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(Continued from page 22) I didn’t have an exact route planned, just a few way points. The usual motorcycle runs follow a prescribed route on A roads as that is the only practical and safe way to manage the large number of riders involved. For my solo ride I was determined to avoid A roads a much as possible so just followed my nose in the general direction of the waypoints I had chosen.

First stop of the day was North Weald airfield, home to the Herts air ambulance and destination of the Herts motorcycle run. It was great to see huge progress on construction of the new hangar since my last visit. The new building will not only house the aircraft and crew but also have facilities for training, patient liaison, a visitor centre and offices for the Hertfordshire based EHAAT fundraising team.

My Blackbird outside the current visitor centre and hanger at North Weald.

And the new hangar, still under construction.

It was a nice morning so once I’d taken a few photographs I enjoyed a socially distanced breakfast in the sunshine outside the Wings café to fuel me for the day.

My next destination was the Earls Colne airfield where the Essex air ambulance is stationed. The adjacent industrial estate is also home to EHAAT’s main office. I knew the offices had been closed with everyone working from home so was surprised when EHAAT CEO, Jane Gurney waved to me from the conference room window, no doubt amused by my antics as I set my camera on a tripod for a selfie.

In more normal times I would be here for meetings but on this occasion just for a photo.

Before leaving Earls Colne I rode down to the air base to get another selfie with the helicopter.

I set the final destination of Harwich into my satnav just to be sure I kept heading in the right general direction then headed out through Wakes Colne and kept going easterly, staying north of the A12. Eventually I found myself near Manningtree then followed the estuary taking in the views and enjoying some nice winding roads as I passed through Mistley and Wrabness. I refuelled at Morrison’s in Dovercourt then rode into a very quiet Harwich. I usually arrive here an hour or more after most motorcycle run participants so ride through streets already lined by bikes and crowded with people. Today only six bikes are parked near the pier and I passed only a few solitary people walking in the town which is a real reminder of how different our lives are at the moment.

After a wander round, a few more photos and an Ice cream on the Ha'penny Pier I made my way home using B roads again as much as practical. I finally arrived home Essex Advanced Motorcyclist Group

about eight hours after I set out that morning. It had been an enjoyable days riding and in a good cause but when reflecting on it that evening it occurred to me that EHAAT had received from me less than I spent on petrol so I promptly made another donation.

Although the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccines is picking up rapidly it is clear that large events won’t be taking place in the next few months at least. With that in mind EHAAT are already looking at how the solo ride format could be enhanced as it is quite probable that is all we can do this year too. As soon as I have more details, I’ll make sure EAMG members know. It’s nice to have an excuse for a ride or better still, a worthy cause.

Old Events Report

Chris Johnson

First published in TUG in October 2014. The mugshot is from 1964.

The first ride of this period was to be a Richard Parker Full Member ride to Derham on 13th July. I was unable to attend, but apparently it was a very rainy day which developed into a very, very, VERY rainy day. Contrary to Richard's pessimistic expectations five did turn up for the run, but the destination was switched to the less ambitious Red Lodge. The heavens opened for the ride back, with Ian claiming to be reminded of crossing Lake Windermere and everyone else admitting to being completely soaked. They must be a masochistic bunch because they all professed to enjoy it, at least in retrospect! Richard also organised an Associate ride on 26th July. There were a number of Group stalwarts there in a support capacity but the number of actual Associates attending is rumoured not to have reached double figures, even when counting in binary, although I may be muddling that up with Chris Reed's pre-Group Night outing on 5th August. The turnout for both rides was officially classed as 'disappointing'.

Richard's next ride was to Uppingham on 3rd August. It was a blazingly hot day and we had over 20 bikes participating. The run was a long one at over 230 miles. I have forgotten where we had our stop on the outward leg; it was somewhere that I knew but only a picture showing us outside a pub called The Jolly Sailor was any guide. In an effort to seem less geographically challenged I have consulted Google Images and can report that

there are hundreds of pubs with that name, but none with apparently matching appearance, so the location remains a mystery. There must have been some marking irregularities on the way out, because at one point I was standing by the roadside in a village for over half-anhour. I got to be on waving terms with some of the local residents, declined two offers of help from passing cars, and bonded with a dog behind a nearby fence. He clearly felt very sorry for me because my owners had callously abandoned me in the heat without so much as a drink of water, and offered me a drink from his bowl. I thanked him but did not take up the offer. It was a rather high fence. Once the run started up again we had an all too brief stretch on a goat track which Richard claimed to have included for my benefit, although since he later admitted that he had made a minor wrong turning I am not sure how grateful I should be. Chris Reed complained vigorously about it as being totally unsuited to his Fireblade's suspension. My other bike is a 954 Blade, and it would have had no problems, so perhaps the handling has grown more track-oriented in later versions. The other explanation is, of course, unthinkable.

