WILTING IN WILTSHIRE (hardly any pictures)

[yen_powell]

Found this old run report (wot I wrote for our local TRF group) on an old back up portable drive, pictures are lost apart from a few on my current hard drive pasted below. This would be about 1995 I reckon.

WILTING IN WILTSHIRE

I was awakened bright and early in my luxury farmhouse accommodation by the sight of

John P (looking rather alluring in his special edition Paddington Bear Jim Jams) sneaking

into my room and swapping the kettle for his and Phil’s broken one. Strange Dave my

room mate had wanted to lock the door the previous evening but I had protested for fear

of people talking about us. Luckily, suspecting John would try something like this, I had

already swapped them around once. The sound of cursing was just audible from the other

room above David’s snoring.

 

Remembering that our super scary landlady was expecting us downstairs for breakfast, I

woke David up with my special TRF tipping a person out of bed action (taught only to

high ranking Rights Of Way Officers and passed onto me by Graham). David was less

alluring in his Madagascan simulated leather cod piece with optional attachments.

After enjoying a FULL ENGLISH BREAKFAST (the scary landlady’s capitals) with

knobs on, we adjourned to our luxury farmhouse parking area in plenty of time to begin

the long drawn out starting procedure on my immaculate DR350 ( well it is underneath

the mud). Half an hour later the others took pity on me and had a go at starting it. John

looked scornfully down at me and did his usual electric start mime. However I had the

last laugh there when he realised he’d lost his bike keys. Strange Dave loaded his

rucksack up with high grade coal for his antique £60 Victorian trials bike and topped up

the oil (in the running lights).

 

By this time the rest of that fine body of men, the Essex TRF Away team, had arrived.

Oh how proud they looked as they struggled to change into their bike gear inside beach

towels to protect their modesty. As soon as John appeared with his keys (found in the

landlady’s bedroom for some unknown reason) we started off.

The first lane was a gentle climb with gentle ruts. Unfortunately everything was invisible

under the four foot high grass. At the first gate certain members were a little late due to

stopping for a spot of low level sight seeing. The following five mile lane encouraged

some to speed up but had some alarming black coloured puddles outside a cowshed.

Splash through one of these and your socks are never quite the same again, neither is the

bloke immediately behind me who copped most of it in the face. The next few lanes were

enjoyed under a blazing Wiltshire sun and the others looked quite happy. I couldn’t have

this of course, so when we approached the ford at Stratford Tony I sent David across with

his camera and blocked the entrance to the shallow side with my lavishly maintained

DR350. Naturally not one of the buggers had the decency to fall off for the camera.

My plans thwarted I led my cattle I mean fellow trail riders to Odstock (the place not the

Bond villain) where as I stopped to open a gate my goggles (hanging loose) flicked up

into my eye and neatly removed my contact lens and flung it somewhere into the

beautiful local flora. I didn’t panic, I made the special TRF hand signal for stop your

engines and help me look for a tiny piece of perspex in long grass. Thirty seconds later

and Strange Dave strangely spotted it, gave it a brief wipe on his babygro all weather

bike outfit and attempted to reinsert it into the wrong eye. One eye watering badly I

bravely led the motley collection of cut throats, car mechanics and gentleman’s jazz mag

producers onward to Porton Down the famous germ warfare laboratory. Fearful that we

might leave them with more germs than they started with, we quickly skirted around to

Old Sarum.

 

Here I decide to introduce some culture into the other riders lives with a brief explanation

of Sarum’s history. However I don’t know any, so instead we just stared at a couple

wrestling in some long grass.(Why I don’t know, but we saw a lot of this type of thing.

Perhaps Wiltshire couples argue a lot at the weekend.)

It was at this point I started to suspect that some of the hooligans faster riders were

champing at the bit. Anxious to calm these thoroughbreds before one ran into the back of

me I pointed them down the byway that runs cross country to Stonehenge. This track is

40 feet wide, straight for a mile and a half and smoother than Dave’s head. It has grass

on it that an old age pensioner bowling champion would be proud of. Why oh why then,

30 seconds after shouting,” run free my proud beauties, get it out of your system”, were

they all picking up Derek and dusting him down. His handlebars were rather twisted, in

fact John P who has had a lot of experience with boy scouts declared that they had

uncannily formed a double fluted sheep shagger knot.

 

Derek was placed back onto his machine and by crossing his arms could still use most of

the controls. We all roared up towards Stonehenge on the horizon, whilst humming the

theme from the High Chaparral. Nothing could stop us now I thought until I saw the

amount of traffic using the A303 which was between us and Stonehenge. In the end

using the force, I closed my eyes and just turned right into the traffic. Honestly the

language some tourists use, you wouldn’t think they were relaxing on holiday.

We passed around the edge of Stonehenge, admired the tourists, and stopped on the

byway just behind the monument. “Magnificent, isn’t it,” I cried. “About time they built

something else now,” says John. And he calls me a Philistine!!

