Skip to main content

Sinterklaastreffen 2019

The last ever St Nicks Rally to be held.  


St Nick and his Piets

I have lost count how many I have been to since my very first back in 1985.  Then we went on my MZ250ETZ. Two-up  with a cheap plastic top box with our things in.  

Back then we went practically every year and stayed in the the Hotel Polaris.

That became quite the annual event until one year the Polaris wasn't available to book and it had closed down.  

We gave the weekend trips another year but it wasn't the same and gradually the "tradition" was over. 

We revived it some years later and began going for the day and joining the run to meet St Nick at the quay, where he came in by fishing boat along with his Piets.

Eventually we started going for the ride and later to watch the ride out with St Nick.  It seemed it was getting smaller each year. 

One year I went and couldn't find the meeting place and the city was devoid of the usual throng of bikers enjoying lunch in restaurants and bars before the ride. I was Billy No-Mates that year.

So in 2019 it will be the last year the club will run the event.  They say that with dwindling support and club membership, plus changes to the way events can be run, and adding in ecological rules that ban camping in the velodrome, it is simply too difficult to continue.

This year may be the perfect opportunity for the Nikon D50 to come with me to get some photos of the last ever St Nicks.

I have already decided to go and have made an event on the Meldrews FB page.  

As long as it doesn't snow or have the Arctic temperatures like last year, I will be there.  In fact, I have already bought my £20 saver ticket with P&O.

Billy No-Mates or?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

New Battery?

The weekend showed how weak the battery has become.  Having had to use the dbPower unit on four separate occasions during the day in Belgium was the giveaway. We are in the second winter of this problem where the battery isn't strong enough to start the bike. In the summer it charges and holds that charge and although I keep the dbPower unit to hand I rarely have to use it.  But in winter it barely has the power to turn the engine over. It's simply "clunk". The lights come on though and that probably doesn't help. So what to do? Being a fair weather biker nowadays I won't be using the bike that often until the new year. Do I get a new battery sooner rather than later? It might end up freezing away in the garage. I have a garage in a block away from the house with no power, so a trickle charger is no use either. I have been looking at a replacement though.  A  Motobatt  with a high cranking power should be around £75. So unlikel...

Czech Invader Rally 2022?

Looking to next year for what maybe a jolly-boys trip to the Czech Invader Rally or what might end up a Billy No-Mates trip. I have been to five previous Czech Invaders but only once when I rode there completely alone. I did that in 1992 on my DR800SL. It's not something I would do again. Not in one hit. When I arrived I could hardly get off the bike I was so stiff for sitting in one place for hour upon hour. Those were all held at the same "rally-inn" in  Chudčice  near Brno. The last one I did was way back in 2004 with Claire as pillion. The BMW GS wasn't well received - not being a Suzuki! BMW at Rally. There is no way I'll be on the Kettle. At 37mpg it will cost a kidney to ride the 1700 mile round trip. So Pepé will need to be the bike of choice. If only I had cruise control as well to help with the saving of fuel. If I am to go over as a solo traveller I will stay in Youth Hostels. After all I will be an old age pensioner by then. We did that way back in 199...