Numball Rally 2009

Last week myself, Zac, Dan (from Full Throttle) and Paul (Christian Motorcycle Association) drove down to Lands End towing behind us a trailer carrying three Honda Zoomer mopeds.

Lands End doesn't look that far on the map, but when you're sitting in a car hour upon hour you begin to realise the stupidity of riding a moped from Lands End back to Dover. After several hours of driving Zac and I began to think "boy every mile we travel is going to feel like three miles on the return journey"... but eventually, we did get there and after an overnight stop we were there unloading the bikes and getting ready to set out on a 400 mile slow ride all the way back to Dover....

There were three of us riding, Dan who runs the motorcycle youth project "Full Throttle", Zac who is only 17 and has been through Dan’s youth project and myself. Paul was driving the support vehicle.

As we left Lands End on these little bikes I spent the first hour thinking how strange the bike felt (I guess getting off a 1000cc super sports bike (Yamaha R1) onto a 50cc scooter is bound to feel strange) and wondering what an earth I was doing, the distance ahead of us felt in a strange way quite intimidating... but after a while I settled into it... we were riding around 2 hours then a short break, then another 2 hours and lunch etc...

Cornwall and Devon have some great B-roads, that were windy enough for you not to feel too slow on a moped. We tried to stick to B-roads or minor A-roads. There were times when we had massive queues of cars behind us, but actually not that many over took us, they just followed along behind. There were three cases of obvious road rage, but nothing more than a few choice hand signals which we just ignored and carried on plodding away...

The route took across two car (chain) ferries which were a very welcome break, across Dartmoor which I really enjoyed riding across, through the New Forest and mostly following the coast road back to Dover where we had a small party waiting for us with a banner glow sticks, etc.. it was very welcoming to see them all there...

We had an overnight stop, but on the whole (including breaks) it took us 21 hours and 15 minutes to cover the 420 miles, which means we averaged 19.7mph.
The bikes worked great, no mechanical issues, typical Honda reliability. You could just about squeeze 40mph downhill out of them and dropped to a rather pedestrian 15mph up some of the hills. And all this... 420miles... for £15 worth of fuel... (unfortunately the support car was £80 worth of fuel).

I would have imagined that this trip was going to be very boring and dull, but actually I enjoyed every moment of it, when I got off the bike at the end of the first day near Weymouth, I just wanted to get back on and continue the journey, and in the morning I couldn't wait to get going again. When we got to Dover at the end of Day 2 I felt the same - we all did... Maybe we're just a little odd, as riding a bike at an average of 20mph for more than 20 hours isn't everyone's 'cup of tea' but I would recommend it... and if you want to try it... well...

This 400 mile run from Lands End to Dover was a test run as we're planning the Numball Rally 2010, which will be a 1400 mile tour of Britain, where we will visit England, Scotland and Wales on these little bikes with no support vehicle...

This will be a fund raising event, raising money for the Motorcycle Full Throttle youth project. I'll post more info on the Numball Rally 2010 as and when its available.

More information about Full Throttle can be found here
http://www.fullthrottleuk.co.uk/kyb.html