Italian Bike Meet - Cassington 2014

Cassington is a small neat village outside Oxford, and is famous (or infamous) for its huge bike meets based around the Red Lion pub on the village green, and yesterday, there was a sort of Italian bike day. The weather was certainly Italian and there was a decent turnout, boosted by the arrival en masse of members of the Ducati Monster owners club whose bikes made up 75% of the stuff there. I went with mate Huw on his Guzzi California, and by the time we left, there were more scooters and other stuff turning up.

There were some interesting other bikes like the Guzzi El Dorado with neat tyre-driven police siren that he activated on the way out, the lovely black Laverda RGS, Dorian's wonderful roundcase Ducati Sport 750, Lois's original Pantah 600, John W of Motonero's Guzzi bronze special, a nice unrestored Cimatti, a couple of Hailwood Reps, an MV Pullman, a lovely Ducati 888, a V7 Sport, couple of nice Morini v-twins and plenty others. 

I dumped my S3 against a tree in frustration at its continuing poor running (dropping down to one cylinder) and took solace in some comfort eating by wolfing down two sausages in buns slathered in mustard and a big glass of cold Coke.

Here are some photos taken on my phone - apologies they're crap, still haven't worked it out yet, and I wasn't in a 'creative' mood, having to face the ride home on one cylinder - thanks Huw for your support!

Just a few photos from Sunday's Italian Day at the Ace

Italian Day at the Ace Cafe on Sunday was pretty good, weather was perfect and there was a good range of bikes as usual, though I suspect the fact it was a long bank holiday weekend meant it was slightly quieter than it might have been. Good to chat to friends and new people too, and we sold a fair amount of mags.

Phil Read was doing his thing selling merch and revving up what looked like some kind of Paton, though our mate Roger's Gilera 125 cafe' racer (see pic below) that runs on a daylight MOT rivalled it for sound, that's for sure - an d that was after riding it on a 100 mile round trip to be at the Ace too. Well done! I didn't get to take many photos as I was manning the mag stand alone, you'll probably find more online. It's always interesting to see the Italian Motorcycles Owners Club stall turn up year on year, but can anyone find a website for them? Let me know if you know.

Mark and his team at the Ace Cafe' always look after everyone really well so credit goes to them as usual for putting on another excellent day.