Warr’s 80th Anniversary Ride
4th July 2004
Normally we go on ‘ride outs’ on a Sunday morning. That is, we meet at ‘SW6’ or ‘SE9’ and go OUT of town. However, to help celebrate Warr’s 80th Birthday, we planned a ‘Ride-in’ from the famous Sunday morning motorcycling haunt, Ryka’s Café at Box Hill, just outside Dorking back to ‘611’, carefully co-ordinated with a similar ‘Ride-in’ from Mottingham.
Clearly, plotting a straight line back to The King’s Road is not what these things are about and so a suitably interesting route was devised by Neil ‘Chrome Banana’ Wilson-Harris (ably assisted by, ahem, myself), taking us south of Dorking, looping past Dunsfold Aerodrome and back up via the A3, stopping at another favourite motorcycling spot, Newlands Corner, for a comfort break on the way. For those of you who have never been within five miles of Box Hill on a Sunday morning it is important to understand that what is a lorry park midweek transforms into a massive motorcycle exhibition on Sundays. In fact, people without bikes actually turn up in their cars to have a look. Generally you would not see many Harleys at Box Hill and so twenty plus does generate a bit of attention, particularly from the plethora of sports bike riders.
When C&F H.O.G. organises rides, it is normal practice to operate a ‘drop-off’ system so that the entire group is able to stay on the planned route. The basic principle is to follow the bike in front and, when you reach a junction, there will be someone waiting there to direct you onward who will eventually rejoin the group at the end.
However, this system does not legislate for other Harley riders joining your route, blissfully unaware that you are ‘organised’ and going somewhere completely different to them. Two things can happen at this point. Either you end up following them, perhaps back to their house for a cup of tea or to a car park full of other Harley riders or they end up coming along with you, thinking they are going somewhere else, whilst their mates have gone off in the opposite direction. I’ll leave to you to work out what happened, but suffice to say there were red faces and chuckling, in equal measure, as some of us took a detour through Surrey H.O.G.’s car park (Charlie Pearch was captured, but managed to escape and turned up at Warr’s slightly bewildered) and there were a few unfamiliar faces who eventually worked out that we were not heading for ‘Bazzer’s Bash’ (or something. I can’t remember now).
Suitably disentangled from other riders and rides the rest of the trip was pretty uneventful but no less entertaining for it. Charles ‘Buzz Lightyear’ Lewis joined the group at Newlands Corner and after a bizarre incident when Peter ‘Scottie’ Scott shot past, going the other way, through West Clandon doing his IAM Observer bit (what are the chances of that?), we triumphantly arrived at the King’s Road, greeted by what can only be described as a throng, being photographed like film stars.
As you will gather from other reports, the whole day was a fantastic success, and may well become an annual event. It would be silly not to come on next year’s ‘Ride-in’.