting your foot down, some competitors did not finish the distance and instead fell off, and started to make mud angels in the soft slushy mud.

Another game was the stick Checaine , this game was all to do with balance, a rider rides through checaine, usually made up from a few sticks planted close together at set intervals in a straight line.

The rider would need to zig zag his or her way thought the sticks carrying a passenger standing on his/her pillion seat without putting his or her foot down on the floor or the passenger falling off, nobody finished the game, it needed to be difficult by adding unstable passenger, because most of the bikers at the rally could have easily negotiated the checaine with no problem, after having years of practice on the roads of the U.K.

There was also the Tug of War which was always one of the favourites at rallies, this particular tug of war got very messy, which created more mud covered bikers and a lot of sliding in the mud.

And not forgetting the welly throwing game, anyone who had a good throwing arm competed in this game, it turned into a great laugh, everyone one the bikers who threw the Welly’s ended up lying in the mud, there was no winner, the welly’s were misguided every time, and ended up in the watching crowd as the biker throwing the welly lost control and spun around in the mud, watching everyone scrambling about in the mud trying to avoid the welly was funny, it made everyone laugh.

The club organisers could have cancelled all the game because of the weather, but good effort to them, they carried on through all the mud, wind and rain, and kept the weekend going.

After mid-day on the Saturday the rain eased off a little, and just became an irritating annoyance, it was too late for us, we were already damp and muddy, the sky was always treating to rain, we just had a flurry of rain now and again, just to remind us that we were staying wet and damp all weekend.

MIKE’S HOVLE

( Photo 9 ) . A blurred photo of Brian spraying mikes tent with spray can in hand, Brian on the left and with Mike and Budgie on the right side with head coverings.

( Photo 10 ) . A slightly better photo of mikes Hovle , taken at the one of the vine rally's with Galen photo bombing the Photo.

Fat Mike had tucked away a full can of brilliant White spray paint in to his sling-over saddlebags for one specific purpose, he had brought this can of spray paint especially for his new tent.

Mikes tent was brand new and had he never used it before after only buying the tent from Blacks Camping store in Cardiff opposite Cardiff’s medieval Castle the previous weekend.

Mike’s idea was that if he sprayed the flat sides of the tent with a symbol or some identifying image, he could find it again in the sea of similar tents that surrounded the rally field, it would help him find the tent easier in the darkness of the unlit rally field after he had a skin-full of beer.

Rally sites were never lite up by any form of artificial lighting, it could be quite hazardous with randomly placed tents scattered around the field, walking around a field full of tents in the dark with invisible tent guide ropes strung out in all directions and with the many of the tents looking exactly the same, it was easy to get lost especially when you have had a drink, so mikes idea was a good one, we did have a small Welsh flag sticking out of the top of one of the tents which helped to located where we were on the field, ( If you read the blog Chapter ## THE FROG AND THE FLAGPOLE, you find out how we managed to get a much larger flag ).

Mike had for some reason decided to call his tent MIKE`S HOVEL, Brian volunteered to spray the side of the tent, he started spraying the tent and sprayed the name Mike’s in foot long or more letters and then began to spray the word hovel, he stopped for a second and asked the people around him how to spell the word hovel, mike was standing and the observing the spraying, Budgie was also there and a number of others, out of sight of the 8 mm Cine camera which I was using, the small group of onlookers watched and said nothing when Brian misspelt the word and placed the E and the L of the word in the wrong place, easily done in my opinion, being dyslexic, I didn’t even notice it misspelt and no-one there uttered a word.

Mike used the tent on every rally he went too, he never made any attempt to correct the spelling, what puzzled me was why he only wanted one side of the tent sprayed, it was common sense that if he was approaching the tent from the other direction he would not know that it was his tent. ( MIKES HOVLE )

RHINO

Some time after Friday night and Saturday morning someone had ridden over and through the middle of a tent, the muddy tyre marks could be clearly seen, tracking across the now flattened tent, luckily there was no-one in the tent at the time.

The tent had been dragged through the muddy field by its guide ropes and ended up in a messy mud covered confused bundle some distance from its original pitch, all the contents of the tent were rolled up inside the middle of the messy lump of a tent, the steel tent poles were mangled and sticking up in at odd angles out of the tent, the tent had been dragged from its original position and very close to where the bonfire was set up.

One of the guys we used to meet up with at rallies had the nickname Rhino, he was an English biker from Bristol and a member of the Norton owners club.

