A night out with the Long Riders

I knew I was tired when I found myself dribbling into a mug of tea. It was half past one in the morning and I was in a tea shack in a very dark layby, somewhere near Uttoxeter. The floor was awash with muddy water that had dripped from the visitors, and was added to by condensation from the ceiling. The table was covered in spattered crash helmets, filthy earplugs and soggy gloves. And I was grinning because I was more than halfway through the rally. I had started the day as a rally virgin, and had got this far with nothing worse than a sore bum.

The National Rally was run over the weekend of 1-2 July this year. It’s a scatter navigation rally for motorcycles and three-wheelers. It begins at 2pm on Saturday, with most people starting at one of the controls at the rim of a mesh that covers most of England. Riders then follow their own routes around the controls, to end near Banbury before 10am on the Sunday morning. There are various classes of entry, depending on the distance and difficulty of the route chosen. A basic Finisher’s Award lets you start anywhere and do as little as 100 miles. The top level Platinum involves track tests, then completing a route of exactly 540 miles over 24 control checkpoints. This requires a combination of riding and planning skills that leaves me in awe.

I had seen a report on the Rally in MCS&L two years ago, and fancied a try. I applied around March, got the initial instructions sometime around May, then the final ones two weeks before the event. Then the planning started.

My bike is a 1969ish Moto Guzzi New Falcon. This is a lumbering 500cc single with a 30lb external flywheel and a top speed of 80mph. It has wide handlebars and a single sprung saddle. It is also a pretty tough old beast, so I changed the oil and lubed the chain, and it was ready.

Due to family commitments I had only a couple of late night sessions to plan my route. I made three sets of route cards: one in a small notebook, and two others on separate cards. Each set had fallback plans in case I was running late. I was hoping to get a Gold Award (500 miles and six special controls), but I would settle for just finishing rather than miss the closing time of the final control.

I wrapped the notebook in a plastic bag and fixed it with a rubber band to a bit of wood I bolted to the handlebars. The other cards went in the top box as reserves. I also dictated my route onto a little office memo tape recorder. I wrapped the recorder in a plastic bag and put it in a bum bag that I wore on the front. To hear it, I jammed the earpieces of an old pair of headphones up inside my crash helmet. With a bit of wiggling, they weren’t too uncomfortable. The rest of the preparation was stuffing a few tools, chocolate bars and a flask of coffee in the top box. I was off!

On the ride down to my starting point at Buxton it drizzled lightly. I’d been dashing around madly before I left, so I started to get cold. I got lost on the way to the control, and only arrived at ten to two. Parked in the layby were a whole range of bikes and riders, including a very clean Douglas Dragonfly that later came to haunt me. I decided to put my waterproofs on, to save time if it rained later.

The guy at the control yelled that it was two o’clock, I jumped on the kickstarter and roared away, as the Duggie rider slowly took a last drag on his fag and stubbed it on the wall.

Next stop was Chesterfield; an easy run. I lost the road I wanted and wandered around the town before finding it again. When I arrived at the control, there was a Douglas parked up. There was a garage nearby, so I took the chance to fill the tank. As I was going through the drill to get the old nail started, the guy on the till came running out to return the credit card I had left on the counter. So far, I had the feeling that I could be doing better.

My third control was Ollerton. I gave the bike some stick on the good A roads on the way to make up some time. I then lost it all by cruising back and forth through Billsthorpe three times before asking for directions. The control I wanted was on a parallel road. And in the car park was a Douglas, with the rider leaning against it and smoking.

Cranwell next, and a café near Sleaford. Quite why I turned into the entrance to the Aeronautical College I don’t know. I left a bit of a mark on their grass when I turned on the narrow drive and escaped. Sorry chaps.

Then to Sutterton, and a pub on the A17 near Boston. This was much easier, and I began to make the lost time back. So much so, that I had a drink and a chocolate bar in the car park before leaving. No sign of the Douglas, so I was feeling smug. I rode off with the sidestand down, but luckily the sound of ploughed gravel alerted me before I got onto the road. Not so smug now.

