Friday morning we all met up at the Blue Star garage Dartford for mine and Tracey's first T-Days rally to Belgium. When we arrived at the meeting point quite a few were already there including Lee and Andy, Kevin and Janet, big Rob, John and Kim, Graham, Ian and Julie, Colin and Mags and Richard Cottrell. Setting off down the M25 then onto the M20 towards Dover the weather was warm and sunny and one hour later we were filling our tanks with fuel at the garage just outside the ferry port.
We had about two hours to kill before the ferry sailed so we thought we would wait there until some of the others turned up, which they duly did, including Gary and Jackie, and Dave Clarke. Gary wasn't sure what time he was going to be there as he was at Maidstone Crown Court on jury service, but he managed to be excused!
All fuelled up and ready we set off over to the ferry terminal and that is when we had our first problem: Lee's Thunderbird cut out as she was pulling out of the forecourt and then refused to start; after a while of pushing and shoving it burst into life and off she went to catch up with the rest of us.
We managed to get booked onto an earlier ferry and with all bikes parked up and tied down it was off upstarts to find some food and drink. The crossing itself only takes about one hour and twenty minutes so you don't get long to do all the things you want to; after a quick sandwich and a visit to the Duty Free shop the boat was just about ready to dock in Calais, so it was back on with all the gear, mount up and depart the boat to meet up with all the others at passport control.
Once through the trouble started when we lost quite a few of the others, somehow we managed to get onto the wrong road - this is when our leader Gary Lineham came to the rescue and got us back on the right track. Once on the motorway it was time to get out the camera to get some action shots of people riding along. This was done by Tracey hanging by the skin of her teeth at around 70 m.p.h. whilst trying to get everything into focus.
Next up was a stop for fuel and a fag break. Just as we had finished filling up the lost souls turned up asking where we had got to? With everyone done, off we went again in to the camp site which was only 60 miles away. We pulled into the rally site to be greeted by our Belgian hosts only to see that the field that we were going to be camping on ran down quite a steep hill. Oh well., let's get on with putting up the tent I thought to myself and in no time at all me, Tracey, Gary and Jackie had moved into our home for the weekend. All booked in we went in search of the bar with a handful of beer tokens. The beer was cold and it went down a treat, so did another and another (get the picture?)
Now our hosts had laid on some food for the evening (at extra cost) but some of us decided to have a walk into the nearest village to get something to eat, the only problem was that the place was like a ghost town with nothing open other than this one bar which was full of the locals. In we went to find out whether they did food and the answer came back: yes they can do us food but it would only be toasted sandwiches and chips.
16 cheese and ham toasties and chips to suit, it was time for a couple more beers before making our way back to the rally site for the evening entertainment. When arriving back at the site we found that even more of Bexley had turned up - they had come over on the train and had a nice steady ride to the rally. The drink was flowing, the DJ had started and the evening was in full swing. At about 1 a.m., me, Tracey and Jackie called it a night leaving all the others to boogie the night away; tomorrow was going to be another long day.