We met at the ESSO garage on Prince's Road at the rather early hour 8:15 a.m. Going this year were Gary, Lee, Chris Biggs, Ian & Julie, Robin, Phil and of course myself. By about 8:30 everybody had arrived and where necessary fueled up. The weather was already fine and warm, bearing out the forecast which I had unusually had the foresight to check the previous day. After an uneventful ride we arrived at Harwich at 10-ish and made a stop off for petrol. Lee and I went to the cashpoint outside the adjacent Safeways superstore having stocked up on Euros but not much sterling!
There were only a few vehicles in front of us at the ferry port so by 10:40 we had loaded the bikes on and secured some seats in the bar area. Chris, Lee and myself opted for the all-you-can-eat-for-£10 buffet, so much of the crossing was spent stuffing our faces and enjoy a couple of beers then it was back to the bar and soon time to disembark. Like last year, the roads around the Hook of Holland and Rotterdam were busy so progress was slow and the weather hot. We got an early taste of the questionable road signage when we found ourselves going around the Eastern stretch of the A10 to get past Amsterdam, when the western route would have been shorter.
In spite of the good weather forecast and the hot sun beaming down on London as well as the Netherlands, it transpired that Ian had donned his long thermals under his leather trousers but this fact only came to light when we first stopped for petrol. Now feeling the heat somewhat, he decided that the sensible option would be to take them off. Cue much mirth as he tried to languish surreptitiously behind an advertising sign whilst taking them off, only to realise that the drivers on the main road behind were being treated to an uninterrupted view!
Our route took us on a causeway of some 30 km in length, half way along which is at an observation tower. We stopped for a quick photo but there was not much to see except sea and the road itself. Further along the route there were one or two wrong turns but we got to the farm site with plenty of time to check in, claim our free mug, make an early purchase of breakfast and beer tokens and then get down to pitching the tents. Lee was playing host to both Gary and Chris with a frankly huge orange tent that included three separate sleeping compartments. Considering its size though it was fairly straightforward to erect.
Friday night and we approached the marquee to start spending the beer tickets. It was at that point that we spotted the shower facilities, which consisted of a single pipe with a showerhead on it, fixed to a vertical plank that was in turn lashed to the fence. Right next to the marquee. Suffice it to say that throughout the whole weekend we only saw one hardy soul in his swimming trunks actually step under it for a chilly dousing, although Ian stuck his head under once to cool off. Fortunately the toilets on offer were of a considerably better standard both in quantity and quality and the marquee was a welcome alternative to the animal shed that housed the bar and stage at last years event.
One minor criticism of the bar facilities is that if you couldn't bring yourself to drink Amstel you would have stayed pretty thirsty all weekend because that was the only beer on offer and there was not much else to drink except tea and coffee. I always take a bottle opener to rallies although I never expect to use it myself, but this time it got plenty of use!
The Friday night band started proceedings with the early 80's Genesis hit "Turn It On Again", giving me the opportunity to point out to anyone who couldn't run away fast enough that it is probably the only chart hit to include sections in a time signature of 13/8. So now you know. They also covered Faith No More's "From Out Of Nowhere" to my extreme pleasure and I recognized the Kansas classic "Carry On My Wayward Son" (not hard, that's the opening lyric if I remember rightly). Much of the rest of their repertoire clearly owed a lot to early 80's progressive rock but they threw in some crowd-pleasers in the shape of Deep Purple's "Child In Time", a Uriah Heep tune which I didn't catch the name of and "Hocus Pocus" by the yodel-prone Dutch progmeisters, Focus (whom I saw live not many months ago in London, but that's another story). There were a couple of nods to the 60's as well in the unlikely combination of the Tom Jones standard "It's Not Unusual" and the less chart-troubling Frank Zappa track "Trouble Every Day" which was a real treat to my ears. We passed the time most pleasantly, some staying up later than others and Chris finding himself one of only a handful still propping up the bar at about 4 a.m.
So it was a slow start on Saturday but most people made it for the complimentary cooked breakfast of egg and bacon on bread. As the previous day's supply of beer tickets had been severely depleted we took the precaution of buying some more at that point. Bear in mind that each ticket was worth 10 bottles, so when I spotted that they had handwritten numbers on the back and that one of our tickets was up past 600, I reckoned it quite possible that more than 6,000 bottles of beer could have been consumed over the weekend. Not all by Bexley TOMCC but I think we did our bit!
