Richard Hobbs

1966 Matchless G3
Also available on Youtube: 1966 Matchless G3 – Classic Motorcycle

AJS and Matchless Owners Club Fenrunners Meeting, Cambridge – Video 1
Also available on Youtube: AJS & Matchless Owners Club Fenrunners Meeting, Cambridge

AJS and Matchless Owners Club Fenrunners Meeting, Cambridge – Video 2
Also available on Youtube: AJS & Matchless Owners Club Fenrunners Meeting, Cambridge

AJS and Matchless Owners Club Fenrunners Meeting, Cambridge – Video 3
Also available on Youtube: AJS & Matchless Owners Club Fenrunners Meeting, Cambridge

AJS and Matchless Owners Club Fenrunners Meeting, Cambridge – Video 4
Also available on Youtube: AJS & Matchless Owners Club Fenrunners Meeting, Cambridge

AJS and Matchless Owners Club Fenrunners Meeting, Cambridge – Video 5
Also available on Youtube: AJS & Matchless Owners Club Fenrunners Meeting, Cambridge

Classic Motorcycle Ride From Silver Ball Cafe To Duxford – Long Version

Classic Motorcycle Ride From Silver Ball Cafe To Duxford – Short Version

Cross Keys Section Meet – Long Version

Jampot Rally 2009 – AJS and Matchless Owners Club

Matchless Classic Motorcycle Ride

JSL Open Day 2009

Miniature Radial Aero Engine at JSL Open Day

Having joined the AJS & Matchless Owners Club just over a year ago, I have been waiting for the club’s annual Jampot Rally to occur so Sarah and I could experience what it’s like to attend such an event.

I have to say, it was amazing! Admittedly, this was, apparently, the best Jampot Rally yet, in terms of facilities, catering, camp site size etc… so it did have everything going for it, but I think Sarah and I would have loved it anyway! Thank you very much, Heart of England section, for organising this year’s rally!

This year’s rally was held very close to home, at Kimbolton Castle. There were 3 main bike runs, with 2 green-laning trips for those who wanted something a little different.

Friday’s run took participants from Kimbolton to Jampot Spares Limited (JSL)/Kettering Classic Motorcycles. Sarah and I have been there many times, as we live locally, so decided to relax at the camp site during this run. Lots of people were still arriving when this run took place, and it was good to see the camp site gradually fill up as Friday afternoon/evening progressed.

The Saturday run (seen assembling above) took us to Oundle. Over 160 bikes took part, by my count, and a couple of hours spent in Oundle were certainly enjoyed!

We all arrived at the wrong car park when we got there because, despite the excellent Marshalling of the run, the school who were kind enough to open up the gates for our arrival, opened them a day early, then closed them on the day we needed them! This was a very minor issue, however, and caused little more than 5 minutes confusion!

We left Oundle at around 2pm to ride back to the camp site, where I had a long wander round looking at the bikes and saying “Hello” to people I knew, and later that evening most of the Fenrunners section had fish and chips next to our tents.

I should also point out that on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings and Saturday, Sunday and Monday mornings, Kimbolton School caterers prepared excellent meals for us all, which were truly good value for money and not like stereotypical “school dinners” at all!

The Sunday run took us through a nice country route, involving a ford(!), to The Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden. 260 bikes took part on Sunday, which was a truly spectacular collection of classic and vintage machinery!

The Shuttleworth Collection itself  was also fantastic. A truly unique collection of some of the earliest aircraft ever made, right up to World War 2. I may be mistaken, but I believe they are all in flying condition too, which is even more amazing!

The Shuttleworth Collection also has a Swiss Garden and Birds of Prey centre, although I didn’t visit those while I was there. I’ll hopefully be back there in a couple of weeks anyway, at the Bedfordshire Steam & Country Fayre, so perhaps I’ll visit them then!

When we got back to the camp site, some of the Fenrunners got together for a photograph (seen above) and then booked a team into the Tug-of-War at 4pm!

