Friday’s entertainment was The Hoochie Coochie Band who have played NWHC rallies several times, and are always excellent. When it came to raffle prizes, our table scooped a large proportion of them, including a case of bottled beers (Gerry), a case of Boddies (Janet), bottle of vodka (Patsi), bottle of Paddy’s whiskey (Alan), bottle of Johnny Walker (John), and Barry got the booby prize of a Suzuki stick on tank protector. We did manage to amuse ourselves with it for five minutes or so until we ran out of places to stick it so it didn’t go entirely to waste.

The egg run to Maplewood House in Bamber Bridge set off at lunchtime on Saturday with 50 bikes. This was a smaller number than usual, despite the fine weather, and the vintage bike club were conspicuous by their absence. We were made very welcome at the home with hot drinks and home made cakes and biscuits, as well as a huge thank you card.

We found our way back to the site quite easily, despite the area’s reputation for being tight with their road signs, and after a couple of practice pints in the bar, four of us walked up to the White Bear pub in the village for some food. I might as well own up now, as the others will probably never let me live it down, that on the way back I took them down a “short cut” through a trading estate, at the other end of which was a very large, and very locked, gate. Dave Garner slid under it quite easily, Gerry climbed over it, and we were afraid that John Hart was going to get wedged under it, but he managed to get through. Neither mountaineering nor limbo dancing being my speciality, I took the long walk back round, but to their credit the others did wait for me.

Once more in the bar, we awaited with trepidation the evening’s band, Brassneck. Nobody from the bike club had actually heard them, but they had been highly recommended by the barmaid and had been booked with fingers crossed. Now I will freely admit that any band which starts their set with Born To Be Wild is guaranteed to get on the wrong side of me from the kick off, but things didn’t get much better. The drummer, bass player and guitarist were all capable enough, but their singer was terrible. To say that he hit one note in three would be giving him the benefit of the doubt. Call me picky, but I prefer the majority of the notes to be hit rather than missed. He had a limited range, and instead of changing the key of the songs so that he could reach the top notes, he just sang as high as he could for the notes he couldn’t reach. Add to this the fact that he kept forgetting words and you could potentially have grounds for a lynching. Billy and Janet cleared off after just a few songs and if it hadn’t been so cold outside I think a few more would have joined them. Luckily for the band, most people didn’t notice the shortcomings in the vocal department, and the good range of songs had plenty of people up dancing. This resulted in them getting an enthusiastic response, particularly from a large group of people sitting near us who we didn’t know, but were presumably from Tone Deaf MCC.

When the band finished it was beddy-byes for us. Sunday morning was the usual “wake up – coffee – more coffee – really wake up – pack – load – go home routine” and looking forward to seeing people again in Northern Ireland. Many thanks to the hard working gang from NWHC for putting this rally on for us again.