An interesting day out at the Brackley Festival of Motor Cycling, if just a bit too hot. With instructions to be on site by 08:00 and set up before 09:00 an early start was required but Dave and Rosemary arrived in good time on their old BMW to finalise the positioning and layout of the stand and to erect the banners and flags. The stand was in a good position with the bike park behind and most of the biking attendees having to walk past on their way in.
By 10 o’clock the place was heaving with people and various events were underway both in the town, where the main road had been closed, and on the grass of the school playing fields. Many BMW Club members visited the stand to help out or just rest in the shade. With a limit of only 4 bikes Rosemary and Dave had a good spread with their R 69, a GS, a 1600 six cylinder and Eddie’s paramedic 1200 RT.
A few memorable sights for me were seeing the old racing bikes at full throttle on the short circuit set out in the high street, the multi cylinder Hondas and the MV Augusta making enough noise to clear any ear wax and making babies cry with the pain! The amazing little Trike that someone had built up using an in line Yamaha Vee twin engine and shaft drive to produce a vehicle that looked more like a little fighter aircraft than a road-going machine.
Watching Dougie Lampkin ride a trials bike over a Nissan Micra and then, more amazingly, up onto a full size tank. He then rode from the turret along the barrel of the gun to fly off the end to the ground, brilliant. BMW Motorrad had a huge truck with a couple of the WSB bikes on display but, to me, the most surprising were the BMW R100RS and the BMW K1 in black with vitually no miles on their clocks! They are owned by BMW and kept as exhibits.
The bikes on display at the show ranged from some very nice vintage machinery, a good collection of scooters to modern machines on the manufacturers stands including Aprillia, Moto Guzzi, Honda, Triumph, Yamaha and of course Harly Davidson. The custom bikes showed just how inventive and very clever some people are and just to show how well this can be done you just had to look at the Millyard Viper, a V10 8 litre engine so cleanly fitted into a bike configuration.
According to one of the main organisers, the lovely Amy, there were more than 12,000 people at last year’s show and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that there were even more than this at this year’s event.
Thanks must go to Rosemary and Dave plus Geoff Clough and Eddie for helping out on the stand and all those BMW Club members who dropped by for a chat.
Report and photos by John L Broad.
PS Also many thanks to John for bringing the Gazebo Ed.!
What a difference to Popham!
6 BMW’s milling around looking for a Stand that didn’t exist!