Had to leave the 900 in the garage because it wouldn't quite have fitted in with the Bristol Italian Auto Moto Festival. Clambered onto the Duke 900SS in the frost of Saturday morning and, offering a prayer to the patron saint of starter motors, thumbed the button. I was rewarded with both cylinders firing, this is not necessarily a guaranteed happening. Rumbled down the M5 with the speedo reading anything from 60 to 100, although the rev counter remained at a constant 4.5k . You have to love Italian instrumentation it's always so surprising. Met up with circa 300 other riders of Italian bikes at Gordano and poured a coffee over my hands to warm up. There was a surfeit of Ducatis, but also plenty of MVs, Benellis, Guzzis, Laverdas, Aprilias and even the odd Morini.
At 9.30 prompt, we headed into Bristol to terrorise the citizens. I made a short video if us leaving the car park. Be very afraid, a mass breakdown at this point could seal off the South West.
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=TDbJaQYpsCo
We parked up in the side streets close to the indoor market and also present was a wide range of Italian four wheel exotica. The citizens refused to be terrorised by our menacing presence but clearly had a ball as the buckets for the Air Ambulance and Help for Heroes were getting heavier by the minute. One of the highpoints each year is the hourly "start your engines" command. This is not, as one might think, so that the public could listen to the scream and fury of massed bike and car engines, but is in fact, to check that they can still actually start. Some naughty Lamborghini owners appeared to have no meaningful silencing so we were forced to listen to the shriek of 6.6 litres of 16 cylinder pasta power, very very bad (apparently).
I rode home over the Cotswolds, Cirencester (home to the £4.00 medium traditional pasty, Cornish piracy at its worst), Stow, Evesham and back to Bromsgrove, as they say, tired but happy.
