Club members on foot

Photo: Phil King

Inspecting the damage

Photo: Phil King

For me the whole T Days experience started when Ian Pocock asked "Are you going to T Days this year Tank?". After a few microseconds thought, mainly centering around the vast quantities of Hoegaarden white Belgium beer drunk last year, I answered "Oh yes, when is it and how much?"
Well, it was on the 22, 23 & 24 June and about £70 with the ferry. We arranged to meet at the ESSO garage next to the tunnel roundabout at 6.30am, the ferry was at 8.30am in Dover. Just as we were preparing to leave from the garage Phil King finds that he has left his passport at home; we agree to meet him at Dover.
The run down to Dover via A2/M2 and A20/M20 was uneventful, we reached Dover and met Chris Moore and his wife Kay on their bikes waiting for us and, shortly before we took the bikes on to the ferry, Phil King arrived with passport! The ferry to Ostend was one of the Seacat fast ferries operating from the Hoverport at Dover. They are very fast, going on deck is like walking in a gale, pity the poor smokers who had to go up on deck for a fag.
From Ostend it was a straight run down the A10/E40, (same road different numbers, its a Belgium thing), to junction 20 where we waited for the slower riders to catch up. All back together we navigated to the camp site at Opwijk (pronounced Opik according to Eddie). The camp site was a large scout hut and adjacent sports fields, not the farmers field and club house of last year, apparently the foot and mouth crisis has limited options for sites this year. The main problem with the site became more apparent as the weekend progressed, there were only three WCs and two urinals for the whole site, no wash hand basins but there were cold showers available if you were prepared to leave the campsite, cross the road and use the showers in a local school. All facilities were unisex of course.
Not being over impressed with the site most of us wandered off into Opwijk where there were lots of pubs, restaurants and a fair! Lots of drinking later, we had some food, some went to restaurants and some tried the local gross kebabs with chips and sauces. I had the gross kebab. After more drinking of Hoegaarden (white beer), Juliper (lager beer) and cherry beer (sort of dark cherry beer) some of us thought we would wander back to the campsite. After long conversations with some Jersey branch members who were even more drunk than we were, we found our way back to the campsite.
More beer was acquired using our beer tokens at the campsite and we were watching the Friday band playing heavy rock at 100mph, a bit too fast for the Bexley dance team to cope with. Wandering outside there was Julie having become separated from Ian. Various friendly locals and Phil King finally located Ian asleep in their tent - Ah the evils of the demon drink!
The following day arrived all too quickly, it was light at 4.00 am, I paid a visit to the unisex bogs and was pleasantly surprised to find that the evil smell that had been present the previous day had now gone, someone had found an air freshener. Feeling better I returned to my tent, other campers were still sitting around talking.
Eventually all of us emerged and it was interesting to see how the empty field of yesterday had become packed with tents. I began to plan an escape route for my Trident sidecar outfit through the tents for the Saturday run.
There were two runs out from the campsite and about 40 of us set off on a run to Waterloo. With such a large group its easy to get separated, traffic lights, breakdowns etc. so I always try and keep up with the leader, in this case Eddie. It was when I realised that there were only five other bikes with me and Eddie that it occurred to me that something was wrong. Eddie also noticed and we did a u-turn and retraced our steps. We found the remainder of the group, about 20 bikers surrounding old Tom who had suffered a broken rear chain on his Thunderbird. The chain was not repairable and there was also some damage to the engine case so it was decided to leave the bike at the side of the road and continue the run. Tom got on the back of my bike and Gwen got in the sidecar.
We reached Waterloo successfully at the second attempt, some of us climbed to the top of the commemorative mound on the battlefield, others drank in the pub. We returned to the campsite via Brussels and I was so glad it was a hot dry day as much of the road system was cobbles with some of the deepest potholes I have seen - I would think it's lethal in the wet. I dropped Tom off at his bike as Eddie had phoned ahead and arranged for a van to come and pick Tom and bike up. He later returned to the campsite squashed with his bike into the back of one of the smallest vans in Europe. Back at the campsite I chatted to Gary and Jackie, two of the members of the Waterloo run who had gone missing. It transpired that Gary had had an electrical problem with his Trident.
Saturday night was spent mainly in a pub in Opwijk with Ian doing deals with the AA, RAC and Carol Nash in order to get Tom's Thunderbird first back to Ostend and then back home. While Ian was doing deals with the motoring organisations we were drinking with more Jersey TOMCC members one of whom was a bagpiper with kilt.
He was later to pipe Tom into the campsite hall to receive his oldest biker award. Lee Adie won an award for best Hinckley special (Thunderbird/Monsa Sidecar), Chris Moore won an award for best Meriden (Tiger110) and all together it was a good night for the club. Sunday morning and we awoke to the sound of little Joe snoring; there was an area around his tent where people had moved their tents away... About 9.00am and a pick-up came for Tom's bike, then at about 10.00am the rest of the club said their farewells and we set off back to Ostend and home. All went smoothly until we returned to Dover where the customs were not keen on letting old Tom and Gwen back into the country. The rest of us left them arguing and pootled off home, HM Customs never stood a chance.