Rat Run 10 – August 12 and 13, 2022
The Yorkshire Templars and Featherstone Spartans SCs celebrated their 10th anniversary Rat Run rally in style.
This year’s chosen charity was the Rob Burrows Centre for Motor Neurone Disease and the event was held at the Featherstone Lions rugby ground, which was Rob’s boyhood club and where he started his rugby league career.
Eager rallygoers started to arrive on Friday morning and over the course of the weekend they were treated to warm weather, unbroken sunshine and fun.
The afternoon’s live entertainment started outside the clubhouse.
Billy Woodhouse performed an acoustic set of scooter tunes while scooter pals enjoyed the atmosphere, caught up with each other and exchanged stories over a pint or two on the terrace.
Friday night’s headline band were Mixtape who delivered a wide variety of rally tracks. During the performance the fun and frolics were notched up a couple of clicks when DJ and rally crew member Glenn Walton launched a dozen beach balls into the crowd.
By Saturday late morning the campsite was almost full and the lunchtime rideout attracted more than 50 riders who were treated to a route which took them through surrounding local villages and beautiful countryside courtesy of tour guide Andrew ‘Ebbsey’ Rounding.
In the meantime, Eddie Soulfinger got the audience on their feet, while the traders were busy at their stands serving bargainhunting rallygoers.
The custom show saw an interesting line-up of scooters. Best Lambretta went to Dave Hamilton’s amazing Bruce Lee cutdown and Best Vespa went to Tim Lovell’s Mohammed Ali themed scooter.
After the custom show results had been delivered the rally raffle became an event in itself. Once again Glenn Walton found himself in the limelight when a lady from the crowd stepped up and took the mic off him. She’d decided that he wasn’t making himself heard and promptly took over, calling the winning ticket numbers herself!
As the sun began to set, the evening’s main act, the Soul Bouncers, started their sound-checks. Some rallygoers remained on the terrace while others decided to retire to the main campsite, freshen up, and return to watch an energetic performance of TwoTone and Ska music.
The rally attracted around 1500 visitors and £500 was raised for The Rob Burrows Centre. Donations were also given in support of Jack Kirmond, Geoff Saddler and Anthony ‘Tones Bones’ Lewis who all had connections to local scooter clubs and recently lost their lives.
Plans are already in place for next year’s event, which promises to be another great weekend full of scooters, fun and frolics.
Words and photos: Stu Smith