Wisbech was next. I was not looking forward to this – controls in towns are hard to find. I like the ones that say ‘layby on the A99, three miles south of Anytown’ – they are hard to miss. Wisbech control was a bike shop in town. Bless them, but they had put big marker signs up well before the turn off, and I didn’t get lost at all (hardly). Just after I arrived, an off-road BMW outfit came in. This is bravery in the extreme, particularly for the person in the chair.

I continued my tour of Flatland, heading for Ely. The sun broke through for a while, and I began to feel hot in all my layers. I overtook a lorry on a long straight road, which cheered me up. Off in the distance I could see a bank of black cloud. As you might expect, I was heading towards it.

The Ely control was a layby on the A10. The marshalls took an interest in the old nail, and came out to have a look and ask a few questions. With my earplugs in and headphones on, I could hear nothing. I was trying to lip-read, swivelling my head around to whoever was talking to try and capture sounds through the open visor. In return I could only grunt. I hope they appreciated that not all motorcyclists are incoherent cavemen (just those who ride Moto Guzzis).

By now I was about half an hour ahead of my estimates. The next control was an enforced rest stop, so I planned to have a meal and check my obviously dodgy route planning and timings.

The control was in Sawston, but I had a crisis of confidence on the A11, and stopped for petrol and reassurance. I arrived at the World Famous Comfort Café just as the big black clouds burst. The road vanished under running water as I went twice round a roundabout to find the right exit. I had planned to do some checks on the bike – oil, plug, chain, etc. but instead, I parked it and sprinted for cover. The thunderstorm rolled over the café, knocking out the electrical power with every lightning stroke. Each time the lights went, so did the till. Being an electronic till, it took five minutes to reboot, and the drawer could not be opened until it had. It took forty minutes for me to place an order, but the staff were great, and I sat under a big beach umbrella on the front porch, eating a huge fry-up and admiring the hissing rain.

I got talking to a chap on a Moto Guzzi Nevada. He had started the rally at 2pm, and immediately had a puncture. It had taken him until 5:45 to get it fixed, so he was busy revising his route plan. He was going to the same control next, so he offered to ride with me. We set off together, but separated at the first roundabout. I misread my route card and assumed he had taken the wrong turning. I pootled along for a while, expecting him to catch up at any moment and give me a cheery apologetic wave. After a few minutes of this, my suspicions grew and I rechecked my route. My perfect sense of inverse direction had worked again, and it was me that was heading the wrong way up the wrong road. I never did see Nevada Man again; sorry mate.

The rain increased from heavy to bottom-of-the-ocean, and the old nail began to misfire. For those that don’t know, the New Falcon has a horizontal cylinder, with the plug nicely positioned to catch any overflow from the front mudguard on one side, and the carb set-up to do the same on the other. I stopped and gave it a bit of WD40, then gave it the beans round the slip roads and back the other way. I got to 60 and it was vibrating more than usual, but themisfire had gone. Then I noticed that it was still in third. The engine sighed with relief, and the misfire stayed gone.

The Huntingdon control was actually a garage forecourt on the way to Godmanchester. Easy to find, and they were using a double-decker bus for the control point. My crash helmet left black streaks on the ceiling every time I tried to straighten-up. I was also struggling with my gloves. They were well soaked, and the lining tried to pull out each time I took them off. This meant that I spent ages trying to turn them back inside-in again. I was losing time fiddling, so I decided to keep my gloves on. My signature on the control cards then became an illegible scrawl, so the organisers will think that I either fielded a substitute, or fell victim to the engine vibrations.

The next stop was an easy one again, a Little Chef on the A1 heading North. The problem was that I had been reading my road atlas wrong. It used a circular symbol to mark the junctions on the A1, and I assumed they would be roundabouts. Of course, it’s been many years since the A1 was straightened out and the roundabouts removed. I found the Little Chef alright, but I missed my next turning completely.

