Shakespeare Rally

1st weekend of January 1979

It snowed during the Friday night so water of a sort was to be had.

- Heather

I had broken my leg badly in the summer of 1978 so had very little to do with the organisation of this, the first of the 'play' rallies held by the Shakespeare club. I was staying with my father in Trowbridge so Paul came down to pick me up in the Steib sidecar he had on one of his BMWs (probably the old white R51/3).

It was a weekend that saw a petrol crisis and not many petrol stations were open for some reason. I believe there was another rally in the Glocester area - maybe a Cossack or a Sprocket rally that same weekend. Anyway we arrived at the field to find:

  1. no water laid on
  2. no toilets
  3. no entrance big enough for sidecars to enter the field
  4. no control tent

Well it snowed during the Friday night so water of a sort was to be had. Hedges about provided rudimentary toilets as always and by trying another gate and crossing another field sidecars could get to the site.

It was not very well organised. We had the first of the series of badges which I had designed to complement the plays featured. We only had 60 people turn up and the village of Blockley and the Crown Inn were friendly.

There was only one person who attended all 36 of the Shakespeare rallies apart from me, Paul and Malc. This was John Sewell from Southampton way.

- Heather MacGregor


Start of quotation I received a call yesterday from one of the original Shakespeare MCC members. A few of them met up at the weekend & took a look at the LPMCC website rally reports & badges.

He says that the rally did have a control tent. He is sure of this because the club borrowed the tent off him. He had to work so did not arrive at the rally until Friday evening. But after that spent most of the rally manning the tent.

He confirmed that the rally field could not be accessed by sidecars until the Saturday. Before the rally some of the club members had built a bridge to get on the field but it was not wide enough for outfits. End of quotation

- Dave Cooper