Sadly, we lost.

After the Tug-of-War, however, was a guided tour of Kimbolton Castle.

The tour lasted about 2 hours and was very interesting indeed. I can highly recommend it to anyone, if you are in the area and able to find out when the tours are occurring.

That evening was the last one of the rally and we spent a short while in the bar/disco area watching the presentations for best bike, furthest distance travelled etc… and then awaited the raffle! We didn’t wait until the raffle happened in the end, but did learn the day after that Sarah and I won a bottle of wine, which was a pleasant surprise.

The following morning, we ate breakfast, packed up the car, put the bike back on the trailer, helped clear up the rally site for a few hours and headed home thoroughly worn out and wishing the rally hadn’t ended!

A 10 minute video of the Saturday and Sunday bike runs can be seen below for those of you who are interested.

There are also more photos of the event here:

Photos of the AMOC Jampot Rally 2009

Since my last blog post I have, as you might expect, been relatively busy!

The first event since winning “Best Motorcycle” at Somersham Carnival was the Classic & Vintage Bikes Day at Cambridge Museum of Technology.

This was a fun day, as usual! There were lots of bikes, as you can see, and lots of good people to talk to and get advice on my carburettor, which is still running rich for some reason!

Photos of Classic & Vintage Bike Day, Cambridge Museum of Technology

The weekend after this was the Hollowell Steam Rally.

I had booked the Matchless into this rally as an exhibit, but hadn’t realise quite how far away it was – just over 60 miles. As a result, I begrudgingly went by car! I could have ridden, but 60 miles would take at least an hour and a half by bike, and to get there before 10am and not to leave before 5pm would mean it would be quite a long day, which this particular weekend I didn’t fancy.

Nevertheless, it was a great day, and having had a towbar fitted and ordered a bike trailer, there should be nothing stopping us going next year!

Photos of Hollowell Steam Rally 2009

3 weeks later, it was Cambridgeshire Steam Rally. Sarah and I decided to use this rally as a test of our new camping equipment before the AJS & Matchless Owners Club Jampot Rally at the end of August and also to find out whether Sarah and I both like camping or not!

As it turns out, we love it!

Above you can see our tent with the bike parked next to it. We parked up next to Des and his Trantor, who we learned was possibly the most fun person to camp next to on the entire camp site, so thank you for helping to make our first rally great, Des! I think I still have your lighter too if you’re reading this!

I should also suggest, at this point, that everyone visits the Cambridgeshire Steam Rally web site! I noticed, a couple of weeks before the rally, as the rally is quite new at its current location (this rally was previously known as the Wood Green Steam Rally and was located at the Wood Green Animal Shelter, as you may have guessed) it had no web site!

I therefore contacted the organisers and offered to create a web site for the rally. They agreed, and the site was made! Needless to say, at the moment, the entire design and all the photos and videos are my own. Whether this will change over time I’m not sure, but for the moment at least, it’s true.

The other amazing thing that happened this weekend is that I finally, after 13 years or so, found Tony Warwick and his steam engine “Gigantic” (engine pictured below)!

As a child, I frequently visited my Grandparents’ house and also attended various local steam rallies on the back of my Grandad’s Matchless. At various rallies, and sometimes parked out the back of my Grandparents’ house, I went to have a look at “Tony’s engine” – “Gigantic”. It is a 1912 McLaren road locomotive which Tony has owned for as long as I can remember. I’ve had several rides on the footplate of “Gigantic” as a child and remember the engine like it was yesterday.

However, when I went to university and my Grandparent’s sadly passed away, I never went over there any more and consequently never saw the engine. Tony also had the engine off the road for a very long time as he was rebuilding most, or all, of it. As a result, I’ve been hoping to find “Gigantic” again and after 13 years or so, at the Cambridgeshire Steam Rally I finally did!