The missed turning was for a virtual control. The organisers had not had enough volunteers to run the control, so they were taking it on trust that anyone using it would ride through Bourne and tell the next control along to give them two stamps on their card. I should have taken the A16 then 16121 from the A1 to make two sides of a triangle back to Colsterworth. Instead I had to turn off at the Colsterworth Junction, and ride out to Bourne and back on the A151. What an awful road! It was dark by now; the rain had stopped but all the flying things had come out to play. The road was covered in tramline grooves and had a series of very sharp off-camber bends. The flies began to build-up on my visor, and I even wished for rain. Instead I got to Bourne and had to ride the same curves again, but with a thicker net curtain in front of me.

The final stage was to get to a sportsground in Melton Mowbray. I found it easily enough, and made use of the water and sponge they had thoughtfully provided for cleaning visors. Just as I was scrubbing off the wildlife, a Douglas Dragonfly chuffed into the car park.

Leicester was next, with a control on the far side of the centre. Given the choice of two A46 exits on a roundabout, I obviously picked the wrong one and rode round the top of Leicester. When I did find the road I needed, I turned the wrong way onto it. Thankfully I was beginning to learn my limitations, and stopped at a garage for directions. When I turned the old nail around, I found a whole crowd of extras waving torches at the entrance to the control point. They must have known I was coming.

When I left, it seemed to take a long time to work my way North from Leicester to pick up the M1. The next control at Kegworth was a short hop from junction 24, except that I nearly missed the layby it was in. Along with a better headlight, I was beginning to wish for a disk brake at the front. My signalling was also a bit lacking in ‘situations’. I had fitted indicators to the bike, but the switch had to be placed on the pre-tapped mounting holes on the handlebar. This needs a nine-inch thumb to be able to signal and work the throttle at the same time. At Kegworth, as at so many other places, I just braked hard and prayed.

It should have been an easy ride from here to the Darley Moor Race Circuit near Ashbourne except that when I got back to the junction with the M1, I couldn’t find the correct exit off the roundabout. I rode round the roundabout three times, reading the signs, before picking an exit. It was the wrong one of course, but I got a chance to read the signs on the other side of the road and learn the right one. This led onto the A50. By now it was getting foggy, but on a decent bit of dual carriageway I could open-up the mighty Falcon to a heady 70mph. I did manage to overtake a 1934 Velocette, so a hint of smugness resurfaced.

To pay for my sin, the pain in my rear increased. The wide bars and upright seating position of the New Falcon meant that I was playing windsock. The wind pressure pushed me down hard into the saddle, and I developed an ache that got worse. I tried moving back, but the rim of the saddle soon dug in. I tried moving forwards, but this brought me onto the even harder unsprung nose of the saddle. It also made the engine noise louder through direct bone conduction. Interesting to a doctor perhaps, but no solace. The pain gave me a dillema: the faster I went, the more it hurt, but the slower I went, the longer it would hurt. I opted for fast, but I was looking more like John Wayne each time I stopped at a control.

The pleasure of passing another bike was beaten out of me by the A515. The road was foggy, dark and twisty, and another bike was following me closely. He was probably using me to lead him round the bends, being an easy marker with my fluorescent bib. Unfortunately he was following closely, and his headlight dazzled me in the mirror. This meant that my cornering and braking were not quite to IAM standards, which must have kept him awake. I was just hoping it wasn’t that Dragonfly.

Like everyone else, I missed the entrance to the race circuit. Anyone passing in an airplane would have wondered at the number of headlights reversing direction in the middle of nowhere. When I clocked in and returned to my bike, the Dragonfly was just pulling into the car park. There had to be at least two of these things with the same registration, or he’d got his braces caught in my topbox when I left Buxton.

