Mallyshagg Rally

29th April - IOW Italian Motorcycle Owners Club

It takes a variable time to get to the rally site, but this is not due to any mechanical troubles. It is mostly due to the wait to get on the Isle of Wight Ferry. The site is on the southern side on the island just off Military Road.

As usual, the rally was held over the May Day Bank Holiday weekend and, as we had four days there, Friday night was just a "relax after the week's work" type of affair, with many people not expected until the next day.

Saturday, then, was an ideal chance to wander around the island. My club, as many people there, went to see the Blackgang Chine amusement park, which was, as it had been since it was opened, disappearing into the sea due to erosion. There were a few points where paths ended abruptly at the edge of a drop over the beach.

We managed to squeeze into structures which were intended for children and generally had fun mucking about in castles, wild west towns and the like. Subequent visits found the park constantly re-arranging stuff and moving further inland in an effort to keep ahead of the problem.

Not a great deal happened that night. Or, at least, not much that caught my camera's lens.

Sunday we had another day out, mainly looking at birds and a model village containing models of many locations on the island, including one of the town it was in, so it had a model of itself that, with a smaller model inside that one. It was quite funny, looking at a model of the local church with the actual church overlooking it.

Pausing only to buy a vat or two of the local mead and rebuild one club member's Ducati, we made our way back to the site.

The evening was quite fun, with no official wet t-shirt/miss rally contest, one of the organisers decided to expose herself for the camera, causing my girlfriend to do the same. And the boogying continued.

Packing up, then, was on Monday. Never could get the hang of Bank Holiday rallies. Weather was, perhaps, not as good as it had been for the festivities, but still fairly nice. Becky, when she wasn't pretending to be a tent pole, seemed to have enjoyed herself on what turned out to be our last rally together. It was a swift ride home, with only a minor delay at the ferry terminal.

- Phil (the Spill) Drackley