For old times’ sake, I also managed to get on board again – once on Saturday evening, and again on Sunday for a trip around the arena. Videos below…

Photos of Cambridgeshire Steam Rally 2009

The weekend after the Cambridgeshire Steam Rally, it was the Thurlow Steam Rally at Horseheath Racecourse near Linton, Cambs.

We weren’t originally going to camp at this rally, but having had such a good time at the Cambridgeshire rally, we decided to camp after all! For this rally, however, I bought a tow bar for the car and borrowed a bike trailer!

The problem at the Cambridgeshire rally was that I had to drive to the rally site with Sarah and the camping gear, drop off both, drive home, get the bike out the garage and ride back to the rally site. Then, when the rally had finished I had to do the opposite! This wasn’t too bad at the Cambridgeshire rally because it was only 15 miles from home, but the Thurlow rally was much further. This is why I bought a tow bar and borrowed a trailer (my own trailer is on order)!

So, again, the rally was excellent and we will make every effort to go again next year! A video summarising at least some of the rally is below:

Photos of Thurlow Steam Rally 2009

Now, onto my new iPhone!

In summary, I have a new mobile phone – the 32GB iPhone 3GS and it’s excellent in almost every way!

On the left you will see my current desktop. In case you somehow haven’t managed to learn this fact yet, the iPhone is a touch-screen phone by the way!

For those of you who don’t know, most of the applications on the left are available as standard on all iPhones. The only non-standard icons are the Google “g” icon and the “UK – Ireland” TomTom satnav icon.

To be honest, most of the applications are available in slightly different implementations on other phones too, but the iPhone’s apps are typically much nicer to use than on other devices due to the touch screen and the way the menus etc. are all structured.

I know other phones have similar functionality now, but I’ve never tested any of those, so for the moment, in my opinion, the iPhone is amazing!

Anyway, I will talk about my new phone more in a separate post – there’s too much to talk about here!

I haven’t managed to write a blog post for quite some time. This is mainly because during weekends I’ve been busy and during evenings I’ve not been able to motivate myself! Anyway, I have a few moments now, and a lot to summarise, so here goes!

Sarah and I have had several enjoyable days (and an evening) out since the last blog post on 29 March 2009! Most of these occasions are summarised below.

AJS & Matchless Owners Club North Weald Section Meet

Every so often, the AJS & Matchless Owners Club has a meeting where various sections of the club meet up to say “Hi” and discuss all things motorcycle-related. This particular one was at North Weald Airfield where we met up with another section or two. I forget which ones though, I’m afraid!

As you can see from the above photo, there were quite a few bikes there – perhaps 80 in total; they’re not all visible in this particular photo though.

All in all, a very enjoyable day! I got to meet lots of new people and was able to sit within feet of the taxiway to the runway in use for that day. I even saw a Spitfire power itself down the taxiway to the end of the runway just before throttling up its wonderful Rolls Royce Merlin Engine and taking off into the distance!

Photos of the North Weald Section Meet can be found here.

Sandringham Arts and Crafts Fair

I don’t really have a general photo to summarise this event, so here’s a rather specific one:

This event was exactly what you would expect from an Arts and Crafts Fair. It had honey, jams, wood turning, wood carving (shown above!), cookery and various other things. We also spent a few hours in Hunstanton after visiting the fair to have Fish and Chips by the sea, which was also quite enjoyable and relaxing!

Photos of Sandringham and Hunstanton can be found here.

Cambridge Museum of Technology Steam-Up Day

For Sarah, I think this day was decidedly average. For me, however, it was great!

I’ve been to the Cambridge Museum of Technology many times, and I can highly recommend it to anyone interested in pumping engines, steam engines, big single-cylinder gas engines and all things industrial. On this particular day, they had the main big boiler fired up and most of the servicable engines running. They also had a model tank club visiting with very accurate scale models of various military vehicles (mostly tanks, of course!) which they were remotely controlling around the site.

Photos of our day at Cambridge Museum of Technology can be found here.

