The fact that I'm writing this at this confirms that the nail in my front tyre continued to hold air all the way home. Not much left of the nail mind!!
Thanks to all who came along and made Wales 2005 a true classic in the old BTBC way. We started drinking early and it went on well into the early hours with a fantastic singing competition with all the locals (15/14 to us I reckon). A very special thanks must also go to Sarah (AKA Mrs loud) for trying to keep me in tune on more than one occasion. A top night make no mistake, it's been a while!!!!…..
The weather was not fantastic all of the time it's true, but it was certainly better than the forecast and we had brilliant Blue Sky all the way home from Mid Wales. Those who cried off due to the forecast made a mistake, a huge mistake.
We only had one mishap to my knowledge, but a proper one it was. You'll all
be pleased to know I've spoken to Alex tonight and he's doing well, broken bones
aside. He apparently had a relatively low speed front end wash out and hit the
Black stuff hard. He's broken his shoulder and his bad leg, but sounds in relatively
good spirits all considered. He's asked me to pass on his thanks to all for
asking after his well being with a special thanks to those who looked
after both him and his bike while the Air Ambulance arrived. He's banged up
in Bangor Hospital and doesn't expect to be moving far for a day or so. I'll
keep you all informed….
So, that was Wales 2005 and now it's only 3 weeks until the Scottish!! I could probably squeeze in one or two more, but I'll be closing the book for good in a week.
Thanx again, top weekend….
PC
Ps, thanx for controlling your bladder Tony!
Pps, thanx for controlling your bowels Andy!!
Where to start?
Thanks to :- PC for the leading and organising, it can't be an easy task.
All who made it another fantastic night (and day) in the pub, my neck and jaw haven't ached so much from laughing in ages, and also for being so kind at my attempts at singing.
Everyone for putting up with my pace today when I lost my (small) mojo, and Dave for helping me get it back, even though he probably doesn't know how, but I do ;-)
Adam for the headache pills and water this morning, you'll make someone a lovely wife someday, cheers, I needed them.
And last but not least the girl doing breakfast for the views (you know what I mean).
B.T.B.C = Brilliant Time, Brilliant Crowd.
Well worth the membership. Roberto
Big thanks form the Chattys too, enjoyed the run, even though it was at my slow pace, a big thanks to Alan for keeping me company. We certainly enjoyed the good company, not so sure about the locals though, Leo sayers dad, or was it the man himself, certainly spread himself about a bit. Food and beer were great and the breakfast was spot on too.
Good to see some old faces, Garty, if you are back as Garty does that mean the dog is now called Adam, what type of lap dog is it ;-)).
Will be there for the C2C as well, just booked my mum to have the kids for that weekend, any other runs will be a bonus.
The Chatty's
For Sue and I, the biking calendar stopped back in 2003. A very close shave
with a stupid and incredibly robust Scottish mountain sheep almost put an end
to us, and has been the theme of many recurring nightmares since. That and a
new passion; mountain biking on a Europe-wide basis, meant that in the 2003
I managed to drive an almighty 90 miles on my formerly beloved Africa Twin,
and the only mileage I did in 2004 was 24 miles including to and from Lucas'
to get it MOT'd. The other miles were an ill-advised spin that I took with a
freshly-healed broken foot; unable to bear the weight of the bike doing a simple
U-turn, my weakened right leg collapsed and I tore all the muscles in my calf,
necessitating another 4 frustrating weeks of recuperation and physio.
Apart from the fear and elation of riding a monster motor cycle; which I patently
wasn't missing at all, the friendships that Sue and I had formed during our
happy years in the BTBC seemed to lose their intensity; without biking, there
seemed to be no common bond any more, and I for one really missed the camaraderie,
the piss-taking and the adventures that we all used to have.
Being Adam's surrogate parents meant that he occasionally emailed, phoned or visited us over the bike-free period, and always kept the pressure on, nagging us to come out on a trip, keeping us up to date on club stuff etc. Well, to cut a long story short, it must have struck a chord somewhere, as I found myself having signed up to do the Wales spring trip, and was running short on time to make any excuses.
We managed to get my parents to babysit for virtually the whole weekend, so found ourselves childless on a Friday night for the first time in years. We dined out and had a bottle of champagne in front of the fire. Romantic as it sounds, the only upshot of this, so to speak, was us both nodding off 10 minutes from the end of the DVD we were watching, and giving me rotten heartburn all night.
We awoke to a beautiful blue sky, but with a really sharp frost which had brought the outside temperature down to minus 4. I readjusted my clothing layers and rooted out the electric waistcoats. The bike started on the first key, and was soon warmed up and the handgrips were at toffee-making temperature. We left our village at 6-15 and carefully picked our way to the main road on a very frosty lane.
