ALBANY VINTAGE & CLASSIC MOTORCYCLE CLUB
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A Wet Kamballup Hall Ride
AT LAST - A wet, winter’s ride to Kamballup Hall. This is the third
time we’d booked the place, the idea being that if it was wet, the hall
would be a dry and warm place for lunch. The other times the weather
has been too sunny and we’ve dragged the chairs outside working on our
tans. This time made up for the other two!
9.45 am and Chris and I have our bikes in the carport waiting for
the wall of water descending from above to ease a little. It drives me
nuts waiting so it was, “Come on let’s go, there won’t be
anyone there and we can come home and light the fire”. Ha! Once again I
was wrong, there were seven people at the Amity
carpark (or more correctly inside the drive-in bottleshop), not
including Peter and Judy who were back-up, siting in the cosy 4WD (they
were smiling a lot - I don’t know why!)
Among the soggy group were
Fabrice and daughter who rode from Denmark
to meet up with us on their Harley. I asked Fabrice if the weather was
fine in Denmark, He said it was
"pissing down”.
So all you BMW riders cowering in bed or next to the fire, you’d better
remember that.
Off we went, didn’t go direct, as there’s no fun in that is there?
So it was the tourist route, Lower King, Hunton Road etc before
stopping for a hot drink at Upper Kalgan Tearooms. We couldn’t really
see anything anyway as the rain was still a bit on
the heavy side, but it’s the ride that counts, not the destination -
isn’t that right folks?
Bondy said he’ll have to get some fuel at Bakers Junction - I said
we’re not going that way, we’re taking the scenic route via Manypeaks
and South Stirlings, he looked at my bike and said, “It’ll be the
furthest that bike will have been, it’ll never make it.” What a bloody
nerve!
This was the first ride on my 1951 S8 Sunbeam, and come to think of it,
its the only sun beam we saw.
After what seemed like an eternity Kamballup Hall appeared, there was a
yellow Ducati outside and Wes and Barbara at the door (they’d ridden
over from Bremer) and they had the fire going full blast - bloody
marvellous.
Fabrice had his socks off and was warming his feet, didn’t go down
to
well with the sandwich I was eating, but there you go, it was raining
and we were using the hall as planned, wasn’t it just great.
The rain did ease on the way home and I think later the sun shone. To
the 9 bike riders & pillions, good on ya.
Thanks to Peter and Judy doing back-up duties. And with all that
rain
the bikes went well including the two British ones and the trailer
remained empty.