Richard Hobbs

British Legion Bike Show

The first event since the AJS & Matchless Owners Club Annual Jampot Rally was the Histon British Legion Bike Show. The day began with a few Fenrunners meeting up in Tesco’s car park for a scenic country ride, ending at the British Legion Club. Other than a really bad sore throat (which became much worse by the time I got home!), the day was great!

Photos of British Legion Bike Show, Histon

Haddenham Steam Rally

Our fourth camping experience was at Haddenham Steam Rally (a rally which my Grandad used to visit with the Matchless regularly). This was another enjoyable and relaxing steam rally!

Photos of Haddenham Steam Rally 2009

Videos of Haddenham Steam Rally 2009

Bedfordshire Steam Rally

This was the largest steam rally I have ever been to, by quite a margin. There were roughly 150 steam engines present on the Sunday, I believe, including almost every single crane engine in the UK!

We didn’t take the Matchless to this one, unfortunately, because I didn’t find out about the rally until it was too late to book in, so we turned up as paying visitors (although camping for 3 days as well). It’s not the cheapest rally in the world (weekend camping tickets being £70 per pitch), but it was money well spent in my opinion. Needless to say, I will try and get the bike booked in for next year though, to save paying and to exhibit it to the world, of course!

Other than the sheer size of the rally, the other reasons it’s worth paying £70 for a weekend camping ticket is that you gain free entry to The Shuttleworth Collection, Birds of Prey Centre and Swiss Garden, all of which are excellent. Well… the swiss garden is actually really quite dull, but then I’m not into plants/green things anyway.

The planes, on the other hand, are great, and if the weather’s nice, a lot of them are regularly flying throughout the weekend!

Photos of Bedfordshire Steam Rally 2009

Videos of Bedfordshire Steam Rally 2009

Kettering Vintage Steam Fayre

Our final camping expedition of the year was at the Kettering Steam Rally at Cranford. The weather was wonderful during the day, but freezing cold at night. We bought a chimenea for use at this, and other, rallies and it was great at (a) keeping us warm at night, and (b) cooking a full-english breakfast each morning!

Photos of Kettering Vintage Steam Rally 2009, Cranford

Videos of Kettering Vintage Steam Rally 2009, Cranford

Great Chesterford Steam-Up

The Great Chesterford Steam-Up is a one-day event at the beginning of October, and it’s another great day, completely free of charge, to relax with the bike and see other old vehicles and chat to lots of people.

Photos of Great Chesterford Steam-Up 2009

Remembrance Sunday at Imperial War Museum, Duxford

Possibly the last place I will be riding the Matchless to with others this year; Imperial War Museum, Duxford. You get get in free-of-charge at Duxford on a few days each year, one of them being Remembrance Sunday. The main reason for opening up for free, of course, is to allow people in to remember the fallen over the years by having a large ceremony and site-wide 2 minute’s silence.

Photos of Imperial War Museum, Duxford

The good weekend I’m referring to this time is more like “Saturday” actually, as on the Sunday, I did next to nothing! On Saturday, however, I visited the Great Chesterford Steam-Up and had another relaxing but fun day!

Great Chesterford Steam-Up

Photos and videos can be found here:
- Great Chesterford Steam-Up Photos
- Great Chesterford Steam-Up Videos

Although I was the only member of the AJS & Matchless Owners Club to be booked into the Steam-Up, I checked with the organisers whether it would be OK to bring a few friends along, and having discovered that was fine, I phoned up 4 fellow members of the club, who mostly agreed to go on the day, depending on various criteria… However, one guy sadly caught flu, another saw the morning drizzle and quite underdstandably didn’t want to risk it, another ended up having to work all day, and the final person had somewhere else to be in the morning and never quite made it over there for the afternoon! Not to worry though, ’twas still an enjoyable day out, and if any of you read this, please don’t feel guilty for not attending in any way!

So anyway, the day started out drizzly, and also ended drizzly, but thankfully during the bit in the middle when there was no rain, I managed to ride to the Steam-Up, spend a good few hours there, and then managed to ride home, without getting rained on once!

I also did my first bit of non-satnav-assisted navigating for a long while… having obtained my first satnav several years ago, I’m slowly forgetting the art of getting to places without automated voice guidance! Nevertheless, I made it there with only one minor hiccup – the map showed a railway line, which was going to be my landmark for turning right to head down to Great Chesterford, but sadly, the railway line runs under the road and is invisible from the road unless you are in a truck cab, for example, so if it weren’t for the fuel stop at the petrol station just on the respective roundabout, I probably would have missed the turn! Anyway, lesson learned for next time!