Trips Stoney Cross

By Dave Tooley

One of the club runs we would attempt on a Sunday would be a ride out to Stoney Cross in the  New Forest.  A meeting place in Fareham would be allocated, quite often Fareham Market car park or Railway Station, and early Sunday morning would see a motley collection of bikes assembled there ready for the off.

However, scooters being what they were (extremely unreliable) there would always be someone with ‘issues’ before we even departed. At least one bike would have an oiled up plug and a crowd would be desperately pushing it up and down to get it started.  This never gave us any confidence that the trip would be completed without incident.  Sure enough, very few miles would be covered before someone (sometimes several) would be broken down by the side of the road.  Sometimes those of us with a conscience would return to help with the repair, whilst others who didn’t give a damn about anyone except themselves just carried on.  It was quite normal to see 20 bikes set off, and only 5 actually make it to the final destination.  I was personally grateful to the guys with a conscience on one particular trip, since I was unlucky enough to have a crankshaft snap on me whilst tearing up and down the old runway in the New forest.  What a nightmare of a ride that was coming back home, being towed all that way behind another bike at speeds up to 70mph.

Not something I would recommend to the faint hearted, especially when the tow rope gets caught up under your front wheel as the lead bike accelerates away 

CRUNCH!!!  Ouch.  That didn’t improve either of our bikes good looks, or the guy towing me his good humour.  Taught me a lot about speed synchronisation though.

I’m not sure if being towed on a bike was even legal, but needs must.

There was a particular café out by Stoney Cross where we would all congregate for lunch.  Well, Café???  From what I can remember all they sold was tea and biscuits, but we made the best of it.  I believe that building is still there, but it has been abandoned for decades.

 Note From Marten. About the Café As I recall it was run by two old ladies, who I think were quite shocked by the sudden influx of customers, and young men with scooters must have really shaken them up. But on the whole we were a very pleasent bunch of fellas and no trouble. Incidentally we were banned from the pub across the road, they didn't like the look of us, their loss.