Eight members met at Barton Grange Garden Centre on the A6. Richard thought, as it would be very ‘twisty and turny’ we might try the …DROP OFF SYSTEM…AGHHHH!! Anyway, after we’d got up off the floor Dave (that would be me!) explained to the gaping-mouthed gathering how it worked. It worked very well actually and we soon got the hang of it with our policeman look-alike Chris doing a great job as back-marker.
Richard led us off the A6 near Garstang and we took some very narrow lanes, up and down, through a (deeper than it looked!) ford and after negotiating horses, muck, mud, gravel etc we ended up at Glasson dock where we met up with Peter, and the Lancaster Lunes (geddit?) Chris and Trevor. Trevor was on his newly acquired ‘53 G80 in trials trim. It looks a beast and goes very well too! After a quick break, we were off again taking a detour around Carnforth and up through the middle of Silverdale. We almost got caught by the twitchers (painful!) as we rounded a bend dropping on to the marsh, but we managed to navigate through the forest of telescopic lenses and camo gear without incident.
When we arrived at Silverdale we took the trials course up to the Woodlands Hotel. We could have taken the easy way around the corner but we like a challenge (and you can always rebuild your jampots later!) What an amazing hidden gem of fading Victorian splendour this is. A great big old rambling hotel with huge entrance, stone steps up to the foyer and…. there’s no-one there! We turn through another big empty room, through another door and there’s a tiny bar full of walkers and their dogs. It seemed to be about 70 percent dogs at one time. Peter and I sampled the local Morecambe Brewery ‘Sunset Bay’, very good too. We looked through the window at the sunshine, time to go. Outside it was pouring down, so we donned over trousers and set off. Of course, down the road at Arnside the sun was beating down as we steamed through on our 2 wheeled saunas.
We steamed over to Caton for a break and a coffee. The local police came over to Chris to inspect his uniform, after a bit of ‘allo allo, what av we ere then?’, they seemed happy with their new recruit. The steam was dying down now so we took the road towards Oakenclough and eventually back to the exciting-as-ever A6. Then a nice warm ride home in the sunshine.
I think the 11 members enjoyed a really good day out, well planned, with very varied roads . Also, it was a very interesting destination. There were a few regulars missing, holidays, illness etc so it could have been a very big run. This is where the drop off system would have paid off more but it still worked well and we all seemed to enjoy it.
Many thanks Richard.
Dave.