Shakespeare Rally

Another of the Shakespeare MCC's rallies held at the Gaydon Inn, Gaydon Warwickshire, in September 1987.

It was the usual set up, with Paul Mullis doing the transport for the rally with his outfit. Free tea and coffee all weekend in the control tent and the radio tuned in to Radio 4, do not disturb during "The Archers"!

Although the Gaydon Inn was the host pub, the other pub in the village, the Malt Shovel did plenty of trade as usual. I always felt a bit guilty going there but both the food and beer were better!

I think this was the first rally I did on my R100RS. I remember Heather MacGregor being interested in the number plate, (PUB); a friend of hers had (has?) nearly the same number on a Vincent, and they really hated BMWs, so she wanted it to wind them up. I promised to give her first refusal of the bike when I decided to sell it, and it's sometimes still referred to as "Heather's Bike". I still can't decide whether I like it so I will have to hang on to it for a while longer, maybe another twenty years or so!

This would also have been around the time I started to use the Fosse Way more and more to travel to rallies. It's not an obvious route to someone from Bradford, and the Motorways were not as congested then, as now, but it still got you around the Friday bottlenecks and was a lot more fun than any Motorway. This was before the M40 had got to Birmingham and the M42 didn't exist!

- Ted Trett


You are invited by The Shakespeare Motorcycle Club to their 1987 Summer Rally 'King Lear' September 18th-20th, 1987 at The Gaydon Inn, Gaydon, on the A41 Warwick-Banbury Road, 12 miles north of Banbury, 8 miles south of Warwick.

For me this was the 2nd English rally after the 1987 January rally "As You Like It". A long journey from Germany.

Start at 5.30 a.m. near Cologne, Me with my BMW K100RS and Axel Bodeit as a pillion passenger. At noon the ferry from Calais to Dover, then on to Gaydon. In 1987 the M40 was not yet built.

So many A and B roads from London to the north. Friday evening as always in good company with a few pints.

My motorcycle friend Axel and I were out early on Saturday morning climbed out of the tent and strengthened ourselves with a delicious English breakfast.

Then we took part in Heather's "Mini Treasure Hunt".

We had to drive a certain distance and also had to write down the names of the pubs and churches we passed. After we found the first pub it started to rain. Since we had our rain suits with us, we drove the route to the end.

Late on Saturday evening at the Gaydon Inn, the chairman gave a speech and awarded a prize for the "Mini Treasure Hunt". Everyone in the pub started to laugh. We didn't understand any of this. (Poor knowledge of English) But the chairman called us to the front, to get the first prize from him. After that it took a lots of pints until we were told what had happened. Some participants had breakfast later and it started to rain, so they didn't even take part.

That's the reason for why we were the first and only participants and won the first prize.

- Hans Mondorf

Ted and Hans both treasured the programme with its quiz, written by Heather. It is now reproduced on the programmes page where you can have another go at solving Heather's word puzzles.