Very soon, the flush of warmth from rushing around packing and locking the house had been stripped from our bodies by the 70 mph slipstream. With temperatures in the minus the windchill was phenomenal, and we were soon glad of our heated waistcoats, despite mine seeming only hot down one side (it had been nibbled my mice). We were very soon on the Whitchurch bypass slowing down for the Little Chef roundabout. A few bikes were already there, so we filled up, then joined the riders, most of whom we didn't recognise, for a chat and a bike inspection. Inside the building, a few more familiar faces were in evidence; Granville, sadly minus Linda who was having to stay at home, Roberto, Les, Andy Cadney and others. We ordered tea and alternately gossiped and head-butted the stupid light fittings. Before long the doors opened saloon-style and the well-nourished Northerners came in, in a gaggle. Fraz, Dave Edge and Clarkie. In stark contrast, Tony Bramah was lurking about, looking as emaciated as a POW from the Burma railway, his new svelte form the result of a couple of years of dieting and road cycling. Still, it was more than good to see them all, and there was a lot of catching up to do with all our accumulated news, especially when Dave said to me in an aside "have you and Sue sorted your marital problems out?" which was all news to us! I suppose that this was the work of a village gossip in Sheffield. Adam rolled in, technically late, but not that it mattered as the big guys were on their third breakfast course. Why he was late is another matter, as he was actually staying in Whitchurch and only had a couple of miles to get to the meet-up, but had waited at the wrong Little Chef!
Soon we were being summoned to the bikes for our pep-talk and all of a sudden the cry "two minutes!" signalled one minute 59 seconds of critical faff on our part as we dropped gloves, mislaid earplugs and generally failed to impress with our lack of finesse. The time-honoured 'second man' rule worked flawlessly as we settled into a two mile string of bikes, with a few of the riders who enjoy riding fast for 20 seconds, then having a five minute wait on a T-junction waiting for last man. We saw Adam waiting on nearly every junction! One thing that I hadn't forgotten was the art of hovering mid-group, always ensuring that there is a 'buffer zone' of bikes in front of me - to see Paul in front is usually bad luck, and to be avoided at all costs!
The route that Paul had chosen was new to us in the main. All small roads and very pleasant it was too. We had a short stop at Llanwddyn, and the sun was doing its best to shine. The special BTBC brand of humour was in full flow, some of us non-GS riders were tittering quietly about the unequal balance of Euan's to Charlies, and the whole thing was starting to become startlingly reminiscent of the early trips back in the 90's - Hooray for that then! We set off again; I shadowed the Chatfields for a while, but eventually worked out that my following him was possibly making him nervous. Accordingly I overtook, and before long had a 'mad half hour' as Sue calls them. The roads were dry, empty of traffic, I seemed to be doing alright despite making a few gear/braking cockups due to lack of 'muscle memory' and there were lots of other riders to play with, so basically I let rip. The adrenaline finally petered out as we stopped for lunch at the usual café stop at Mallwyd. On the way I had a strange experience, Adam was waiting on two consecutive junctions yet hadn't overtaken me, there were no shortcuts - and his navigation is so hopeless anyway, he wouldn't be able to consciously read a map to obtain the necessary information. Has he got a clone?
Wales is not the first choice of the travelling gastronaut. The café served perfectly adequate food, but it was all really bland looking. The toasted teacakes were only lightly toasted, the flapjacks could have done with a bit longer in the oven to acquire a more 'nutty' flavour and healthier-looking colour, the sandwiches all looked a bit listless too. Maybe the reason is that the guy doing the cooking was almost albino white! Still, at least they were open, years ago, for months I worked on a building site in a small Welsh town, and despite there being 60 or so builders and trades wandering the town looking for food, the chip shop resolutely closed for lunch every day from 12-30 to 1-30! and it also made a change to not be soaking wet as we usually are at this particular stop.
We spent an agreeable lunchtime with Paul and Sarah, who had decided to ride their bike this year instead of pretending to have it stolen! The bigger boys were hanging around the toilets, making it embarrassing for us guys with small willies; obviously with Carl not being around, a committee had to take up the duties as Cockwatcher-General. We were soon being summoned back to the bikes again for more fun, so we put our lids & gloves on and Sue and I joined mid-group again to avoid any unnecessary work or waiting about.
Our next port of call was a cracker of a road up from Dinas Mawddwy over to
Lake Vyrynwy. The summit cross that we playfully 'crucified' Joe Nyman on is
still there, which made me smile, as after that he spent the rest of the weekend
violently waving cutlery about in our faces, and gave Rob Scott a thrashing
with a poker on the bar-room floor! With hindsight, it seemed like a better
idea if we had left him there!