At Uppingham we had to fit into a car park which was manifestly too small. I didn't quite end up stacking the KTM vertically in a telephone box, but it was pretty darned close to that. The Beans Cafe seemed strangely familiar, the queue was long and the service a little chaotic, but the garden at the rear was very pleasant. Chris Reed had enthused about the Malteser ice-cream sundaes. I tried one. It was ... interesting ... but I shall not be having another in a hurry. When we left we had a fuel stop at a garage whose forecourt was manifestly too small. Could this be a characteristic of Uppingham? The journey back seemed uneventful until after the stop at St Neots, but then things went very pear-shaped for some of us. A marker who had abandoned post too early meant that by the time we were around Sandy we were getting a nasty feeling that we shouldn't be around Sandy. There was a lot of stopping and peering at maps; the A507 sounded promising but unless you know where you are it is awfully easy inadvertently to

head the wrong way on the A507, so I shall keep discretely silent about a subsequent catalogue of unwise decisions. In the end I finally made it, alone, to Buntingford and scurried back homewards down the A10. It was actually a first-class day out and I ended up doing 328 miles.

Sunday 10th of August was blessed by the last hurrah of Hurricane Bertha and, despite John Tipper's very appropriate talk on 'Riding in the Wet', people stayed away from the AGT in droves. Perhaps the persistent heavy rain and a lot of standing water put them off a bit. I had planned a ride to the Silver Ball (which Chris Reed refers to, unjustly to my mind, as the only cafe where you wipe your feet when leaving) and had two takers who had not lost their love of splashing through puddles. One left at Newport but Alan braved it out to the cafe despite finding that his supposedly waterproof boots had violated the Trades Description Acts. It had stopped raining on the way back, but familiar roads were made more exciting by the necessity to avoid flooded sections on bends or, even more exciting, avoiding oncoming cars which were avoiding flooded sections on bends. By the time I had got back to Sydenham my clothing was merely damp and then, in the last 400 yards, the skies opened with a cloudburst which reduced visibility to ten yards and I was back to square one.

A week later John & Audrey held their annual Boys & Girls Ride to the Cotswalds. This started at the Birchanger Services on a greyish sort of day with about 20 riders which included only two girls apart from Audrey. This was disappointing, although better than in some previous years, and one of them was riding aYamaha MT 05 which has just been voted 'Bike of the Year' by Bike Magazine. Now those of you with a keen memory for these events reports will remember my limited enthusiasm for the destination, Bourton, which may be related to an aesthetic sense developed in

youth in the industrial wastelands south of the Tyne and means I am not keen on neat little villages, and be expecting yet another hatchet job now. Rest assured, you will not be getting one. I got past Woburn but then missed a marker on the A5 roundabout and ended up going in the wrong direction. Attempts to recover the situation, since it was overcast and I rely on the sun to tell me what direction I am heading in, failed pretty miserably and by the second time I had been through Dunstable it was 13:00 and I gave up and went home. The sunless day method of orientation, by observing the lichen on the northwards facing trunks of trees, doesn't really work well on a motorbike; target fixation risks. This debacle, coming so soon after the one at the end of Richard's run, means that I have finally capitulated and bought a SatNav. OK, since the mounting broke the first time I used it I have had little joy from it yet but I live in hope. Anyway, back to the ride. From Facebook pictures it looks as if it was far north enough to be out of the clouds for most of the way after Buckingham. I have no information about it other than a bit of joshing on the Forum about the back marker leaving a petrol stop on the way back whilst some of the group were still paying for their fuel. Unusual and unlucky, since John normally runs a pretty tight ship on his rides, which we less gifted regard with awe and admiration.

Only one day of social rides left to report now, which is good because it is getting late, I have to finish this report before going abroad, and my old bones are aching for my comfortable chair in front of some rubbish on TV. Unfortunately on Sunday, 14th September there were two social rides. Richard Parker had a Full Member ride to Alderburgh, and Geoff Preston had his annual Beachy Head run. I had decided to make up my mind on the morning depending on when I woke up. Beachy Head gave an

extra half hour in bed since Thurrock is closer to me than Chelmsford. In the event I got up at 05:15, and that meant Aldeburgh. I was second to arrive at Sainsbury's and a further fifteen riders drifted in to enjoy a run on a fine day. Richard played his usual trick of travelling through familiar places by what was, to me, novel routes and I was forever thinking "How the blazes did we get here?". There was a stop at that caravan site / fishing lake somewhere in the Stowmarket region, whose location I always manage to forget, and we arrived in good order at Aldeburgh after only 3 or 4 drops of rain on the way.

Editor: The juxtaposition of these two independent pictures was a happy accident by the then editor, or so he claimed! Since the result was amusing I have not separated them.

