21st Farmyard Party 200721st Farmyard Party 2007The weather leading up to this years Farmyard Party, had been the
wettest for ages. Heavy overnight rain left much of Yorkshire under water, and
riding to work Fri morning I got soaked.
Not surprising then that a large
number of rally goers were put off making the journey north to Helmsley, anyone
who knows me will know how much I enjoy the Farmyard, so it was going to have
to rain a lot harder before I gave up.
I had a call from Ged, he had
decided to give it up as a bad job, then a text from Rod, if this rain keeps up
he was going to bail, then a brighter text, from Jane, "I hope we are still
going", the day suddenly got brighter. Then Malc came round with his PDA and a
news item showing flash floods in Doncaster and surrounding areas, 'it will be
gone by the time I get there', I hope.
Home, I got the bike out, glorious
sunshine, damned hot in the wet gear, and set off. While waiting in the
sunshine for Rod & Cath, the mother of all thunderstorms started coming
over the horizon, but it was too slow, they turned up and off we went, heavy
drops of rain just starting to fall.
On to the Limes cafe, missed Nick, he
and Gill had gone to fill up, on to the Big Fish, just the six of us then,
never mind, farmyard here we come.
I don't know how, but we managed to avoid
the masses of black clouds all the way to the site, a small shower at most and
we were there. Tents up and dinner on, it started to drizzle, not too bad, we
sat in the tent and eat in the dry, apart from Nick, who sat outside under an
umbrella until the cooking was over.
We set off at 10pm, in broad daylight,
rain stopped to look round.
Boy was it muddy, there were a large number of
stalls to look at, three major entertainment centres, and goodness knows how
many eateries.
We ended up in the 100% tent, much to my delight there was a
'Best Tits' contest, that was until I found out that most of the entries were
blokes, some of them had a fair pair to be honest, and according to the
audience one of them should have won.
Back to the tent at 2am, asleep at
2.01.
Sat, lets walk into the town, it's bright, warm, I won't take a coat.
Thousands of bikers everywhere, this is great, stopped for a cup of tea, in a
hairy-arsed biker kind of way, and the rain came, not that hard but steady, a
handy ironmongers and a pack of bin-liners later, we are on the way
back.
Back at the campsite, the sun was out, the rain never came again, and
we just chilled, drank, eat and wandered about.
Met Polly, how you bump into
someone amongst so many others I will never know. So much to see and so little
time.
If anything it was even muddier now, some people were body surfing in
the mud, sober in the morning, I wonder how many of them still thought it was a
good idea.
Sun, bright and dry, it is a great sight, the constant stream of
bikes diving out for three hours and more, the ride home easy on the eye, and
with empty roads, it was a great day.
I called in to John & Barbs, to
say hello, they had just finished the rideout, and found it hard to believe we
had it so good. From there home, every inch in the dry, a good bit of it in
sunshine. If you were going to go and had a change of heart, you missed out,
next time have faith, it may be even better.
