(A) The Toads and Dogends Rally
Mileage today : 144 miles
Total mileage: 144 miles
The Toads is always a good rally. Friendly, loud and hopefully dry and sunny. In recent years the pubs camping field has been flooded out and the site is getting more floods during the years than it used to do; global warming?..who knows.
The motorways were busy but moving. With one petrol stop on the M5 to give me enough petrol for the 1st fill up on Sunday, I covered the 114 mile in just over 2.5hrs. I arrived on the field just as it started to rain 🥴. Fortunately it was only light and short lived. Others had not been so lucky with the ride. It had taken Rob 5hrs to negotiate around London with constant, heavy rain and Alan hadn't anything better coming from the south east of the country.
It wasnt long before more bikes turned up and the field became a hive of activity. Somebody sneaked over to the bike while I wasn't looking and left me a present for my collection 🤣
Phone signal was pretty bad and some people tried to getter better reception but I don't think it worked very well.
A group of us wandered off to the pub.
The pub has 2 large seated areas, a dance floor room ,a function room and a large outdoor seating area complete with barbecue area and a outside bar.
4 of us grabbed a table in the sun and we started to sample the beers on offer both from the outdoor bar which had 3 real ales on and the pub bar which had some nice ciders. As we were in good spirits it was selfish time. Unfortunately Geoff couldn't quit get on the photo no matter how I tried to rotate my phone so he looks like he's dead in the bottom right hand corner of the photo. He had just ridden 165 miles in the rain then put his tent up on his own; at 80 years of age that's not bad going .
Come 5.30pm and people started to move indoors to grab tables as the kitchen has started serving and the DJ has started playing music. The pub is well experienced at hosting biker events. The food menu is simple but good portions and cheap at £10. Fish & chips, Steak pie & chips or chilli with rice or chips, both meat and veggi variety, caters for everyone.
It wasn't long before people were up jigging about on the dance floor and making a fool of themselves and the beer contained till midnight. During the night.....the rain started.
Saturday was dull and overcast then heavy rain. I passed on the offer to go into Worcester and drink dirty beer with the lads.......
....instead I stayed on site and spent the day re-packing some of my gear, cooking, planning my route then had a couple of beers in the afternoon before an early night in the hope of getting away early on Sunday.
