Our Oxford Motorcycle Riders (OMR) Meetup Ride to the Old Brewery Cafe and Stourhead (NT) was hastily moved from Thursday 2nd November to Monday 7th November to avoid Storm Ciaran. this proved to be a very good decision as the weather on Monday was pretty good for early November. The group met at Starbucks, tot Hill services for the pre-ride briefing and coffee and we ran into our first problem of the day – unfortunately Tim’s R1250GS would not start. A quick inspection showed that the negative battery terminal was a little loose and after Tim had purchased some jumbo leads from the Shell service station we were able to jump start the R1250GS from Martin’s KTM. Tim and Jill decided that it was safe to continue the ride although we decided that Garry Webb would take over as back marker. Many thanks to Garry and Martin for helping out.

We followed the scenic back road route to our coffee stop at Amesbury and unfortunately we lost Andy who was running short on time and decided he couldn’t make it as far as the Old Brewery Cafe Gillingham. After coffee we continued on the route over Salisbury Plain to arrive at the Old Brewery Cafe Gillingham about 10 minutes late which was quite remarkable considering the late start. The ride was very good, traffic was very light and the scenery fantastic on a clear, coldish late autumn day.

the Old Brewery Cafe used to be Cafe Corsa part of the Moto Corsa motorcycle dealer but is now focused entirely on the cafe side of the business but with a distinctly motorcycling theme, well worth a visit if you are passing. We spent a bit too long enjoying lunch really and managed to arrive at Stourhead (National Trust) with about 10 minutes to spare before last admissions to the gardens. After getting our tickets we then realised we would have to cross into the gardens before 16:00 so we had a bit of a forced march up the hill to the garden entrance near the house we made it with two minutes to spare.

There are a lot of advantages in visiting Stourhead late in the day as most of the visitors have gone already and there were some beautiful views to enjoy. We finished off with some tea in the Spread Eagle pub down near the gardens and then headed back home on the A303 by which time it was dark, getting cold and a bit busier. The 8 attendees contributed £30 to the BMW Club Oxford TVAA collection which was very generous.

We will probably organise an Old Brewery Cafe Spring Ride in April/May where after lunch we will skirt around the northern edge of Stourhead, stopping for photos at Alfred’s Tower, and then continue back on an interesting route to Marlbourgh with tea at the Honey Street Mill Cafe. Look out for this ride on the BMW Club Oxford Motorcycle Riders (OMR) Meetup group – you can visit it here and please join if you are interested.