Standing by ancient man’s greatest achievement, I carried out Braintree man’s greatest

achievement and started my bike first kick. We headed of to Yarnbury Castle , a huge

Iron Age hillfort. It sits next to the byway but is surrounded by fences stopping you

visiting it. The next day I spotted a Sarum to Bath milestone sitting 20 feet inside the so

called private area. On that day we climbed the fence and passed through the banks and

extremely deep ditch for a sit down. Dave immediately began a dried sheep dropping

bombardment on those on the other side of the ditch. Realising that his missiles were

falling short due to their light dehydrated state, I threw a fresh missile. This went much

further but was a bit messy to hold. Luckily as run leader I had taken the precaution of

using David’s glove so as not to risk sullying my map. I carefully placed it back inside

his helmet without him noticing.

 

But all that was still in the future and Dave’s gloves and helmet interior were still clean

as we passed Yarnbury Castle and onto the Salisbury Plain. Here the tracks split many

times and there are little or no features to navigate from. Added to this there are

numerous extra tracks created by the army that aren’t even on the map. At the first three

way fork I used a cunning TRF navigational aid and picked the left hand track. Eeny

Meeny Miney Mo took us along the side of the army’s Hercules landing strip and into

Little House on the Prairie country. Fearful of unexploded artillery shells I had intended

to rely on Dave’s GPS. When he revealed that he’d forgotten the batteries I sent him in

front as a punishment.

 

We emerged safely in the village of Chitterne and Dave quickly changed his underpants,

put a fresh Hoover bag onto his airbox, emptied the chalkdust out of the old one and

carefully placed it in the rear wicker basket for later reuse. Perhaps I should go into

greater detail about Dave’s bike. Purchased for a mere 60 notes and authenticated by

Arthur Neagus shortly before his death in 1984 from beeswax poisoning, this fine

example of late Victorian machinery shows not only the excellence of pre-war Japanese

engineering, but also how British tinkering can really bugger it up gradually as the years

pass. Dave is immensely proud of his machine and has been known to call out anyone

who hints at it’s parenthood or mentions the gear change arrangement. He once let me

ride it in deepest Kent by the simple act of stealing mine and riding off quickly. Unable

to get out of first gear I screamed off after him shouting the name of the County we were

in. He eventually stalled and as he frantically prodded at the kickstart I wrestled him off

of my bike.

 

Back in steamy Wiltshire I was finding that as I attempted to travel across Boyton Down,

the old eeny meeny trick wasn’t really as good as I’d first thought. After 20 minutes of

going around in circles I saw a man with no chin in the middle of nowhere. I stopped and

asked if he knew where he was. “Are yooo cheps teyarf ?” He said. Wondering why he

was eating a plum I replied that we were. “ More of yooo cheps up yonder”, he

enunciated as he pointed at the horizon.

 

I immediately checked behind me to see if everybody was still with me. It was quite

possible that with the circles we had followed I may have caught up with my own tail end

Charlie. But no, Charlie was still there, so there must be native trailriders about. The

posh geezer gave me directions with a warning not to stray onto his fields as some of his

“cheps” were using tractors and might chase us. When we finally saw the “cheps”, they

were driving about five or six- half million pound combine harvesters. All that money

and inbred, I wonder if he wants to adopt me.

 

By now we were coming to the end of the day’s run and as we approached Burcombe I

was looking forward to a shower. I asked Dave to stay at the back and make sure no one

got lost. This ensured that I got to the shower first and that there was no risk of running

out of hot water.

THE END

[XTreme]

5 minutes ago, yen_powell said:

I saw a man with no chin in the middle of nowhere.

Nice one Yen! 

I remember you mentioning Strange Dave before.......how did he get that name?

[yen_powell]

1 minute ago, XTreme said:

Nice one Yen! 

I remember you mentioning Strange Dave before.......how did he get that name?

Without wishing to sound like Vinnie Jones in that gangster film, because he's strange and called Dave. Bob knows him, he's one sandwich short of a picnic most of the time.

[boboneleg]

Good old 'Johnny Gerbil' , as he was known to us in Bristol TRF

[Pedro]

1 hour ago, yen_powell said:

After enjoying a FULL ENGLISH BREAKFAST (the scary landlady’s capitals) with knobs on

knobs on? at breakfast?  

[yen_powell]

29 minutes ago, Pedro said:

knobs on? at breakfast?  

Yeah, UK meat production means we get all the bits you try not to think about.

[yen_powell]

2 hours ago, boboneleg said:

Good old 'Johnny Gerbil' , as he was known to us in Bristol TRF

When we had some of our bikes on display at some county show that bike was there with it's huge round headlight. I made a giant tax disc, laminated it and stuck it onto the round lens when he wasn't looking.

[Pedro]

8 minutes ago, yen_powell said:

Yeah, UK meat production means we get all the bits you try not to think about.

Oh, those knobs!