Videos of our day at Cambridge Museum of Technology can be found here.

Cottenham Yesteryear Road Run

On 19 April 2009 the Cottenham Yesteryear Road Run took place. This is a charity event raising money for MAGPAS. 400 or so classic and vintage cars, motorcycles, tractors, trucks and military vehicles took place in the road run which went from village to village showing residents and visitors  all the vehicles and also collecting money for MAGPAS, as mentioned above.

As of 20 June 2009, this year’s Road Run had collected £12,000 for MAGPAS, and I’m glad to have contributed at least slightly to something contributing to such a good cause!

Photos of the 2009 Cottenham Yesteryear Road Run can be found here.

Videos of the 2009 Cottenham Yesteryear Road Run can be found here.

FBHVC Old Vehicle Drive It/Ride It Day

The FBHVC Drive it/Ride It Day is not an organised event as such. It’s a day where the Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs (FBHVC) request that as many historic vehicle owners get their vehicles out on the road for the day to show to the nation that these vehicles exist and are still driveable/rideable!

Sarah and I decided to ride to a pub in a nearby village to have lunch by the river and to then ride home, and I must say, it was another great day!

AJS & Matchless Owners Club Motorcycle Run

Throughout the year, various members of the Fenrunners section of the AJS & Matchless Owners Club organise motorcycle rides around the county (and beyond!), and this ride was no exception. We met at The Chequers Inn at Wrestlingworth before setting off on a 75 mile route, finishing back at the Chequers Inn again! These 75 miles were ridden in one continuous stretch, which, despite being the longest non-stop ride I’ve ever done, was very enjoyable!

6 of us turned up at the pub in the first place, but within 500 yards or so, 2 people had broken down, leaving only 4 of us to take part in the run. Luckily enough, though, despite 2 bikes breaking down within that short distance, they were both up and running again by the time we got back and were both ridden home later that day with no problems!

I have no photos of this event, I’m afraid, but I do have the route as recorded by my GPS if you are interested!

The Nesting Blackbird

This wasn’t an event at all, but it is worth mentioning!

At the beginning of April, Sarah noticed that a blackbird was nesting on top of our water butt, 5 feet off the ground, in the corner between the fence and trellis running down the front edge of the canopy in our back garden, and around 12 feet from out back door, which is used all day every day!

The blackbird didn’t seem to care about Sarah and I going in and out of the back door and using the garden for BBQs etc… or even hanging washing out on the line which was around 4 feet away from her nest! I was also able to setup my tripod and camera behind the trellis pointing into the nest, about 12 inches away, zoomed right in to take some quite impressive photos.

The blackbird then laid 5 eggs!

At this point, Sarah and I looked up various facts about the blackbird and learned that these eggs were going to hatch in around 2 weeks. Before that time, however, roughly 3 weeks after the blackbird started nesting and 1 week after the eggs were laid, the blackbird appeared to have deserted the nest entirely!

After 24 hours of staying away to give her a chance to come back, we realised she wasn’t coming back and upon looking into the nest again, we realised that there were now only 2 eggs remaining.

I would like to add that we really don’t think it was us that scared the blackbird away as we had never attempted to touch the nest or disturb the plants growing around it – the gap in the plants through which the photos were taken was there naturally, and the blackbird had never been bothered by us in the past at all!

A couple of days later, there was only 1 egg left, and it was slightly cracked from the outside, so we figured something had found the nest and taken the eggs, sadly.

Anyway, we do seem to have either the same blackbird, or a different one, nesting in a new spot in the garden now, and this time we’re not going near it, just in case. I guess we’ll see what happens in due course!

More photos of the blackbird, the nest, the eggs and a few other birds in our garden can be found here.

Jampot Spares Limited Open Day

Although this was a very enjoyable day, it did start off badly!

The Open Day at JSL is an event often visited by lots of club members. A lot of these members I know from the club web site as they have helped me get the bike on the road over the last year or so, but I’ve never actually met them. This event was going to be a perfect opportunity for Sarah and I to not only meet these great people, but to turn up on the motorbike so they can actually see the bike they’ve hearing and talking about so much.

