On the television they always have what they call perspective shots. A quick view of the scene where the action is to take place; it helps us all to get the idea. So, before we go any further, it was February 4th, a Sunday, and the run was called Winter Wanderings. The meeting place was Bromyard town square, a lovely market town where any readers from down south would be horrified to find that houses are a fraction of the going price and where people manage to live completely free of Austrian blinds and Sierra cars that they don't clean on Sunday mornings.
Jo and Jenny run a superb hotel on the square and whenever we have arrived there to meet the other chaps for a run, we've always been regarded rather cautiously by the hotel residents. For the most part they are grateful to be relieved of the chore of talking to each other quite so early in the morning, by the arrival of folk in black leathers and extremely disreputable Belstaff suits, many sporting pudding basin helmets (that would make the British Kite Mark see red with apoplectic rage) and goggles that look as though they might have some connection in the dim and distant past with some magnificent flying ace with a huge handlebar moustache.
At first they are suspicious - how have motorcyclists managed to engender this response in everyone? But then they realise, as all the helmets are removed, that the average age of the riders is somewhat in excess of 40 years, and that the bikes are even older. Flat tankers a lot of them; old deserves respect and so the residents smile and nod indulgently.
It has often occurred to me that it would be rather nice to go into the hotel and have breakfast, and so the plan was laid. We would ride to the start of the run, him on the James and I would ride my Honda C90, the forty miles from home to the start of the rally. We would then dismount, chat affably about rebuilds and so on and then go into breakfast, to the horror of the patrons who had regarded us safely from the other side of the glass bow windows, doubtless thinking, oh my dear, motorcyclists.
But it was February and the battery was flat, so we took a trip to Mel's, ostensibly to get a new battery, but more obviously to talk some more about bikes. My presence was a bit of a disadvantage in as much that the conversation did not turn to the latest list of women that Mel or the mechanics could 'give one to' and the usual offer of dirty videos was not made. Maybe they think I'm a lady. I counted the ubiquitous naked lady calenders on the wall. There were five; one of the women looked like she needed the forks of an FZR to hold her tits up, they were so enormous!
The Honda was rubbed over with a rag, started up and I was ready to go. The sky was clear, not raining, and I nervously mounted the bike, a little apprehensive as this was the longest trip solo and I had to get around the one way system in Worcester without making a mess of it and stalling. I became that morning a motorcyclist proper. Took what Pirsig said in Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance to heart and owned the road. Imagined myself as Ted Simon even, worked out that after my day's adventure I would only have to do 63,910 miles to catch him up.
I started singing. There's nothing like the early morning, the hills of Worcester and the almost overpowering sense of well being that riding a bike creates to provoke a bit of humming and then as things get better, full scale choral work-outs.
It didn't rain, I didn't stall it, I arrived to a certain (undeserved, I felt) indifference from the chaps in the square. I expected a much bigger reception; what I'd done was brilliant, heroic. I was a motorcyclist now. The relative newness of my bike (it's actually got a letter after its registration number) enabled me to leave the James miles behind (well, a hundred yards) going up hills. I felt rather proud about that. Okay, I accept Joey Dunlop has little to worry about, but surely no-one has their fantasies in true perspective when they are in the middle of enjoying them. I was racing in the streets and that was good enough for me.
My bike does not qualify for the runs. it's got to be over 25 years old. However, they said I could go on if I wanted. But I declined as breakfast was waiting. Besides I wanted time to talk about my spectacular achievement. It seems to me that after brief periods of intense physical exertion nothing delights a man more than drinking beer and talking about it. I didn't see why I should be denied my opportunity to do the same.
Motorcycling, like a lot of other things, is addictive. As I sat there munching my toast and marmalade I started scheming and planning. When could I get out again? If it feels this good in February what will it feel like in the summer? Within a few minutes of recovering from my dawn blaze across Worcestershire on a C90, I was bitterly regretting the breakfast booking and wishing I'd done the run as well...
