A quick flashback to March 2020, and I’m back from the Modrapheniacs rally at Sandford and planning my rally year… Well that certainly didn’t go according to plan did it? My headline then was ‘Modrapheniacs rally kickstarts 2020‘ little did we known that it would be the first and probably last ‘normal’ UK rally of the year.
Fast forward to July 2020 and the hell that has been COVID-19. The lockdown that has gone with it is slowly starting to ease, not finish, but ease. Families can meet up again, and now friends can meet up too. So I look at what remains of the calendar and try to decide what’s going to happen next, but without a crystal ball I’m as much in the dark as everybody else.
Pick a date, any date
Over the weeks and months since March I’ve watched one rally after another fall off the calendar. Among the COVID casualties, I noticed the Modrapheniacs Jo Loving charity weekender had also been cancelled. It’s the first time that it’s not happened since it was first started, oh well I guess another one bites the dust.
Then towards the end of June, I see an ‘absent friends’ rideout is being organised instead, in memory of Jo Loving and Tony Wood. I’m tempted, but after the lockdown, I have to ask should I go? Well, I decide as long as we’re all being sensible and are socially distancing the answer is yes.
Flying ant day
So come the Sunday morning, two of us set off from Pompey up to Totton to meet up with the Modrapheniacs and several other clubs for the rest of the ride down to Hythe (the one in The New Forest, not Kent), over 80 scooters come into Totton, but they’re not alone – as today is National Flying Ant Day, and there’s thousands of them that just seem to come from nowhere, and suddenly I’m not looking forward to cleaning them all off my visor!
Fortunately, 2-stroke seems to act like citronella candles and by the time we set off the flying ants have all but disappeared. It’s a nice trouble-free ride down to Hythe (if you don’t count the Fiat 500 that charged out of a slip road in front of me and then had to brake hard because of the scoots in front, but hey, that’s just a normal day’s riding).
They say the sun shines on the righteous, and it certainly has this time! The weather’s lovely, just right for a trip down to a picturesque New Forest village, the first time I’ve been there, but I’m certainly planning on going back again. It’s even got an ancient pier that has an equally ancient train running down to the end, it’s just so, quaint!
Elbow bumping all round
When we arrive, it’s greetings from people we haven’t seen in months, though without the usual hugs and handshakes, it’s strange but necessary. And although we’re all talking to each other, everyone keeps their distance and sticks to their own social bubbles, again it feels a little strange, but these are strange times, times that we have to adapt to, certainly for the foreseeable future if we want to have anything left of our scootering lifestyle (sermon over!).
All in all it was a great day out and considering the issues we have at the moment very well handled.
Am I glad I went? Hell yeah, it’s great to be back out on the scooter!
Words and photos
Booga
Booga’s Rallery