However, that, sadly, was not to be. Having wheeled the bike out into the open, started it up and got kitted up, I rolled it off the stand, pulled in the clutch, put it into first gear, and the engine stopped. The exhaust valve had jammed open again, like it did early last year.

We therefore attended the JSL Open Day by car. As I said, it did turn out to be a very enjoyable day, but for the first half an hour or so, before we arrived, I did feel rather annoyed, to say the least!

Photos of the JSL Open Day can be found here.

Videos of the JSL Open Day can be found here.

Classic Bike Show, Stanford Hall

I attended this show by car, as it would have been rather a long and tedious journey by bike! It was another good day with perhaps a hundred or two classic bikes on show, plus another 1,000 or so in the car park field, ranging from vintage pre-war bikes to modern Hondas and Kawasakis.

The Photo above shows the AJS & Matchless Owners Club stand which, as ever, was nicely presented!

I didn’t buy anything other than a mug, pin badge, cleaning cloths and a tube of Autosol on this particular trip, but there were an awful lot of things to buy, ranging from almost complete motorcycles to individual nuts and bolts. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to admire some old bikes and to also spend a couple of hours trawling through the autojumble stalls!

Photos of the Classic Bike Show can be found here.

The Sidestand Spring and The Hurt Finger!

I have known for a very long time that the spring holding the sidestand up on the Matchless was both stretched slightly, and hooked onto the wrong place on the frame.

A fellow club member (thank you, Peter!) kindly donated a new sidestand spring to me and showed me, on his bike, where the holes in the frame should be to hook the spring into, so armed with that information I headed into the garage to fit the spring!

I won’t go into too much detail here, but in summary, the spring is quite tough. Having hooked one end into the frame underneath the bike, I began to pull the spring towards the side stand to hook on the other end. In doing so, the spring slippped out of my grip and the hooked end went into the skin on the bottom of my finger and pulled my hand back under the bike. Having looked under the bike to see what on earth I’d just done, I saw the end of the spring trying to push through the skin on the top of my finger!

I quickly removed the end of the spring (which had gone roughly 15mm into my finger!) and made my way into the kitchen whereupon I cleaned it up and sat down on the sofa for Sarah to kindly bring me a cold glass of water!

Needless to say, I felt rather ill for the next 20 minutes, but there was actually very little pain, almost no bleeding, and 7 days later it was as if it never happened. Very strange…

Souldrop Open Evening & BBQ

A new motorcycle workshop has opened up in Souldrop recently and they decided to have an Open Evening and BBQ, which Sarah and I, of course, attended!

It was a great evening! Roughly 20 people turned up, most of them on two wheels, there was plenty of food, all barbequed by myself ( ) and it was a late, but very enjoyable evening!

Photos of the Souldrop Open Evening & BBQ can be found here.

AJS & Matchless Owners Club Crosskeys Pub Inter-Section Meet

Similar to the North Weald Section Meet mentioned earlier in this post, this event took place at The Cross Keys in Norfolk.

It was an incredibly sunny, and rather warm, day and in total I rode 134 miles! We met some more new people, spent a few hours chatting about motorcycles, had a great pub lunch and then rode home!

I must say though, 134 miles in one day, with the last 65 of them being non-stop, is quite tiring, especially at an average speed of 30 mph with a top speed of 45-50 mph! The last 65 miles, for example, took 1 hour, 54 minutes!

It was thoroughly enjoyable though, so I’m not complaining!

Photos of the Crosskeys Section Meet can be found here.

Somersham Carnival

As of the day this blog post was published, the last event we’d been to was Somersham Carnival.

I’ve been to Somersham Carnival nearly every year of my life, which isn’t so strange considering I grew up in the village!

