Another Friday, another rally. Today I’m off for the 40th anniversary BSRA National Scooter Rally at Newark.
It’s an early start as it’s about 200 miles for me, the weather’s not looking great, so it’s on with the waterproofs and away I go.
It’s a straightforward ride until… suddenly no lights. No headlight, tail light, brake light, indicators, speedo tells, nothing. As I’m on a motorway when it happens there’s not a lot I can do about it until the next services. When I stop to check it (read wiggling wires about) I have no luck but I’m now literally halfway there. I press on and at the next stop I have another go. Success! I have lights and away I go… for about a mile, then the lights go again, annoyed I give the headset a thump, and hey presto I have lights! So for the last 50 miles or so I can be seen regularly hitting the headset, hey it worked!
I catch my mate at the services a few miles out of Newark and we head into Newark Showground together, in the sunshine. The place is huge, we pitch our tents opposite the main venue and chill out with ice cream.
No queue room
Friday night and it was time to wander round the various ‘rooms’ (actually halls), the main venue was rammed with a fight to the bar, though the queues were moving reasonably quickly. Then off to the Northern Soul room, while it was busy, there were no bar queues there, in fact, the bar staff looked quite bored. We decided to give the staff some work and stay in there for a while.
Back to the main room for the bands, first The Score, a local indie, covers band, got the crowd up nicely. They were followed by Notts Mod band, Sharp Class who I have waxed lyrical about previously.
The last stop was the silent disco, silent? It was full and about 3/4 of the dancers were loudly singing Sweet Caroline! It was a great atmosphere and a great way to end the evening, well after a nice greasy burger of course.
I was up early on Saturday to wander around the campsite, the weather was a little grey and threatening, and the weather forecast wasn’t very promising for the rest of the day – hey, what do I expect, it’s July!
Scooter to camper ratio
At first sight, it looked like the rally was just wall-to-wall camper vans, but actually, there were a lot of scooters there. All sorts, ranging from custom classics to matt black chops, with the ubiquitous GTS in between.
Breakfast, then a wander around the parts fair and custom show, catching up with the usual suspects.
No fly zone
Now those who know me know my love of aviation, and guess what, the Newark Aviation Museum is at the other end of the Showground, guess where I was going to be spending my day?! (I have offered Iggy a 10,000-word in-depth review of the Newark Air Museum complete with photos, including close-up views of the Avro Vulcan undercarriage. I’m patiently awaiting a reply).
Missing the inevitable rain, I headed back to the, now sunny, campsite where I caught the ‘Rallyoke’ karaoke, with The Score providing the live backing music to a number of possibly drunk scooterists who were singing their hearts out, great fun to watch.
A good English fry up
Another ice cream, a bite to eat and it was nearly time for the England game, which was being shown live in the Northern Soul room. For me it was a good excuse to get a bit of a snooze in. Football over, I was tempted with the offer of bacon and egg sarnies (thanks Tracy) but completely forgot the bands! I managed to catch the end of the AKA The Syndicate’s set, but collapsed in a snotty heap in my tent before the Death of Guitar Pop’s took to the stage, only waking up for my ride home on Sunday.
Words and photos: Booga