There was then the long walk from the car park to the chippie, the queue there, and than the walk back. A plus this year was that there seemed to be fewer seagulls to snatch the food from your lips. There was a bit of muddle when we left with independent trips to the petrol station to avoid crowding it. I distinguished myself on this short run by deciding I might be going the wrong way, and pulling in to a driveway to take stock. Driveways have slopes. With my short legs I can only just have the balls of my feet on the ground on the KTM, and when I put my foot down I found the bike was leant so far over that I could not hold it, and slowly and elegantly(?) toppled over. I always knew that this was inevitably going to happen (and will equally inevitably happen again) so I felt pretty resigned. By good fortune a bunch of

other guys from the group drove up at that point to witness my shame, and more significantly to haul the bike upright for me, for which service many thanks. Painless, and the bike was scarcely scratched. We had to wait for a while at the petrol station for everyone to find their way there, including one guy who was phoned to find out where he was and responded that he was following Chris Johnson. Unless I have been cloned, or it was a not-so-subtle way of saying that he was hopelessly lost, this could not be right, but fortunately he turned up before too long. The ride back was pleasant, with a stop at Needham Lake, and we ended the run near Chelmsford at 17:15.

The account of Geoff's run obviously cannot be at first hand. I am not a fan of the roads south of the Thames (one of the reasons for preferring Aldeburgh) but in recent years he has got increasingly ingenious at avoiding the worst of them and I suspect this year he may have excelled himself. A comfort break at Biddenden was reported. This looked interesting. When Google Routes was queried about a journey from Thurrock to Beachy Head via Biddenden and Rye it showed an awful lot of M20, but for a bicycle (apart from having to take a ferry across the Thames) the route looked more interesting, and by foot even more so, although the journey time was 28 hours! Geoff grandly declares that he does not do numbers, but that there were around a dozen attending. The ladies at the Biddenden tea room were apparently a bit overwhelmed at the influx of bikers but it was otherwise a pleasant place to stop. Between Appledore and Camber a marker left position early and the rump of the group were lost, but sterling work by Stephen and Audrey recovered them and everyone met up at Rye. At this point Maz produced a cool bag and astonished and delighted everybody by distributing exquisite goodies. There was some grumbling about the cost of ice cream at Beachy Head itself. I have no details about the ride back but it stayed fine, whilst the guy who cut off

back early after lunch (presumably at Rye) got a soaking. Doug, Maz and John acted as sweepers. Here endeth the report. Armchair. TV. Beer!

Editor: And that should have been that. Unfortunately when preparing the report I had pasted a few passages about Geoff’s run, including one from Geoff himself and John Tipper, at the bottom of the document to aid my writing. In my hurry I completely forgot to delete them before submitting, and they duly appeared in TUG, where they must have thoroughly confused the readers. In the interests of historical authenticity (I love a bit of historical authenticity) I reproduce them here, so that you can be thoroughly confused as well.

Had a lovely day out riding with EAMG to Beachy Head. It went a bit pear shaped on the route home as some of us parted company when markers were not found and I'm still wondering # BernieTaylor and Ian Taylor where you came from on the A21??? And passed us. Lovely to see you both especially as I have just read on FB that you have just celebrated your Wedding Anniversary..

Pleased you enjoyed the ride, thanks to all for your good company and in particular to Doug and Maz and John for sweeping. :D There aren't too many good bike roads on the route but the road from Lydd to Rye via Camber can be a hoot if you are lucky enough to get a clear road, it was my lucky day, I encountered one car and I was able to overtake without having to wait any time. :) The weather was superb for the dozen or so bikes, sorry Chris I don't do counting. The comfort break at Biddenden proved to be rather time consuming, the village coffee shop obviously unaccustomed to large groups of hairy bikers, the ladies present are not included in that phraseology of course. :) Somewhere between Appledore and Camber the Group managed to decrease it's numbers by around forty per cent, yep! the fatal flaw in the marker system, a marker moved before the sweeper appeared. :shock: Fortunately, Stephen and Audrey were within

coms range and the situation was retrieved and we all, eventually, met up in Rye. :) It was at this point that Maz produced a miniscule cool bag from which she distributed unending amounts of food to the assembled group, myself included, for which we were all most grateful, and amazed. :shock: It was then on to Beachy Head where, with the lack of anything more exciting, everyone availed themselves of the obligatory ice cream. :D Duly rested and refreshed we embarked on the journey back to the beloved Essex!! :lol: Thanks for organising Geoff, Audrey enjoyed riding for herself rather than sweeping for me all the time and I enjoyed just being led! We enjoyed the alternative route south avoiding the normal main roads. Kent was really busy, plenty of potential hazards, with high verges full of invisible driveways but some of the scenery was spectacular; made a real change from the roads of Essex. £2.50 for an ice cream at Beachy Head was a bit steep but the village cafe in Biddenden was charming, albeit unused to serving bikers. Sorry to hear Peter got a soaking, serves you right for leaving at the lunch stop. We were much luckier only seeing a wet road as we arrived home. Thanks to MAZ for the unexpected salmon roll and to Doug for sweeping in the morning. Shame about the double social ride booking though!