20th Annual European H.O.G. Rally. Biograd, Croatia
26-29 May 2011
It all started in June 2010 at the monthly meeting of C&F at the Rose, it was decided that the 2011 ride/vacation had to be the Croatia rally.
Gavin got the job of finding the great roads and Janet booking the accommodation that we’ll never forget, and boy they did a fantastic job! After nearly a whole year of waiting our pack of six bikes, Gavin, Janet, Steve, Dutchy Mark, Jonathan on his lovely Warr’s Custom and myself finally crossed the channel headed for ten days of great roads, sunshine and beer.
We spent our first night in Gent Belgium and rode the next day to Dusseldorf to catch the overnight DeutcheBahn train to Alessandria (that’s in Italy not Egypt for those of you who’re not so good in geography).
Leaving Alessandria and heading for Genoa the next morning felt like winning the lottery, mile after mile of biking heaven, 30 degrees on a serpentine new asphalt that followed a crystal clear river. It couldn’t get any better. But it can get a whole lot worse, and that's entering Genoa and learning how to dodge Vespas and men waving their arms and shouting while driving. We couldn’t get out of there fast enough and back onto the magical roads of Tuscany that us and the Italians have been blessed with.
For our last night in Italy we were treated like conquering heroes by Jo and Suyin who had flown in and waited for us patiently at our hotel in Florence; they could hear us getting close and then the rumble would disappear and that kept on happening for nearly an hour as our hotel was bang in the middle of town. The leading skills of Gavin and his sat nav were no match to the roadwork diversions and the maze of tiny streets. We had a great time in Florence and it was especially nice for Mark and Jonathan to have their girls with them in this romantic place, I had to share with Steve! We found an Irish pub across the road though!
With the girls on board, the last day in Italy was another perfect ride, and arriving in Ancona to board the ferry that’ll take us to Split we realized that the best is yet to come, there were hundreds of H-D’s! The ferry could’ve been a H.O.G. rally by itself.
We left Split and headed towards Biograd. Ed, Natasha, Ilona and Joanna were already waiting for us. Ed didn’t ride down and opted for Easyjet so he doesn’t add a lot of miles on his bike, the big jessie!
The feeling of getting to a rally after a long ride is amazing, I was rewarded twice by having my beautiful wife waiting for me at the rally entrance.
H.O.G. couldn’t have picked a better location for a Harley rally. We sampled the beaches and sea food restaurants by day and the bars and stages by night. Now to the night bit, Grizzly and Sue were there, and as you all probably know Grizzly can truly party, so after a whole night accompanying Grizzly from bar to bar, fellow foreign bikers started calling me Panda as I’m a much much smaller bear!
Saturday night was the Chelsea & Fulham Chapter party and Rob had booked a very nice restaurant right in the centre of the rally where all the waiters were wearing Warr’s T-shirts for some reason. The crowd at the party was fantastic, the ride down stories were shared and the patches distributed. Then someone got a bottle of Tequila and Tomas and David our Lithuanian friends popped a bottle of nameless alcohol so strong that it should be banned (it probably is). We danced; we did the limbo; it was a great chapter reunion. Swapping the restaurant for the Harley stage bar (on foot), the drop off system broke down and we lost a few. But there were enough of us still to claim the bar in the name of the Queen and party ’til early hours. The H.O.G. photographers wouldn’t stop taking photos and other revelers were heard to say “nobody parties like Chelsea & Fulham”. We might have had a couple of men down (Marcus!) but oh, what a night, what a party, what a rally, what a vacation!
Thank you Rob for the Warr’s generosity and thank you Gavin and Janet for one to remember. See you all next year in Cascais Portugal. Bring Alka-Selzer!