To lift the gloom a bit in these challenging times we thought it would be a nice idea to bring back some good memories from the past whilst we are waiting to add new ones in the future so here is the BMW Club National Rally 2008 – the Cotswold Rendevouz, held at the Fire Service College, Morton-in-the-Marsh, Gloucestershire.

This was the first rally that Oxford Section had hosted for some time, and we were a bit nervous about providing a good event. We were very lucky that Bob Mack was able to secure the Fire Service College for us at a bargain price, luckily Bob was a part-time fireman and knew the college well.

The Fire Service College provided excellent hard accommodation and also a vast field for camping. The only problem was that we had to obtain a camping licence (like the Caravanning and Camping Club) to allow the BMW Club to camp in an area not normally licenced for camping. The BMW Club still benefits from this facility!

We were very lucky to have a large group of Oxford Section volunteers, over 50 who helped with the rally. The section committee also worked very hard. We provided rally t-shirts to the volunteers, see photos.

The rally had all the usual things you would expect: ride outs, socialising, music from the brilliant Yetties(!), beer, vendors. But in particular the ‘cycle games’ were very good using a borrowed F650GS from Vines of Guildford.

Over the full weekend we had 1,024 paying visitors and about 200 day visitors, and everyone seemed to have a great time. There were a couple of complaints about the temperature of the food (well it wouldn’t be a BMW Club rally without the odd moan 😁) but it did not spoil the event for everyone else. So overall a really good event and it made me appreciate the hard work that goes into arranging a BMW Club national rally – so many thanks to all those across the club who have worked on some great rallies for us to enjoy over the years👍.