Yer Tiz
Devon MAG held its first Yer Tiz Rally on the best weekend of the year – in October! Report by Richard Long
Above: strange fruit indeed, a Harley-Davidson side valve in a Norton Featherbed frame, lookout for a feature in The ROAD soon. The sunshine brings out the MAG membership joining instinct in riders of distinction. Jane, a member ten years ago, returns to the fold with no coercion whatsoever
“I have a dream ... to fill North Tawton with bikes for the weekend. Well that was six years ago, but the dream came true this year!”
Clive and Jenny Cook had started the South Devon MAG group with Richard Long, John Groves had started Mid Devon MAG and North Devon MAG was being re-formed so this seemed an opportune time to broach the subject of starting a rally in Devon.
The first rally meeting was held in April 2011, so we had only six months to get it together, which was a bit daunting as I had never organised anything like this before. However there was helpful advice from the GWR and End of the Road crowd and with a core of about ten dedicated marshals what could go wrong? Well, not a lot did really except both bands cancelled at the eleventh hour!
Friday of the rally came, there was glorious sunshine outside and I was getting texts saying there were already people on site at 10am. Arriving from work I saw that some of the marshals had almost set up the old army marquee which was on loan from Cornwall MAG with the erection being overseen by Mike Baker (steady!) and a healthy trickle of bikers started arriving.
By early evening we had 210 people on site which 56 The ROAD
might not seem a lot but we had decided for a first rally we’d be happy with about 70 or more. What a surprise! About 250 people camped over the weekend. Everyone was enjoying the bands with Revolvin’ Door playing a good varied rock set on the Friday night and the bar was drunk dry. Saturday afternoon saw 150 bikes lined up for the show, the bar was open, a selection of stalls and traders were present. The barbecue was fired up, many raffle prizes donated by some local bike shops were won and the trophies that were made by Clive Cook and myself, were given out to the show winners.
The weather was unbelievable with 28 degrees on the Saturday which helped to make sure the bar ran out of beer again. On the Saturday night Blue Swayed Blues played a really good set of…..well, rockin’ blues and the bar was almost drunk dry again. A few folks were still stood around the bonfire on the Sunday morning and had been there all night. I heard some reports of people who turned up and were having such a good time they decided that they wanted to stay, so went to a nearby supermarket to buy a tent. Yet others were seen crashed out on the concrete next to their bikes in just a sleeping bag.
Overall, there was a great atmosphere, old friends were met and new friends were made. A really
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