Rhino had been out on a run with some of his friends, when he arrived back at the rally site, it was dusk and the bonfire had been lite, he spotted the flattened mangled tent and thought it would be great fun by throwing it on to the bonfire, he dragged the mangled mess close to the fire, and then picked the bundle up, laughing as he did so, and tossed the messy bundle in the middle of the roaring fire .

Someone said “ what the fuck did you do that for “, he answered “ there’s enough mess in the field without adding to it”, he laughed as he made this statement, and then someone broke the news to him that he had just throw his own tent on the fire with all his camping gear wrapped up inside.

All he had left on him was the clothes he was wearing and his crash helmet, he spent the remainder of the weekend sleeping on one of the picnic tables in the beer tent.

( I am not 100% that the previous blog happened in the way it did, I have a very vague memory that a tent caught fire at a rally, caused by a gas stove falling over and setting the tent alight and the occupant of the tent needing to go to hospital for the burns he received in the fire, and for some reason I think Rhino was involved, I could be totally wrong and Rhino had nothing to do with fire tent?.)

WOBBLES GRIFFIN

I remember Wobble had, hand painted the image of the LP album cover off ( Meat loafs, Bat out of Hell 12` LP ALBUM ) on to his Griffin crash helmet, most of us wore a griffin helmet at some point, at the time they were very popular, I still have mine, I still have a snoopy sticker on the side of the helmet, I did this as a joke as I managed to murder Snoopy in Ross-on-Wye, it was like a fighter pilot putting a kill image on the side of a fighter plane after shooting down another plane, well it was funny at the time.

Wobble still has his painted griffin helmet somewhere, they are very icon helmet nowa days.

Wobble, Fat mike and Big Roy wore White lab coats over their leather jackets and with their denim cut-offs over the top of the lab coat. I never bothered doing this, but did supply a couple of the lab coats as I worked in a lab sometimes in the job I had at the engineering firm I worked at, so I borrowed a couple, I still don’t know why they wore them and I have never asked, it’s too late to ask Mike as he as passed away many years ago, and no-one as seen Big Roy for years, he is still around somewhere, I’ll have to ask Wobble one day the reason why.

P.J. AND THE DILDO

( I’m not 100% sure if this happened at the Fools Rally, it did happen at some rally, so I have included in this Blog )

There were some garden type benches and tables inside the beer tent, they were dotted around the sides of the tent, with a makeshift bar at one end and a stage area made up of wooden pallets for the Disco/bands to play at the other end.

I have no idea whatsoever where the subject of this Blog came from, but there was a very large pink vibrator laying on top of one of the empty tables, we did not notice what it was until we all sat down around the table.

P.j. spotted it first, and started to flick it around, the vibrator was all floppy, but solid enough to stay upright under its own weight, p.j. waved it around, we all done our best to avoid any contact with it, everyone was laughing and making jokes about the abandoned sex toy.

And then for some bizarre reason, p.j. switched the pink vibrator on, and put it straight in to his tankard full of beer, it rolled around in the tankard stirring the drink up and making hell of a noise, it vibrated so violently the contents of the tankard was forming up in to a white froth, and splashing the liquid contents of the tankard over the table.

He then removed the Dildo from his tankard and left it on top of the table to make its way across the table under its own power.

To be honest it was hilarious, everyone was laughing fit to burst.

Someone on the table said to p.j. “ What the fuck did you do that for, you don’t know where that thing as been and now you're drinking you pint “.

P.J., just shrugged his shoulders, and just kept drinking from his tankard.

I think he may have a few to many drinks before he found the Dildo.

What happened to the Dildo later in the evening I do not know, it disappeared as mysteriously as it appeared.

JOLLY JACK

One of the guys who attended the Fools rally was called Jolly Jack, you can guess why he was called by that nickname, it was a very rare sight to see him smile or laugh, he seemed to be miserable all the time.

Unfortunately his girlfriend or wife also inherited his nickname, she ended up being called Jolly Anne, just for the record she was not a miserable person.

At the rally, sometime in the evening there must have been some kind of domestic between them of one sort or another, no-one noticed or saw anything, but there was no explanation of what happened.

Nobody knows really why, a couple of people have an idea, but that is none of my business and not my story to tell, so the reasons why they left in a hurry is not that important to any of us who were there at the time.

Well sometime while everyone was at the beer tent, Jolly Jack packed up all his gear and his tent on to his black Honda CB650, and he and Jolly Anne headed back to Wales at breakneck speed, and so I am told arrived back in Wales in record time.

Nobody at the rally site knew he had left in the night, it was very hard to notice a missing tent, when the there were hundreds that looked exactly like it scattered around the muddy field, and the drink and the darkness of the night would not have helped to notice any change in the sea of tents, his bike was parked outside the field with all the others, so no-one would have spotted his bike missing.