There’s not a lot to say about the carnival really. It’s exactly what you would expect from a village carnival; classic cars, floats, a parade around the village, Somersham Town Band, an arena in the field in which various displays occur and a generally good day out for adults and children alike!

This year, however, I took along the motorbike for the first time ever. The bike itself has been in the parade and displayed in the field before, perhaps 15 or so years ago, when my Grandad still owned it, but this time it was my turn.

The other thing to mention is that I won the “Best Motorcycle” award, as shown below!

It is important to note, however, that my motorcycle was the only one there, so you could argue that my bike was also the worst bike!

Anyway, as a few people have already said, an award is an award, regardless of how it was won!

Photos of Somersham Carnival can be found here.

Well… yesterday was the day of the first classic motorcycle run of the year for the Fenrunners section of the AJS & Matchless Owners Club and I, of course, attended!

The weather was pretty awful, the forecast was even worse and it wasn’t very warm either, but nevertheless a few dedicated club members turned up for the run at the Tesco store just north of Cambridge.

The run was basically from the Tesco store to Mildenhall, for a warm pub lunch and then home (obviously via some convoluted route that actually makes the run worth doing!), but sadly, I didn’t quite make it that far…

In total, including the journey from my house to Tesco, 46 miles were planned there, and probably another 46 miles or so home again, totalling 92 miles for the entire day. However, all in all, I rode a grand total of only 39 miles!

As you will know from reading the rest of my blog (assuming you actually do, of course!), my own bike is still being put through the 35mph run-in period having had a new piston and rings, so I’m currently attending club runs on a fellow club member’s (Peter’s) bike which he has very kindly lent me – a 1955 AJS… not sure of the model, but it’s also a 350cc heavyweight like my own bike, just 11 years older. Very good condition too, I might add!

Anyway, as you can see from the map below (click to enlarge), the plan was to meet up with a couple of local club members in Sainsbury’s car park in Huntingdon (at point A), to then ride to the starting point of the run (at point B), and then to ride the route shown to Mildenhall (at point D). However, frustratingly, I couldn’t go any further once I reached point C! So close, and yet so far…

Point C (the layby where I stopped) can be seen below:

As you can see, it’s in the middle of nowhere!

As we were riding along this long straight road (from bottom to top as you look at the above photo), there was a horrendous sidewind which was gusting a lot. It wasn’t gusting to the point where it was dangerous, and we were nowhere near being blown into the oncoming lane, but it was certainly significant. It was also raining. It was roughly at this point I started to look forward to the warm pub, the hot pub lunch and the opportunity to dry off slightly! Maybe that was my mistake…

With a sidewind, as any motorcyclist will know, it can feel a bit like you are riding on jelly, you are gently swept from side to side as the wind comes and goes and as soon as any gust disappears, you find you are still steering into it slightly, so suddenly move the into the gust and have to compensate again by steering in the other direction. It’s pretty much the same as in a car, but you feel it a lot more on a bike!

Anyway, with all this happening, and the rain coming down, albeit lightly, I noticed that even when the gusts stopped, it still felt a little like I was being blown around. It wasn’t until I noticed this happening a couple of times (in the space of 15 seconds or so) that I realised that if I really was being blown around, it was only happening at the back of the bike!

It was at this point I decided I ought to pull over and see what was going on – was the wheel coming loose? Was something else wrong? Was it really just the wind?

Well, it turns out I had a puncture in the rear tyre, caused by a metal fencing staple!

So, that was it – the run was over! 3 or 4 other club members pulled over too, to see if everything was OK, and I must thank those people again for doing so!

Now, canisters of compressed air mixed with liquid rubber-like stuff exist which can be squirted into the valve to both pump up the tyre and seal the puncture, but (a) they don’t always work, and (b) nobody had one anyway, so that clearly wasn’t an option!

