After last years soggy but enjoyable do we decided a repeat visit was definitely in order, which is why Lindsey and me are blatting up the A1 in Friday evenings chaos. After meeting up with various others at the services we all dive into the maelstrom again and the western bypass is as much fun as ever, all the friendly cars snuggling up together, and us trying to maintain our dignity amongst it all.
Jo "Clutch, throttle, brake or is it brake, throttle,
clutch?"
Giddy prepares serious coffee, all hail the saviour.
Once on site I'm immediately impressed with the campsite, it's so smooth and cropped it's more like a well kept lawn. Once our tents are up we all head indoors to find some beer having foolishly not brought any with me. Bloody hell, it's expensive. £2.20 for a pint of larger and fuck knows what for bottles of girlie-pop. Fortunately I've got a little whisky with me so manage to get pleasantly pissed without having to resort to bankruptsy.
Giddy's tent aka "the house of shite". Not a pretty site I think you will agree.
Saturday fails to be hot and sunny but at least manages to be dry, perfect for a run round Kielder. Lindsey, me, Andy, Jo, John and Giddy set off and for the usual loop. Neither John or Giddy has done this before so they're both in for a treat. The first section up the A696 consists of heavy traffic, medium traffic, light traffic then party time. Lindsey and Giddy (Sprint and VFR) tear off into the distance, everyone else eases into their own pace - after all it's no good knackering yourself out too early in the game. Once onto the A68 we stop at Rochester nr Redesdale Camp for coffee and sticky buns, or perhaps more accurately apple pie and custard for some and soup for others. Very nice.
Giddy and John share a brief moment of lucidity
Andy meanwhile has a brief snooze.
From there to Carter Bar is much more interesting as the roads
starts to twist and turn. Once across the border I take the lead
and start to wind it on a bit, I think I'm doing fine till the
bark of a Buell behind me tells me Johns caught up. mind you John
is fast, a lunatic, but a fast one. After that things get very
interesting, I'm not exactly trying to loose John (been there
tried that, almost caught the ambulance) but there again I'm not
going too easy. By this time everyone else has joined the end of
the convoy so I settle for keeping them out of ditches on the
tricky bits. Kielder visitors centre provides more nourishment
and a chance to chill out and for those that ain't been there to
have a look at the castle.
The remainder of the journey is silly in the extreme. The sports
bikes (that's everyone but Jo and me) keep buggering off on the
open stretches, we sort of regather at each turnoff and
eventually it's every man and woman for themselves for 40 miles
of B road lunacy to Hexham. I guess we all owe a collective
apology to the driver of a large white truck as every one of us
seemed to have been er, surprised, by him. Actually I think we
owe apologies to anyone we met, which fortunately wasn't many. It
was just one of them days.
Back on the site we meet up with Bev, Lynn, Derek and Michael who
got no further than Newcastle, or in Bev's case the bar. Which is
where we wind up after an hour or twos external drinking, having
bought some cans this time to avoid poverty and financial ruin.
Big Val and Wendy. Both pissed in the extreme.
The bands are quite good HOWEVER once your hairline starts to
recede beyond a certain point it is time to have short hair.
Middle aged gentlemen with bold domes, long perimeter hair and
spandex pants tend to look a bit silly don't you think. Musically
they where good though. Later, by which time I was, to use the
vernacular, shitfaced, a more R'n'B based band came on, complete
with brass section , which had me boogieing about.
Somewhere during the evening I was accosted by Wendy and Big Bad
Val from work, it's nice to know they can leave a trail of terror
and disruption in their social lives as well as their
professional ones.
Clockwise from top left. A pint of beer, Andy Wrong (pissed), me sober and responsible, John (pissed), Young Michael (most likely pissed), Wendy (very pissed), Wendy's spare tyre (protruding).
The next morning manages to be both hot and sunny for the sobering up and riding home process.
And I suspect that's about the end of the rally season for 2002. Bugger. Roll on 2003.