Last weekend saw our tour season draw to a close.

As is often our way, we chose to centre our tour at one of our favourite hotels between the Yorkshire Dales and Lake District. We were pleasantly surprised with the amount of bookings, but it was great to see so many new faces amongst many of our regulars.

With a dry if rather dull weekend forecast, we had a choice of destinations, but decided to use the first day to do our Lakes tour. Avoiding running down the hordes of oriental visitors we passed through Bowness and along Lake Windemere to Grasmere. The cloud was low and obscured the mountain tops but did nothing to detract from the scenery, if anything making it more atmospheric. Having got over the shock of having to pay 20p for a P, we continued on our way with the cloud eventually lifting to show the countryside at its best.  Leaving the Lakes behind we had a run up to Alston via Hartshead café, introducing some of the great roads we have, to the riders that have not had the opportunity to ride them before.   The group returned weary but smiling in time for a few beers and our evening meal.

The Yorkshire Dales were our destination for the Sunday, again a mixture of narrow scenic roads and the faster ‘bike friendly’ ones. All was well until leaving Hawes when Graham acting as tail-end Charlie broke down, (new GSA – what can I say!) fortunately he fixed the fault (side stand switch) and we re-grouped only to find he had picked up a nail in his back tyre.  Confined to the ‘naughty step’ he returned to the hotel and Charlie was promoted to tail-end Charlie (well he has the right name).  Unfortunately his promotion did not last long as a misunderstanding led to one of the markers moving and we lost him!!  Undaunted, but now out of orange tabards, we continued our tour through the Forest of Bowland with Richard resplendent on his new Aprilia Capanord  (rather like it) going to the back and threatening  dire consequences for anyone going wrong !

But you just know when it is going to be one of those days, and our way was soon blocked by an accident making us re-direct via Lancaster. Now why the whole of the North West of England were trying to get through there I do not know, but the traffic jam was horrendous and we crawled through there, emerging with great relief back to civilisation and a welcome beer. So an eventful weekend, but very enjoyable. Lots of laughs, great riding and a fitting end to the year.

We are presently working on the 2015 schedule but it is going to be a little while before it is complete, However, I know many of you have to book your holidays well in advance, so although not complete, If there is a tour that your are particularly interested in, please contact us and we will advise you if it is on our itinerary and the actual dates.