There was a run scheduled at 1 p.m. that was rumored to include a stop-off at a steam fair, and certainly included one stop for petrol and two for refreshments. Having got a feel for the distances involved on Friday, all plans to venture back to Amsterdam were dropped so we reckoned we'd give the run a try as we could break off and go elsewhere if the fancy took us. Gary and I made sure to take our maps just in case. About 20 bikes set off in the opposite direction from which we'd originally approached the farm and meandered along the narrow country roads, passing through little groups of houses dotted around and making sharp right and left turns where the roads followed a grid pattern around the fields. It was a good opportunity to admire how neat and tidy everything looked but for Chris and Ian on their Daytonas it was impossible to get much beyond second gear and the bikes were getting hot. When we stopped for the first refreshment break at a café next to a smallish windmill, more than one of us had the feeling that we had almost gone round in circle, so we asked one of the Dutch guys to point out where we were. True enough, our three quarters of an hour on the road had left us almost in sight of the farm!
At that point we were also pretty hungry so we determined to have some lunch at the restaurant and then decide where we fancied going. Due to some confusion over the menu the majority of us ordered one variation or another of... eggs, ham on bread. It was a re-run of breakfast! Another one of the Dutch guys had translated the section of the menu for us as "omelet". At least the side orders of more bread and chips came out as expected and the white beer with a hamster logo on it was appreciated. The rest of the run group left us to it and by the time we had eaten there were a few people thinking of a kip so we decided to head back to the site. I reckoned I knew exactly where we were on the map and that it should be a simple matter of going left, right, left, right and we'd be back there. Of course it didn't seem to work out like that and there was a certain amount of re-checking the map and we even had to turn around at one point, but we got back all right after that.
There was then time to take it easy before the first band started. They were a rather humdrum three-piece rock act with a female guitarist/vocalist who look and sounded a bit nervous. Dunno what their normal audience would have looked like. Following them was a much larger and livelier band with more of a folky, hillbilly sound, including a banjo and an accordion player. They swapped instruments from time to time and a couple more guys joined in later on. After enough beer it was deemed suitable to dance to so a few of us got stuck in. Ohno later cemented his reputation as mild-mannered rally organiser by dancing on the bar with a young lady or two and fortunately the bar, though temporary, was robust enough.
For some reason, possibly just having a spare pocket, I had earlier been made custodian of the Bexley beer tickets and at the start of the evening was in possession of about 70 bottles-worth. By later on this was down to 30 or so and one or two or us had gone back to their tents, so a simple bulk purchase was deemed worthwhile as the remaining tickets would be worth nothing by dawn. Cut to next morning... and there in Lee's tent is a crate and a half of beer that we just couldn't get through the night before. Following breakfast (eggs and ham again of course), it was split between anybody who had room in their baggage for it and after one final toast to all and sundry there was only two or three left abandoned to fate.
With a ferry to catch we couldn't hang around forever, so we left at about 11 a.m. If anything it was hotter than Friday! We made occasional stops for petrol, gave the causeway viewing tower the miss (it was on the other side of the road anyway) and got back to the Hook of Holland by about 3 p.m. Gary directed us to a nearby café where we gratefully plonked our hot and sweaty selves down in the cool interior and had half an hour recovering over a couple of beers before joining the queue to the ferry. Progress was a bit slow so by the time we got the bikes on they were all running hot and the blast from the cooling fan on mine was like an open oven!
Being Sunday the ferry was virtually full and there was no room in the bar area, but that was not a major problem as we headed for the restaurant again and pretty much stayed there for the duration. Robin found a bit of floor space to stretch out on and grab an hour's snooze, for which his earplugs proved very useful. Some people visited the duty free shop for more goodies to cram into their baggage but having decided to take only a tank bag for waterproofs and camera, a small rucksack for sleeping bag and clothes and my tent bungeed on the pillion seat, I had no spare room which was probably just as well!
We disembarked at Harwich, which turned out to be a time-consuming process as we must have been almost the last off and the queue to get out was a long one, winding down a rather unnerving concrete off-ramp and snaking round the port area. Seeing the opportunity to take a short cut we jumped ahead a bit, amazingly without earning an earful of abuse from the car-bound masses. Back to the petrol station eventually and just as we'd filled up there were a few spots of rain. Only Phil made the wise move of putting his rain gear on straight away, the rest of us setting off towards the A12.
Once on our way though it started to rain more heavily. Frustratingly the skies ahead of us looked clear, so I decided it wasn't worth stopping to put my waterproof on, but however keenly I filtered through the traffic behind Chris, the clear patch of sky seemed to maintain its distance in front with the result that by the time I was certain that I should have been wearing it, I was too damp to make it worth putting the waterproof on. And damp I stayed as I followed the A12 all the way in to East London and the Blackwall Tunnel, that being quicker for me than going on the M25. Damp too I arrived home at some time after nine to do the minimum of unpacking and get an early night. All in all though a great weekend and a good opportunity to see the outwardly-manicured countryside of the Netherlands.