Over from the Lake we cut back across, skirting Bala down to Llanuwchllyn. Some
classic rally cars were coming the opposite way, but seemed well driven enough
not to be a problem. Fraz was in front of us on his tiny little supermoto, he
looked like a big kid on a minimoto! Anyway, we were rolling smoothly through
Llanuwchllyn, and I noticed all the people about so I let rip with a colossal
backfire. Fraz jumped a mile, but you could see his mind working, so he spent
the next several hundred yards going slower and slower as he tried all the variations
of throttle and speed to do his own explosion. He couldn't though, ha ha!
The next bit over the mountain road to Trawsfynnyd required that I have a
minimum of 9 riders in front of me, so that we wouldn't have to open any of
the 5 gates or wait at any of the junctions. However, I miscounted and we found
ourselves with rather too much Mr Clarke in the 12 O'clock field of view. With
only one rider in front of us, I pulled a rather nasty trick on a couple other
riders. I simulated a 'stall' in order that they overtook me whilst I played
about pretending to be all flustered. It worked a treat though and soon we couldn't
see Paul at all! The KTM rider in front of us pulled over for a car, but found
it tricky to get back on the road. I didn't want to overtake him obviously,
perhaps he saw what I was up to and wanted me to have a 20 minute wait on a
wet junction instead? but he must have felt the need to roar off, which he duly
did, and totally missed the next corner, taking an emergency shortcut across
a load of gravel - very impressive! We got to the village of Bronaber, then
disaster! Paul went a different way and Sue and I found ourselves installed
on the junction with the straight -as-a-die A470 - a roman road. This was our
payback. The group had strung out a lot, so we stood in the drizzle for more
than a merry moment, taking pics and chatting with occasional riders. Fraz was
getting a bit fed up with his SM slipping and sliding about everywhere, so was
contemplating splitting off to go straight to our luxury accommodation.
Eventually Allen Mitchell appeared in his fluoro sash, which signified that
he was the broom wagon, so we put our kit back on for a half mile blast up the
road to a regroup at the garage on the next junction. The owner of which was
playing pop about all these nasty people parked on his forecourt er… buying
snacks, petrol etc and he kept coming over to hiss at us. In the end we got
fed up with him threatening us with the Heddlu and stuff, so we cleared off
after a few minutes. We were intrigued why Tony B was breakdancing on the floor
by his bike as we passed him, apparently he had banged his shin cocking his
leg over the bike, so was having an 'Italian footballer' moment.
We went up the Bala road a bit then cut back towards Ffestiniog, over the next ten miles between there and Beddgelert, there was a mishap. Alex Penrose slipped on a corner and unfortunately came down hard on his shoulder and also re-broke his leg, which already has a bit of Barry Sheene-style metalwork. Suffice to say, his biking was over for the foreseeable future, and a few of the others stayed with him and his bike whilst an Air Ambulance arrived. We all wish Alex all the very best and a speedy recovery.
Sue and I became victims of our clever plans again, and got plonked down on a junction in Penygroes, we got talking to a couple of kids, who wanted to know all about our bike etc. It was a good job that they did talk with us, as we were on the junction for at least half an hour. Hooray! Allen appeared and we were able to depart on the 'home run' to the pub. It took a few minutes, and we were there. Paul was ticking off names on his list, we told him about Alex and parked up the bike in the front garden of the pub. It was quite difficult to get parked close enough without touching the other bikes, and I remarked that it was a bit like a game of Jenga with bikes - if they were taken out in the wrong order in the morning, the whole lot could fall down!
We managed to get access to the rooms, and took our minimalist luggage upstairs,
Sue was wondering aloud what the riders with 3 panniers were carrying, and we
both reminisced about Mark 'Wing Commander' Piercy's dressing gown that he carted
all around Scotland all those years ago. The room was actually colder than outside,
the radiator was stone cold as well, and with the help of my Leatherman, my
alter-ego 'Plumber man' immediately diagnosed 'valves both fully open, no air
in rad, water circulating, check boiler operational' As I didn't have any legal
means of accessing the boiler room, I did the next best thing, and went to whine
at the staff to get it put on! Sue was chilled to the bone, so rather than risk
a nasty dose of Anthrax from having a shower, we retired with cold noses to
the bar, where the Grand National was on telly. The girl at the bar, an attractive
young thing with worn-out looking teeth and the skin of a 50 year old let it
slip that it was 'Happy Hour' until 6PM. I relayed this to the gang upstairs
who were mooing and lowing in their rooms, and within a short time the bar was
full of large and not-so-large men smelling sweetly of Head & Shoulders
and moaning that although it was allegedly 'Happy hour', drinks were still very
much full price! Perhaps the idea was to make the management happy instead of
the customers?
