April Rally

Organised by Rising Moon MCC at Lowerhouse cricket club Padiham, near Burnley in early April 2016. The badge says April Rally, actually the rally was called Kings, Queen and Fools but other than on the invite and tickets it doesn't mention this.

Never trust April weather. The previous weekend we had done the Vintage Club's Felix Burke navigational scatter, all around the Cotswolds in beautiful sunshine on the Beetroot, our BMW outfit. This weekend we had taken our summer tent but fortunately our winter sleeping bags. This was the first rally we took Heather's new BMW R9t to that year and it snowed! (I was ok though as I was riding the Beetroot)

Beetroot in the snow

A local rally for a change, on the same site that the Middle Wicket used to use, so we thought we knew what the setup was there. Security on site was good, we were issued with number tags then logged on and off the site by the gate marshals. This worked ok until we went out by the gap in the back fence because it's a shorter walk to the new food type pub opposite the field. When we came back later we caused a bit of confusion as according to their control we hadn't gone out!

April showers

On Friday evening we had a walk from the site down towards Burnley where there are a couple more pubs nearby. We bumped into Goat from the Silent Few MCC who ran the Middle Wicket rally. Then we went back to the club house where again they had a band and disco.

As usual when we go to local events we didn't know many people there, and they seemed to be a younger crowd than at most of the rallies we normally do. It was amusing at times because we were treated as an 'old' couple who didn't seem to realise what we had got ourselves into attending a 'biker' rally – maybe we should have worn our badge waistcoats!

Saturday morning after a late start we rode up to Burnley hospital to visit an old rally friend who was in there recovering from an accident he had coming back from the Rally @ the Edge. After that we had a wander around Burnley town centre, it was not quite as well to do as the Cotswold towns and villages we had visited the week before.

Saturday evening it started to snow so we didn't wander off other than for our meal at the pub across the road after which we had an evening in the clubhouse. Sunday morning the roads were clear but covered in salt, not what we wanted for H's new bike. It was an easy ride home back down the valley via Hebden Bridge and Halifax.

R9t clean again

Got home to Bradford in good time to give the bike a hosing down to get the salt off.

- Ted Trett