OLD BUCKE NHAM BIKE NIGHT

OLD BUCKENHAM IN NORFOLK, THE VILLAGE IN WHICH THE OX & PLOUGH PUB WHERE THE OLD BUCKENHAM BIKE NIGHT'S HELD, HAS A SPECIAL PART IN MY BIKING HISTORY I.T WAS HERE A VERY, VERY LONG TIME AGO, I FIRST RODEA BIKE...

I wasn't that old, perhaps 11, and my uncle had a CSOHonda which he let me have a go on down their drive, and I enjoyed it so much that I didn't stop at the end, and headed out on to the road to ride round the village green. I had no helmet on, or anything like that, and it caused absolute panic as I zoomed (well, as much as you can zoom on a CSO, I s'pose) off, with people running frantically along behind me, yelling at the tops of their voices for me to stop. I can't remember if I heard them and deliberately ignored them, or didn't hear them (Isuspect the former), and they were almost apoplectic by the time

I got back, not giving a monkey's at the legality of what I'd done, grinning from ear to ear. A formative moment? You bet!

Dave at the Ox & Plough 's been running a bike night on Tuesdays throughout the summer for a few years now, and they've grown from just a few mates turning up to 850-plus bikes on a good night. It is, like most bike nights, not a particularly organised thing. There's a food wagon offering curry, sometimes a barbecue too doing burgers an' stuff, and The Flying Chef, as featured in BSH many years ago, with his Cossack sidecar -mounted hot dog wagon which is, Iadmit, one of my main reasons for going 'cos they are damn good. There's an outside bar, as well as the one in the pub itself, and even in these Covid-19 restriction days, queuing and serving's always orderly and easy-going . The bikes completely take over the green in front of the pub, and there's always a well-run crew of marshals to direct parking, and provide side-stand pucks, and a walk round the place can take a good hour plus to see everything. I've seen a fair few ex-magazine feature bikes there over the years, and there're always a goodly number of customs of all kinds, as well as classics, modems, the odd hot rod and rat rod, pick-ups, sports cars, etc ., all getting along just fine.

Just as with the majority of bike nights, as the evenings darken and the temperatures drop, the attendance drops, and folk forgo their Tuesday night pilgrimage, but they'll start again in the Spring and, even though the ride there is, for me, a boring 35 miles or so of dual-carriageway, I'll be one of them. See you there?

To get more info on the Ox & Plough's bike nights, go to their Facebook page or ring 01953 860970.