Temperance Rally

Sober Motorcycle Tour Club

This was Sober Motorcycle Tour Club's summer rally. They had the Too Drunk to Remember as their winter rally.

Big Bill Jones and Roger, the Belly, Faulkener's rally was held at the Bradford Arms on the junction of the A5 and the A449 not far from Cannock.

                   

- Ted

I did this rally about half a dozen times, so I can't remember what happened at which year's rally. The Bradford Arms is a large pub with an equally large beer garden. We were camped next to the pub.

They did, and still do, excellent food and never objected to the sometimes very late sessions that went on in their beer garden after they had closed.

One year the Micro Car Club were holding a rally just down the road at Weston Park, and on Saturday afternoon a replica Isetta bubblecar called into the pub to see why all the bikes were there. I am not sure exactly what he had in it, but it was a big Japanese bike engine and when he left he laid a strip of rubber down the A5 as far as we could see!

Another year we spotted that Derek Faulkener's CBR600 Jellymold was parked suspiciously close to his tent, not quite hiding the damage to his fairing he had acquired on the way there. This was only a week or so after having replaced it all after his last mishap.

The only other thing I remember about the rally is that we were there on the day Lady Di died in 1997.

- Ted Trett