In the morning someone mentioned that no-one had seen Jolly jack and Anne, and then we discovered his tent and bike were missing.

There were no Mobile phones back then to inquire why he had left so abruptly, it was a subject of discussion for a short while, and then someone said ( I think it may have been PJ ), it looks like Jolly Jack as fucked up, and packed off, what he meant to say was packed up, and fucked off, this was funny at the time and made everyone laugh, and that phrase was used numerous times over the years to describe a number different situation, you had to be there to really get the joke, some of us still use the phrase even now 40 odd years later and when someone uses the phrase, it always puts a smile on our faces, things were much simpler back then.

( Photo 11 ) . Outside the roadside Café/petrol station, with mike holding the inflated orange Durex, from left to right, Dylan sitting on Wobbles Honda CB 400/4, myself leaning on Fat mikes Honda CB 550, Fat mike, Budgie and Wobble doing something strange with the Durex, PJ trying to look cool with Sharon leaning on my Honda CB 550.

( Photo 12 ) . This is how we parked the bikes up outside the Café Angus at the far end and Dylan chilling at the centre.

FAT MIKE AND THE DUREX

It was Sunday morning, the rally weekend was over, so we all packed up our gear and started to make our way back to Wales, leaving the rally site was very random, our group were all friends, but everyone left at different times and possibly using different routes home and not necessarily riding with the same people you came up with.

The group I was with stopped off at a roadside café service station on the A’’’’ called the ???????. ( I can not remember the road number or the Cafe /Station name ).

The Fools rally was a very wet and muddy rally, it rained most of the weekend and this resulted in everyone and every piece of gear including the bikes covered in sticky mud.

So we pulled in to the petrol station at the front of the rest stop, the bikes loaded down with canvas tents with metal poles which weighed a ton, sleeping bags rammed in to black plastic bin bags, all the bikes covered with a thick coating of mud.

We stopped of at the petrol station and filled the fuel tanks up with petrol for the last part of the journey home, and then headed in to the café car park.

The bikes were all parked up in a long row, all facing in the same direction.

We all looked very similar to the bikes, we must have appeared to any passers-by as right scruffy bunch, when we entered the café we got the reception we expected, the busy café stopped, the customers in the café turned around and eyeballed us, and the café staff just stared hard at us, they stopped what they were doing and watched us walk in, their eyes following us across the room, we were used to this kind of crap so we ignored it and just picked a few tables near the windows, so we could keep an eye on the bikes and because we left Dylan strapped to the pillion seat of Wobbles Honda 400/4, we put our lids down on top of the tables and it was our turn to look around, once the customers could see we were staying they carried on eating their breakfast, and generally ignored us, a couple of tables got up and left leaving their half-eaten food on the table, I think those guys had been reading to many Peter Cave biker novels, we came to eat breakfast and not to cause any trouble.

This rest stop was typical of the time with a tall glass frontage that ran the full length of the front of the building and overlooking the car park area.

The tables were playing card shaped and big enough for six people at a squeezes, and they were bolted to the floor by a single thick metal upright pole in the middle of the table.

The benches that were set on both sides of the table were made from wood with high backs and covered in man-made washable material in a plasticy shiny red colour, the whole place was almost red in colour with red table tops, red benches and red ceramic tiles.

It was a standard canteen catering setup were you slid your food tray along a metal chrome grill and the girls behind counter took your order as you moved along.

The food counter was a long stainless steel glass display affair with precooked food being kept in stainless steel sunken containers with oblong lids covering the food, we queued up and quietly shuffled along the counter ordering our chosen breakfast’s and beverages, we all needed to refuel our bodies and souls, and warm up after a long rally weekend.

There were a couple of the boys in front of me, everything was moving along with no problems, and then it was my turn, I asked for whatever I wanted, it was around 10:30 am in the morning so breakfast was still on the menu, they still had set menus for the time of the day back then, a sign said that breakfast serving finished at 11:00 am, and the only lunch was served after that time.

So I spoke to the girl serving behind the counter “ I’ll have two full English breakfasts, and a pot of tea please “, she did not move and just stared at me and did not say a thing, so we were just staring at each other for a few very long seconds, so I repeated myself “ Can I have two full breakfasts and a pot of tea please “.

She made a face at me and said “ Do you speak English, I can't understand you “.

I answered and said “ I am speaking in English “, the girl turned to the next girl who was standing nearby and said “ I can't understand him, he can't speak English “, I looked at both the girls, it was like some scenes out of a TV sitcom, the second girl spoke to me talking very slowly as if I needed to read her lips to understand what she was saying, “ what do you want to eat “, she spoke so slow I thought she was going to fall asleep.