The concept behind the Bucket and Spade run is one of Mike's. It's the same concept that underpins all the runs he organises. That is, persuade as many of your friends as possible to ride motorcycles all day long in all sorts of weather, with only the promise of a cup of tea and his company to offset the disaster, the rain, the pain in the bum and the stress of losing fellow riders.
I'm not surprised that 30 or so people do join him. The concept is a simple one. Leominster Bus Garage to Aberaeron and back in a day, for us a round trip of 250 miles, a mere nothing for a big Yam but a bit of a stomp for a bike over fifty or sixty years old. In many ways the Bucket and Spade has the stamp of a works outings. There is enormous promise and speculation, it's everything you remember from going to the seaside when you were a kid. The sun will come out, we're going to have fun. It's the highlight of August. The real troupers turn out for this one; everyone makes an effort.
The rucksack is loaded up, it's seven o'clock on a Sunday morning, the bike's ready (he's done the obligatory fiddle with the chains) and it's just a case of cramming the waterproofs in on top of the lunch. Even after the summer we've just had there is no way we are going to trust the British weather. Anyway, if we do take them it won't rain, for the same reason we take the puncture repair kit and the great weight of Whitworth spanners, swinging like a hanged man in the tool bag.
Leominster Bus Garage, nine o'clock now, and a chap in plastic sandals turns up from nowhere to talk about bikes. Every time we stop people come up to us wanting to talk about bikes. Everyone says Hi and hello, lots of bikes - Sunbeams, a Rudge, a Scott, lots of natty little Ariels and some modern (fifties) bikes.
Someone tells Mike of a particularly hazardous road they had gone down the day before. It says unsuitable for heavy traffic - but was actually unsuitable for any traffic; gestures of an incredibly steep incline with water at the bottom. Mike takes all this in with the expression of a father listening to a son who has just discovered what it's like to get drunk. Oh God, I think, it won't be long before that one is incorporated into the route card.
There's the sudden noise of a bike being kicked over. It's the Sunbeam Sizzler, the rider has firmly strapped on his pudding basin, goggles down; a couple of riders want to get ahead to have breakfast. They wind on the throttle and zoom off. 25 minutes later, when we leisurely set off, they are a quarter of a mile down the road in a hedge.
Different thoughts must cross our minds as we travel along. If you end up behind some riders, you'll see the pillion gesticulating wildly about things; the bike must be quieter than the Sunbeam I'm on the back of. They don't think about work, all of them say they leave that well behind them, maybe they just think about riding. This bend, the car in front, the weather, where's some rider got to.
Next, one of the engines starts to overheat and loses compression. We stop in the Welsh equivalent of the Amazonian rain forest. Huge great trees with dense foliage blocking out the sun. Sometimes, when you look at a bloke sitting on his bike, you can almost visibly see him invoke God's help in keeping the thing running. His own expertise and his mates crowding around muttering encouragement goes a long way but in the end if the gods say you're out of the game, you are. Anything from a head gasket to a bush gone in the gearbox, and that's the end of it. Even simple things can go wrong and sabotage an entire day's riding.
Eventually, the bike is fixed and we're all back on the road. After a swim on Aberaeron beach we stomp off into town, thudding along in the great heat in our huge Derri boots. Sometimes I look at us and think they won't let us in but they do and we have tea and cakes.
On the return journey, one bike develops a puncture in the back tyre. We're on the Drovers Road and luckily someone has a repair kit. The men yank at the tyre, push it this way, pull it that way, get the tube out, feel around the inside of the tyre wall as gently as a man reading braille, but nothing is found. Later on we all regret this as 20 miles down the road the puncture comes back just as the bike is leant over in a bend.
The main body of the section had left us by this time, it's pouring with rain and no-one has a puncture repair kit left in working order - the glue looks like toothpaste after the boy scouts have been at it. We leave him at a garage 70 miles from home to ride back and get a trailer. By the time we arrive home his wife's phoned to say it's okay he's fixed the puncture.
Then his wife phones again, it's punctured again, can we get him? Back 80 miles to the pub he's managed to stagger into. Load bike, drink beer, hastily eat chips and home again (the same 80 miles): knackered and exhausted like kids after a day out at the seaside...
