REVIEW - DRAGON RAID 2005
The first national event of the year the Dragon Raid will be remembered for years to come as ‘the one with the sunshine’. The event this year coincided with the only sunny day in Wales in spring!
The first national event of the year the Dragon Raid will be remembered for years to come as ‘the one with the sunshine’. The event this year coincided with the only sunny day in Wales in spring! Good weather was just the icing on the cake, and along with excellent routes, great company, a superb medieval banquet and strong R.A.T. Pack support helped make the event an overwhelming success.
The routes were written and put together by Richard Stillwell, Pack Leader from the Wylie & Holland Pack. Richard has now taken responsibility of writing the routes for the last two years, and you would think by now he would have used up all the best roads, but once again he pulled excellent routes out of the bag. Ann Rutherford and Rob Masters in full dress, took over the responsibility of presiding over the occasion, and they enjoyed the entertainment sat on thrones looking down on all the peasants. Lashings of red wine and mead washed down the sumptuous four course meal consumed only with the aid of a steak knife!
Pack support at this event was at an all-time high, with one of the best turnouts from the Exeter Bridge pack, who got into the spirit of the weekend with dressing up for the medieval Banquet. Packs from Bill Smiths, Woods, Wylie and Holland, BS Bikes and Windy Corner were also very much in attendance.
During Raids, there are usually stories that surface regarding members experiences and this year was no exception! Shortly after leaving Saturday’s lunch stop, Raid regular Tony Osborne suffered a snapped throttle cable on his well-travelled Trophy. At this point most of us would have admitted defeat and called one of the breakdown services. Not Tony, after adjusting his Trophy’s tick over to make it rev more, he limped his bike back to the lunch stop. Here he managed to fit a spare cable in the car park with only basic tools. To put this in perspective fitting a new throttle cable to a Trophy is an hour and a half job in a fully fitted Triumph workshop.
We have spent the last two R.A.T. Dragon Raids at Ruthin castle, and both have been a huge success. Reluctantly we have decided to move next years Dragon Raid and next year we hope to move to the beautiful scenery of Pembrokeshire in south Wales. More details on location and dates will follow at the end of the year.