Riding away from the control, I began to get one of those nasty nagging feelings. My route plan showed I had one more control, then an hour’s rest at the one after. The rules said that I had to take an hour’s rest every 200 miles. I kept seeing my route and mileage plan in my mind, and I had a first break marked at 180 miles, with the second one at 400. Even at this time of night, I knew that this wasn’t right. I decided to press on to the next control, then hide before clocking in. If I was outside my allowance, I could sit on the bike for an hour before checking in. Luckily the Uttoxeter control was a very dark layby with a tea shed. I crept into the light pool of the shed and fished out all my damp paperwork. With a bit of counting on fingers, I found I could check in at this control, but could not proceed to my intended food and drink stop at the one after. This is how I found myself dribbling into my tea in the early hours of the morning.

A couple of blokes on Moto Guzzi Le Mans came into the tea shed and we swapped a few tales. I was nearing the end of my time, so was suiting-up as we talked, with the ear-plugs and headphones in. Yet again I did the dazed caveman bit, puzzling over even the simplest questions. Now even the Moto Guzzi riders had someone to look down on.

I did a quick check on someone else’s map ("er, is that the A198 outside?"), then rumbled off through Stafford, Telford, and Newport towards Bridgenorth. On the way I was surprised by lone traffic cone, sat in the middle of my side of the road. Perhaps it was the local council’s warning for a pothole?

When I got to the control, I was very glad indeed that I hadn’t stopped here for my break: it was the forecourt of a closed garage. However, they were kind enough to tell me that the Church Stretton control was now six miles further south, at Church Stretton and not Leebotwood as advertised. Why do they give such complicated instructions to cavemen? At least it was beginning to get lighter. I could see the route card again, but the fog had got thicker and I couldn’t see the road or the traffic signs.

From Church Stretton, my route took me through Ludlow. This was a horrible place, with speed humps and a level crossing. Every time I looked-up to check a road sign, I took-off on a hump. The back wheel stepped out on the crossing, but I was beyond caring.

Then I made the only good decision of the trip: I turned off onto the A4117 towards Kidderminster. This climbed at around one in ten for what felt like miles. The old nail did its stuff, thumping every fourth lampost and raising a cheer and wave from an early-morning couple (or very late night). I rode up out of the fog into the dawn sunshine, crossed a cattlegrid and was stopped by the most amazing sight. The whole valley below was filled with a lake of mist, with pink-tinted clouds and clear blue sky. This was worth staying up for.

I took a picture, went round the corner and met a flock of sheep asleep in the road. They, of course, scattered just as I was picking my way through them.

The descent from heaven was interesting; a series of very sharp bends decorated with banks of fine silt and gravel, dropped by the night’s rainfall run-off. I developed a firm grip on the saddle with my aching cheeks, but managed to stay within the kerbs.

The bike was well into reserve by now, so I was very glad of the control point and garage at the bottom of the hill.

I wasn’t looking forward to my last control, and I was right. It was a school in Bromsgrove, with a rather hazy description. I wandered around the town for a while, until I saw a couple of people I could ask for directions. They were two lads in their early twenties. Both were soaking wet. One was covered in grass clippings, while the other was bare-chested and carrying his shirt. It was around 6:15 in the morning. Without batting an eyelid they directed me to the school. Without batting an eyelid I followed their directions and found it. I should have asked if they had lost a traffic cone.

Luckily I had the sense on leaving the control to ask someone for directions to the motorway. As usual, my unerring sense of misdirection would have had me going the wrong way. I found the M42 with no problems, except that a traffic light sensor couldn’t see me and the lights stayed on red. I tried rolling back and forth over the loop in the road, but no joy. I was about to go ahead anyway when a car arrived and the lights flicked over. It felt very odd to be invisible on a bike with as much metal in it as the Moto Guzzi.

The last leg was the trip down to Gaydon, just off junction 12 of the M40. I tucked in behind an Irish coach on the M40, and let him tow me. The coach punched holes in the last few scraps of mist and the slipstreaming eased some of the ache in my seat.