I decided, at that point, I ought to find out if Peter’s insurance (on which I am a named driver) had breakdown cover. I spent 30 minutes or so phoning 118118 and all the numbers they gave me, to no avail, and eventually phoned up a work colleague who looked up the number online for me! So much for 118118! It turns out that Peter’s insurance does have breakdown cover, and so 45 minutes later, the truck arrived and took me and the bike home!

By the time the breakdown truck arrived though, I had then been stood in the windy layby for 1hr, 15 mins, 45 minutes of that was spent with Neville and Mark from the club, so a big thank you to them! During that time, we had even stronger wind, more rain, hailstones twice and countless cars zooming past spraying us all with dirt and water! The photo of this location, at that time, can be seen here:

I must admit, I’ve brightened up that photo a bit… it almost looks bright in the above photo, but believe me – it wasn’t!

And here is the bike being loaded up onto the truck having been carefully strapped to the loading device:

Once I got home, there had been half a warm turkey delivered from Sarah’s parents (Sarah had been at home during this short trip), which Sarah kindly made into a sandwich (as I never made it to the pub and really was getting kinda hungry by this point!) and later on that afternoon Peter phoned me to say he was more than happy to sort out the puncture, as it’s his bike and therefore his problem, and as much as I disputed the latter, he wouldn’t back down, so he later turned up with his trailer and picked up the bike. So, thank you to Peter too, not only for lending me his 54 year old bike, but for also offering to repair the puncture before letting me have the bike back yet again!

Hopefully I’ll have beter luck on the next run…

Well, another good weekend has been had, I’m sure you’ll be glad to know!

Sunday 9th November over here in the UK was Remembrance Day where we pay tribute to, and remember, the fallen of two world wars and other conflicts and this year it was also to mark the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War.

To honour this day, Imperial War Museum Duxford held a special free admission day with a 2 minute silence at 11:00 and a Remembrance Service at 12:30, among other events such as a truly amazing Spitfire display!

The other event of the day was a Royal Enfield Club-organised classic motorcycle run from the Silver Ball Café to IWM Duxford which, of course, I took part in! It was also a perfect opportunity to record a proper classic biking video with my new helmet camera, which I was very pleased about. You can watch the video of the classic bike run here:

- Video of Classic Motorcycle Ride From Silver Ball Cafe To Duxford

I do plan on editing the above video at some point to make a shorter version, but until I get around to it, the above unedited version is all I have! You can, of course, skip through it to your heart’s content or you can watch the entire 53 minutes or so if you are so inclined!

So, anyway, as for Duxford itself, it was a great day as mentioned previously! Lots of things to see, as usual, many of which can be seen in my photos:

- Photos of Classic Motorcycle Ride from Silver Ball Cafe to Duxford and of Duxford itself

The other thing I’ve learned is that the piston rings on the Matchless are letting oil through! Although I’ve been losing oil for a while now, it wasn’t until Sunday when someone finally told me they could smell and occasionally see the oil smoke coming from the exhaust that I realised it wasn’t all coming from the breather pipe and rocker box gasket, so I have my second winter job to do now (the first being to change the oil and clean the filters)!

I’ve not written much recently, mainly because not much has happened! Today, however, stuff did happen, so here I am!

As you may know from my blog entry on 23 September 2008 entitled An enjoyable pair of weekends!, at the Matchless‘ MOT at the beginning of July this year (3.5 months ago), the odometer on the bike read 31666 miles. When I got home from my ride today, it read 32668, meaning I’ve now ridden just over 1,000 miles!

What a milestone!

I have also recently obtained my self-bought early Christmas present – a bike cam! This small video camera can be stuck anywhere (car bonnet, car ceiling, bike handlebars, crash helmet etc…) by using the included handlebar mount and universal sticky mounts and cable ties etc… so I did my first test run with the camera today to see how it all works.