He was planning a weekend's motorcycling and camping in Wales and I was listening abstractly, not thinking about much in particular while he wistfully wittered on. As I didn't actually say, no way, I'm not doing that, nor make a prompt refusal, I was enmeshed in a plot beyond my powers of disentanglement. For a pillion rider acquiescence is a yes vote.
What he actually said was that there would be zephyrs of breeze gently flapping against the opened slit of the tent, that through this slit there would be rays of golden sunlight, that the sounds awakening us would be those of bird song and the distant refrain of a babbling brook. Like all motorcyclists, all the same, the continual triumph of optimism over the experience of years and years.
It was only when he mentioned that the campsite was located in Wales that I had real pause for thought - it always rains in Wales; I even had photographic evidence from past exploits to prove that Wales was not the place to go camping and motorcycling. Especially on a vintage bike, the bloody thing breaks down. And I have to sit there biting my lip trying not to ask what was the matter with it, for fear of getting thumped with a Whitworth spanner.
Does anyone really camp in Wales in the wettest April in recorded memory? And do people do it on a bike that this year celebrates its fifty-first birthday, after a rebuild that left no compression and something else wrong that when he explained it to me sounded as complicated as the internal digestive processes of a double stomached goat. Surely, no-one would envisage it.
But he does, and why? To get out with his mates? No, to get out with mine. The weekend is the Spring Rally of the WIMA and an impressive bunch of women they are too, By comparison, the men in the vintage club are quite gentle. These women do things like going to the International Meet in summer (1200 miles each way) on MZ 125s. I've only been at this a short while and even I know that's mad. They go to Digwall (north of Inverness) for a rally; most people wouldn't go if they inherited a Scottish castle and an estate.
The idea in spite of the fact that I had failed to nip it in the bud, was now assuming gigantic proportions. Maybe it was straightforward curiosity. Imagine a group of women who adore motorcycling as much as men, and whose idea of a good time is doing the Monte Carlo or riding from Sussex to Darlington on some enormous machine they can hardly stand astride, just to see a mate. Could it be that here was really the group of women he'd been looking for?
I felt as though I had been duped. I'd joined WIMA on my first day out on the bike when we went to Founders Day, hoping, I think, to have a little credibility of my own. A group of women that could in their own small way compete with the men that I ride with each weekend. I sought company, solace, thought that there might be women out there as perplexed and bewildered as me about motorcycles; naive and sweet, supporting their men and doing things like pressed flower work.
But no, I discover after six months of reading their journal they are a group of extremely competent enthusiasts, several of whom go out and leave their men behind to look after the children. I was nervous about meeting them. He was looking forward to it. He had a certain credibility, he was going on the Sunbeam, I was bringing up the rear in a jeep laden with enough kit to keep the average Everest expedition safely and adequately equipped for several months.
I also had the Big Dog, the one who barks very loudly every time he hears a motorcycle start off. He was my company as we drove down to Wales with huge barks ricocheting round the jeep like Tyson beating three kinds of you-know-what out of a piece of corrugated iron every time we came near a bike. So I was to arrive with the same lumbering passivity of a woman in purdah.
I needn't have worried. The women were magic. Our paltry 80 mile jaunt to get there was nothing, most of them had come several hundred miles. Imagine the scene, about 15 women gathered in a group to watch him start up the bike, much amusement at the sight of such an ancient device as a kickstart. He couldn't start it. They were incredulous, but to their credit they didn't jeer when he sheepishly came back for the tools...
The run on Sunday morning was kept modest for our benefit, but the Sunbeam, despite or because of its rebuild, didn't let us down. It was great to have her out again. I have been so indoctrinated that I refuse to accept that a motorcycle can be proper if it isn't black - we were on the only black bike.
Lunch was a brilliant affair, laid on by the WIMA rally officer. I think she used to be a chef somewhere, she's the only person I've ever seen riding a BMW wearing a checked cap back to front, a pair of clogs and an apron...
Anon.