The turn-off for Gaydon and the Heritage Motor Museum was well signposted, and for once I didn’t turn the wrong way. A marshall on the gate ("Hi, Marshall, I’m John Wayne") gave me the best directions of the rally: "follow the blue line painted on the road". If only the rest of it had been like this.

I followed said line, puttered around the back of the museum building, and was set-upon by two marshalls. These guys were directing the incoming bikes to park in neat rows. Later on, as the bulk of riders arrived, they were working like one-armed paper hangers. They did a superb job; 1,000 bikes and three-wheelers were slowed, directed to spaces and parked. Everyone was able to park safely, with room left to get out.

I was early: I arrived at a few minutes after seven, but the control was not open until half past. I must have been in the first group to arrive, as I was parked half way along the first row of bikes. I killed the engine, got off the bike like an arthritic pensioner, and slowly began to strip my kit off. It was an incredible relief to wriggle the headphone speakers out of the crash helmet; they had been pinching my ears all night. I laid my gloves on the engine to dry out a bit and opened the top of my waterproofs and leathers. My hands were died purple and blue from the wet gloves, and my hair stood straight up; I looked like Beaker from the Muppets, but with ears looking like I had been helping Mike Tyson with a bit of training and hands that looked trod on.

The final control was already open, so I clocked in. What a strange contrast of primitive chaos meeting organised efficiency. I shambled into a hall full of desks, and handed-over a damp and battered control card to one of a forest of waiting hands. The lady stamped my card, directed me to the next table to collect a finisher’s plaque, and then to the rest and feeding stations. Within a few seconds I was clocked in and standing at the breakfast counter. In the time it took me to fumble money out of a wet bumbag with stiff hands, the servers had filled a plate with fried food and were asking me difficult questions about tea or coffee. I plopped my tray on the nearest table and began to shed bags and clothes as a thin steam began to rise from me.

Sat at the table and just wiping the last traces of grease from their plates were two cheery lads who had done the Platinum award. Amid all their tales of track tests, weaving between cones and clever riding, they confessed that the hardest special test had been to give their weight in kilos. Whatever the answer, breakfast increased it by at least one.

And that was it.

After breakfast, and with life returning to body and brain, I strolled around the rows of bikes and took a few pictures. The marshalls had built-up three or four rows of machines, and were filling gaps as they appeared. Every few seconds there would be an interesting engine noise, and everyone looked up to see what was coming in. In the rows were sports bikes, tourers, commuters, veterans and odd-balls. A pair of tiny monkey bikes were parked together in an embrace, next to a Honda scooter. There was a whole row of those damned Douglas Dragonflys; I checked and they all had different registrations, so that was one theory blown. A Norton single chuffed in with a gorgeous single sidecar like a Silver Cross pram. The feeling was electric; everyone had just achieved a major result in just getting to the end, we were all trading stories and every bike and rider was treated as an equal. It surely can’t get any better than this.

I finally trundled off home. The route back out to the M1 was busy with bikes streaming the other way, all heading for the finish and all waving. Somewhere up around Leicester I was getting a bit punchy and needed fuel, so I pulled into the services. I took my time filling up and had a drink and a chat with an Italian couple touring on a Moto Guzzi v35 (that's true love). I was about to leave when a car pulled away from the pumps, revealing a Douglas Dragonfly.

I was in shock. No rider appeared, and I could see nobody with a crash helmet anywhere around. No-one else in the filling station paid it any attention, so I quietly got back on my bike and rode off. I kept a very close watch on the mirrors, but no accursed British flat twin crept up on me.

Spooky. Did I see it or not?

For the record, I did 510 miles between controls in 17 hours. With the distance for getting to and from the event, I covered 791 miles in 25 hours.

Would I do it again? Yes, but I want a better seat or a fairing, and I’ll spend more time getting my directions and route card right. And can I ask for a handicapping system for Douglas Dragonflys?

Result

Gold Award. 552 points.