It was only about 4 O'clock, and I reflected that although it wasn't going to
be anywhere near as dramatic drinking session as my mountain bike crew had in
Betws-y-Coed a while ago (5 pints of Speckled Hen before 5PM and we started
at 2PM AND got the blame for 'giving one of the riders meningitis' by his wife!)
it was going to be a hazy afternoon waiting for Jamie Oliver to arrive to get
the chip fryer going at 7PM!
Chatty and Sarah rolled in some time later, having spent a cold afternoon attending Alex and waiting for a recovery truck that was wrongly directed to a different grid reference by North Wales' finest. They went off to get ready and I had another little whine about the heating. Dave Edge came to sit with us and we good-humouredly made him suffer for what he'd asked earlier about our marriage being OK again. The 'bigger boys' were trumpeting loudly about there being no microphone for karaoke later, and that the 'Sands' Nightclub was closed due to a Rohypnol and Burberry shortage in North Wales. Talk about gutted! We were eventually able to order food, the least said about which the better I'm afraid. I wrongly imagined that even the crappiest chef could fail to cock up a grill, and Sue showed signs of paralysis when asked how her Tandoori-flavoured beef and Ale pie was.
Eventually, one of the more intelligent bar girls worked out that unless a microphone was procured, the evening could get nasty, as the Sheffield boys were going into karaoke deprivation syndrome. As soon as it arrived, a competition started between the locals and the BTBC. The local team was basically one young girl with pert breasts who had quite a good singing voice and er nice pert breasts, plus a midget pissed version of Max Boyce, who came over to talk at us all, and a disabled lad in a wheelchair, who was also rather dramatically the worse for wear, and had a huge wodge of jellified snot running down the side of his face - yuk! A few other locals sulked quietly in a back room moaning about their pub being taken over by 'Stars in their eyes'.
Well, as evenings go, it must rank as one of the best, simply a huge, rollicking belly-laugh of an evening, as we all appeared to outdo each other in either singing, dancing (a simply unforgettable Bez impression from Les Goodwin) dice playing (don't ask - it was a bit like the chess-playing I witnessed in Amsterdam!) or just cracking up watching the others. I must be getting old, as I was one of the first to go to bed, the room now warm because the heating had come on, and Sue and I spent a relatively uncomfortable night under a postage-stamp size and thickness duvet.
The morning was supposed to be clear skies and dry roads, but unfortunately someone had forgotten to tell us that Wales does not obey weather forecasts. A few of the guys listlessly wandered around the car park, kicking wheels and smoking fags, it seemed that we were all sharing the same hangover. The breakfast chef arrived late for duty after his culinary triumph of last night, and within half an hour had given us all indigestion to take home with us. Sue and I had managed to con my parents into an approximation of babysitting for the weekend, but we couldn't abuse the favour, so had to skip off and get home early. We said our goodbyes, and were soon speeding home on the roads I know so well.
Well, it's been two long years and I've really missed this bunch of reprobates.
I haven't missed being scared riding too fast on an out-of-control machine on
dangerous roads much, but I have missed the fellowship and bonhomie of this
terrific club with its diverse and almost universally likeable membership. It
seems that the bigger the bike, the more friendly the bloke riding it; you don't
get much bigger bikes than Big Traillies, and upon this I rest my case.
See you out on the trails soon, and Tim and John, don't bother having your mantelpieces
enlarged for any more C2C trophies!
Garty
Cheers
John Greenan
Great to hear that Alex is doing well, look forward to seeing him on a ride out soon(ish)
Well what a hoot that was. My first ride out with the BTBC in almost a year. I'd almost forgotten how great it is to be blasting along some amazing road in the middle of nowhere with 20+ bikes to play with. I'll be back for more ASAP. Great to see loads of old faces and a few new (to me) ones too.
Thanks as always to PC for sorting it all out and for letting me come along at the very last minute. Thanks also to the southern contingent who democratically led the southern blast home – the race with the fire engine was a cracker! Thanks also to Allen for the last man duties – great job. Finally sorry to Mrs Chatty for the beer mat in the eye – I really am truly sorry!
Look forward to more of the same soon.
ATB Adam
Hope you are all home safely, I've not heard anything more about Alex but will
ring the hospital tomorrow and let you know.
Thought the hotel was much better than last year, I mean you don't need curtains in the bedroom at this time of year!! Seriously, the kids did their best, the food was good and the entertainment first class and breakfast 500% better than last year. It was good to see some new faces and different bikes, another great trip,
Thanks Paul.I'll concur with John, best wishes to Alex, hope the hospital food isn't too grim. Probably still better than chez Coach and Horses. Top do I say, thanks to Paul for organisation and Adam for leading the four of us back to (almost) Birmingham today.
Well the bike's washed, must go and scrub my thermals....
Andy Cad