It didn’t go completely to plan, as I had intended to video an entire 20 mile run, but I accidentally hit the stop button while putting the recording device back into my pocket, so I ended up recording none of it! I did, however, still have the bit that I recorded going from my initial starting point to the beginning of the route, so I’ve edited it accordingly and put it online, both on Youtube and Mongeese Videos:

- Matchless Classic Motorcycle Ride – Mongeese Videos
- Matchless Classic Motorcycle Ride – Youtube

The sound quality, as I’m sure you will notice, is pretty awful – this is mainly because I haven’t found a sensible place to put the microphone yet – I had it sticking out the top of my pocket this time, hence the wind noise, but I will try putting it in the pocket next time to hopefully reduce wind noise, but still capture the engine noise!

The camera, by the way, was bought from Board-Cams for the price of £129.99. I have the “Board-Cams 520 Helmet Camera & Personal Media Player“.

Anyway, that’s it for this time… so until next time, goodbye!

We had two events planned for this weekend – Haddenham Steam Rally on Saturday (which I wasn’t taking the Matchless to) and the 3rd Legion Bike Show on Sunday (which I was taking the Matchless to). Both events took place and we attended both of them. However, neither day ended up being quite as we had expected (and hoped)!

I shall start with Haddenham Steam Rally…

This rally is supposedly one of the largest in the area, if not the country, with vehicles and stalls from all around the country, but sadly the Met Office had predicted “Heavy rain” from 07:00 until at least 19:00 and as a result, only around two thirds of the steam engines turned up, perhaps a third of the motorbikes, half of the other vehicles and even some of the stalls had failed to show, not to mention the noticeable lack of actual visitors/spectators etc.

However, there wasn’t a single spot of rain until around 16:30, which is when Sarah and I left anyway, so it ended up being quite a nice, albeit windy, day!

The lack of vehicles wasn’t so bad either – it just made the rally a little more “normal” as opposed to “huge” like it normally is and the lack of visitors made it possible for me to take lots of good photos without people getting in the way! Click here to view the photos of Haddenham Steam Rally 2008!

So basically, Haddenham Steam Rally still ended up being a fun day out, which is great!

Now onto the 3rd Legion Bike Show at Histon…

Overall, this turned out to be a fun day out too, but not in the way we had originally planned!

The original plan was that Sarah and I would set off on the Matchless at around 10:00 to meet up with the rest of the Fenrunners section of the AJS & Matchless Owners Club so we could all go on a nice long run before turning up en-masse at the Bike Show! The forecast for Sunday, by the way, was considerably better than the forecast for Saturday and the sky looked fine when we woke up!

So… Sarah and I set off as planned and almost half way to the meeting point we hit what felt like a torrential downpour! Being on the A14, we had to keep riding until we could pull off the dual carriageway into some shelter, which is exactly what we did at the Hand Car Wash place just past “Cambridge Services”. By the time we got there, though, the bike was drenched, Sarah’s jeans were soaked and despite me wearing full motorbike gear, I was soaked in places too! Fortunately, my efforts to waterproof the electrics on the motorbike paid off so far because it was still running fine!

By the time the rain had subsided, we had clearly missed our opportunity to meet the rest of the Fenrunners for our motorbike run, so we decided to see how the weather was along the next stretch of road and decide at the next junction whether to ride home and visit the show by car (in case the electrics weren’t as waterproof as I had hoped) or to continue on straight to the show (and arrive several hours early!). The downpour started as soon as we left the shelter, but again, being the A14, there was no turning back, so we rode the rest of the way to Bar Hill, turned around and rode straight home!

Thankfully, we made it and I must say, despite arriving home completely soaked, slightly cold, and with a 42 year old motorbike absolutely covered in water, we were still in good spirits and unbelievably glad that the motorbike survived! At least I now know it’ll be OK in the rain!

We then got changed and headed off to the biike show by car. It turns out that instead of 20 or so AJS & Matchless owners taking part in the run, there were just two, but we met them there in the end and had a relaxing and enjoyable day! Click here to view the photos of the 3rd Legion Bike Show!

Thank you again to the organisers of the run… sorry we couldn’t make it, but we did try, and it was still great to see you at the show anyway!