Gabbadon

The Gabbadon Rally was organised by Shaw and District MCC and the one I did was at The Brown Cow (now closed) on the A6025 (now the B6114) Elland to Buckstones road, near to the Scammonden Bridge over the M62.

Bridge over the M62

The Brown Cow was up on the hillside above Scammonden Dam, quite a windy spot with views to die for but very exposed. I arrived Friday night after work and, being September, had to get the tent up quickly and get organised before it got dark. I found a reasonably sheltered spot then went to check the pub out.

Windy weather

There was a separate disco in the building next to the pub but I settled in and sat at the pub bar and spent the evening talking to the landlord. He was a New Zealander or an Aussie, I can't remember which now, but we put the world to rights. I didn't actually know many at the rally, my friends from the Dean Valley and West Vale clubs were not coming until Saturday. Anyway, the noise in the rally part of the pub was not conducive to talking.

This was a local rally for me and I had arranged to meet up with some friends to do some trail riding on the Saturday. This was a good area for some off-road fun, and there is still an off-road track on the hillside across from there.

So, home to clean the mud off both me and the bike then back to the rally to get some food and carry on where we left off last night. Well, how wrong can you be? We went into the pub and my Aussie landlord friend refused to serve us! He said that we had our own bar next door and that we had to go there. Despite explaining that we wanted to talk and not get deafened, he wouldn't change his mind. As we say in Yorkshire There's nowt as queer as folk. We went and got served in the bikers' bar then took our drinks back into the fairly full pub and sat and talked to some of his locals. The landlord either never noticed us or didn't fancy trying to throw us out. The locals found it most amusing that we had to walk to the other bar to get served but despite his attitude we had a good night.

Richard's Grot award

On Sunday Richard Hirst from the Dean Valley was not too pleased to get the Grot Bike award with his pride and joy, a well-used Triumph Bonneville. No club or long distance awards for us at this one but at least we had no worries about a long ride home, only about 20 miles or so on back roads.

I never went back to the Brown Cow.

- Ted Trett