The Trip Out, Euston Park, UK
The Old Shovel Got Soaked.
We got soaked not once, but three times :) Once across France to the Ferry, bc putting off putting on the rain gear for too long. Second time going from the South Coast to the Trip Out. And the third time on the way home. Foul weather indeed. When we started out, the radar images looked menacing. And then it got worse. Posing again that old question: why are we doing this! The good news was: the Trip Out itself was miraculously living in a bubble of warm mediterranean air all weekend while the rest of the country got seriously drenched. It was so absolutely good to roll through the gate, the clothes still clammy from the rain earlier on, and see the golden meadows of Euston Park, dry as they were under that blue East Anglia sky, already filled with hundreds of tents. Ah: to get out of those wet clothes! Changed into some dry clothes, hung the soggy kit over the bike to dry, and then went to the bar for a truly well deserved beer.
If you haven’t been to The Trip Out, it’s all about
Anna and Andy, who love music and vintage Harley choppers, and it works like this: There’s this really really huge bike camping area (cars must stay in the other huge grassy field up the hill) surrounded by trees, and a church hidden among them, so you set up your tent not too close to the marquee, otherwise no sleep, but not too far away either, because: toilets :) Then you head for the food truck of your choice, get some calories on board, wash them down with a nice cold brew from the well sorted bar and spend the rest of the day listening to strange and crazy music, try to see the Meyer Dancers doing their thing, chat with the friends you haven’t seen for a long year, slowly walk around to find even more crazy choppers hidden in the bushes, get another beer, and repeat as often as you can.
There were the usual bunch of lovingly created
vintage Harleys parked in the show field, crazy paint jobs, an almost authentic looking not-quite-a-’71 boat tail Superglide, Indians, BSAs, Triumphs, Sportsters in all phases of dereliction and wrenchification rumbling, farting and humming hither and thither, long beards, short beards, a swap meet (a "rolling" Sportster chassis with engine could have been yours for £1.400), dogs, kids, clothes, funny hats, the best cappuccino for miles around (come to think of it: the duke, who lives next door in Euston Hall might have an even better one from his kitchen), a half pipe, hot rods, vans, a chill out tent with forgotten movies playing on a large screen …
Once your eyelids get heavy, you crawl into
your sleeping bag, breathe in the sweet smell of the grassy field around you, and sleep serenely, until at 3 and a half in the morning someone needs to start his straight piped Panhead. This is when you realise that the beer you had all evening wants out again. Rats. The whole place is, as you now notice, snoring away madly, and the loo is a quarter mile into the darkness ...
The next day there were fun and games, riding the impossible plank, the sausage snapping contest, the pie eating contest and what not, with Andy having a great time badgering the competitors. Awards were given away for the bikes in the bike show, there were more burgers to be eaten, a loose handlebar master cylinder wanted torquing down and before we knew it, the Old Shovel was shovelling on again, homeward bound, almost dodging the last downpour in Dover.
Anna and Andy, see you next year!