Eight minutes and 27 seconds after going to sleep, I am awake again, in a pile, at the bottom of the tent. My policy of not building a flat sleeping area is a serious mistake. I shuffle myself and the sleeping bag back up the slope and onto the mat that is patiently waiting for me. And slide down again. Bugger. A couple more failures and I curl up at the bottom of the tent and doze off there.

This sorry scenario is repeated several times through the night, but fortunately substantial quantities of German wine and beer are a wonderful aid to sleep ;-)

I wake feeling cold and notice that there's light outside. A check of the thermometer reveals that its just below 0 degrees Celsius in my tent and a check of my watch shows that its early. I get up, very quickly get into my clothes and go outside to see what's what. Unknowingly, I have parked my tent facing due east and am confronted with an absolutely beautiful dawn. The early morning light over the mist in the valleys in front of me is a lovely sight. Ain't this nature stuff excellent?

Over the next couple of hours we all rise and consume coffee or tea. Graham gets his cooker and frying pan out and we have German sausage with heavy German bread for breakfast - excellent. Graham's cold is obviously worse as he looks like hell but he bravely soldiers on. A brief set of discussions lead us all to favour a walk. First we head down to the bottom of the valley again to peruse the stalls. The small pool of water at the bottom of the road is now absolutely massive and the Germans are riding through it as fast as possible to see how large a splash they can cause. We arrive just in time to see two blokes going through in opposite directions, splashing each other thoroughly and laughing like it was going out of fashion! After this, the stalls somehow seem small potatoes so after getting the obligatory badges etc, we wander back up the side of the hill, by a different route. There are more bikes to be seen; including a 1928 Mars combination on which the clutch looked like it was being changed. Incredible. There was also an MZ tradesman's sidecar (essentially a large box on the sidecar chassis). Very practical but all the aero-dynamics of a brick.

Last night we saw a tent with an English flag on it. Today we resolve to visit but there's no one home. Just over a rise near this tent, however, is another field full of tents and bikes and mud. We tramp off for a look-see. The most astonishing machine by a long way is a Zundapp combination towing an artillery field gun. Later we saw the owner merrily riding out of the site, so it got there under its own steam. As we walk up to the top of the field we see a rather attractive lady shrug out of her trousers in plain view. Jethro comes all over a quiver until our attention is distracted by the Guzzi rider racing trough the mud, which is deep enough to rip part of the bike off! At the top there is a bar, some shelter and a place selling the splendid 'curry-wurst' that is a must for all to try, as well as an exit to the road. This is obviously the best place to camp. As the sun is now well up and it is in fact half past noon, we all have a beer whilst enjoying the 15+ degrees warmth (in the sun) and the splendid view. I'll bet there are people who have been to this rally for years and who haven't seen that view, as it's usually shut off by the falling snow.

A few more beers and Simon and I decide to use his mobile phone and my Psion to send a few e-mails home to let folks know how we're doing. Being already mildly intoxicated, this takes a while to set up but eventually works. One goes to the Thumper Club, one to Ixion and one to my partner to let her know I'm ok. Technology, innit cool?

We walk up to the village again and while the others head off to the shop and the bar, I wait at the crossroads for The Latecomers - Joe, marvin and Rob with his partner Alex. I use this time to generally rest and catch up on this journal while also enjoying the sun! About an hour after I sat down, I look up to see marvin's bike approaching. A quick holler and I'm shaking hands with Latecomer #1. Rob and Alex are just behind with Joe. I jump on the back of the marvin-mobile and we trundle down the road to park up the bikes. I am shocked to see how many gaps there are in what was a solid wall of bikes yesterday (and when we walked up an hour ago, for that matter). We find somewhere to park their bikes that's a lot closer than where our machines are. This turns out to be a good thing when we discover that Rob has brought every possession he has crammed into one tremendously heavy Givi top box! To carry it any great distance, Alex and I have to carry it between us and even then its difficult.

They get set up and while they're doing that Simon and Graham arrive back at the tents. While the Latecomers set up their accommodation, Graham bungs the cooker back on and I break out 3 tins of Heinz's Most Wonderful 'All Day Breakfast' - a splendid hot meal for Simon, Graham and I which will also form a fine base for the beer and wine to be consumed later. We also start chatting to a German chap called Robert, who is here with his friends. He has a proper fire surrounded (at a safe distance) with straw bales to sit on. We take up his offer of comfort, warmth and convivial conversation. We also watch, fascinated, as one of his friends collapses in an utterly comatose pose (on his back, arms flung wide, head lolling) over one straw bale. He's like this before dark and when we return to the fire much much later, he still hasn't moved. Impressive!

Robert joins the us (marvin, Alex, Rob, myself, Graham and Simon) as we go to the bar by the entrance and start some serious drinking and chatting. Viv, Julian and Jethro soon arrive. We also meet up with 'Twiggy' an, er, substantial Brummie bloke we previously met at a service station when his outfit wouldn't start (Thursday). It turns out it was his tent with the English flag and that they'd arrived Thursday night.

We went to the bottom of the valley for a while. The bar by the entrance is actually outside the site and we were prevented to re-entering the site while a ceremony was held in honour of all those that had died motorcycling during the past year. The names of all those known to the people there were read out. I wish I'd known of this in advance as I'd have added Jeff's name to the list. Nevertheless, it was thoughtful and moving. After the service, we walked down to the stalls and bar and resumed our drinking.

At this point the evening descended into an alcoholic haze. I remember coming back up to the bar at the top of the site to find marvin. I also remember Viv coming rushing into this bar squealing "Simon kicked someone's lights out!" Initial thoughts of ultra-violence from this mild manner net engineer were moderated slightly but this is what (if I recall correctly) happened: a drunken rider bashed him with his bike while they were down at the bottom of the valley. Simon got really angry and shouted "I am static, you are dynamic!" at this madly drunken German, whilst giving the bike's rear light cluster a good kicking. That'll teach him to mess with a Welshman while he's drinking :-D

When we all finally got back to the tents, we found that we were a lot happier drinking from bottles whilst sitting on straw bales round Robert's camp fire. He and his mates were very good company. The only fly in the ointment was coming under a brief artillery bombardment from someone on the other side of the valley who was attempting to fire a dozen or so rockets into the air but was getting the 'up' thing confused with the 'across' thing.

When we finally went to turn in, we found that Jethro's rather nice Coleman tent had been hit by the artillery and now was sporting some rather nasty looking holes in the fly sheet! He was bloody lucky it hadn't totally gone up in flames but spending a while drinking spiced cider with a consoling Austrian (who just sort of wandered by) helped with lashings of his Sir Rowley Birkin QC impressions ("I was very, very drunk") allow him to cope well with this unpleasant birthday present.

By around 2 am we've all staggered off to our beds after a very pleasurable day and evening. Exactly, as far as I can tell, what a rally should be like.

end of day 5

 

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