I repeated my breakfast request, the second girl turned to the other girl and said “ I think he wants a breakfast “, I sighed deeply and rolled my eyes, this was not the first time I had People across the welsh boarder not being able to understand my valley accent, the other guys I was with never seem to have a problem, but there again most of them were townies from the lowlands of Glamorgan with softer welsh accents, most likely I spoke to fast for their little English brains to compute the data, I turned to wobble who was behind me, and asked him if he could translate for me and explain to them what I wanted to order.

Wobble did this without any problem, and the two girls produced my order in record time and the shuffling queue once more shuffled on, the first girl, kind of smiled at me and shook her head slightly and said under her breath,” They shouldn't be letting these foreigners in to the country, if they cant speak English”, she could not understand me, but I could hear and understand her with no problems, she was just lucky I did not order in Welsh it would have sounded like I was swearing at her. ( Bydd gen i ddau frecwast Saesneg llawn, a phot o de os gwelwch yn dda ).

We all eventually obtained our breakfasts and sat around the tables to quietly eat our hot food and drink our tea, while I was sitting there, I noticed where we had walked in to the café the floor of the café was covered with muddy footprints, I could see the girls behind the counter pointing at the floor and then looking at us, to be honest the tiled floor was in a right mess, the mud we had walked in was still wet and it was being walked around the whole café.

Fat mike disappeared in to the toilets, while he was in there, some of us started to collect the square sugar cubes that were in bowls on every table around the café, we decided to see if we could build a tall tower out of sugar cubes, we had done this before and it never ended well, but the opportunity was there, so we could not let that slip by without a good attempt at beating the previous record of an 11-inch tower.

The staff of the café did not initially realise what we were up too, they were to busy whinging about the state of the café floor,

We were making good progress and every one was getting louder as we neared the record height of our last sugar tower attempt.

The noise of our laughter we were making drew the attention of the café staff and then suddenly the tower fell over scattering sugar cubes everywhere on to the muddy floor.

At the same time Fat Mike came out from the toilet with a Durex that he had blown up in to small balloon, it was orange in colour and with four thick tentacles things at the business end, Mike then stated to push the inflated Durex in to peoples faces, mainly the girls, including some ordinary customers who were trying to eat their breakfasts, this interaction with the general public caused chaos and there was a lot of screaming and shrieking going on, mainly from the girls again, our increasing laughter at mike playing this prank added to the noise in the café.

This was too much for the café manager, who was a heavily set middle-aged woman, she came out from behind the counter like a out of control steam engine and told us all to get out, and never come back with some very choice and racist words and continually stated that she had already called the police, we had finished our food so we didn’t give a shit and all left laughing all the way out of the door, we left a mud covered sugar strewn café behind us and one very angry woman, people say you should not give too much sugar to kids it makes them hyper, we were still laughing when we mounted the bikes and roared off back to Wales.

It was a cold, wet and windy rally weekend, but we found ways of enjoying ourselves.

Some of the people that rode up to the Fools Rally, and the bikes they were riding.

Wobble, riding a red and white Honda CB 400/4, with Dylan as his passenger.

Frog ( me ), riding a blue Honda CB 550 f1, with Gaenor as my passenger.

P. J., riding a blacked tanked Honda CB550, with Sharon as is passenger.

Mike Keen, riding a black Suzuki GS750 with no passenger.

Anne Keen riding a brown Honda CB500 with no passenger.

Brian, riding a blue Honda CB900, with Clare as his passenger.

Fat Mike, riding an orange Honda CB550 with no pillion passenger.

Galen, riding a green ? TRIUMPH ? With no passenger.

Angus riding a ???????????????? With no passenger.

Budgie riding a red Honda 400/4 with girlfriend as a passenger.

John Hawkins riding Suzuki GS850 with no passenger.

Jolly Jack riding a black Honda CB650 with Jolly Anne as his passenger.

There may have been some others of our group there, but at the moment the above list is all I can remember.

( Thanks to Steve Wobble Jones and Brian Robinson for helping to resurrect the accuracy of events for this blog, Trying to remember things that happened 42 years ago accurately is hard work ).

( Photo 13 ) . I don`t know what was going on here, but it looks like Anne and Sharon were trying to keep me warm?.

( Photo 14 ) . A photo of Wobble, myself and Fat Mike on the rally field.

( Photo 15 ) . A photo of Budgie and Angus relaxing, not sure if it was the Fools rally, but there are not many photos of Budgie and Angus.