Posted by So a friend messaged in the week and said that there was a breakfast car meet at The Dukes pub in Leighton Buzzard on Saturday if we fancied popping along. You could have unlimited tea and coffee if you had a breakfast – well with an offer like that, who could refuse!
The sun was kind of there somewhere in the clouds if you looked really hard. The forecast was sunny spells – we’ll see!
We arrived at the pub mid morning and there were a handful of cars in the car park and a few chaps standing with mugs of tea looking at the cars.
We chatted for a bit before heading inside to get breakfast and some of the bottomless coffee.
The breakfast was amazing and would, I believed at that time, keep me going until dinner.
We had a chat with some of the guys and a look round the cars before heading off to Stagsden to check out Boyds of Bedford. We hadn’t been to Stagsden before and only sort of knew where it was and so thought we’d wing it and try and find our way without sat nav. Surely it can’t be that hard to find!
We ended up stopping twice to look at the map on our phone – well the other half looked at the map, I just nodded in agreement like I knew what he was talking about – I find this generally works well in situations like this, smile and nod like you actually want to know in detail when and how we went wrong and where and how we need to go in order to get to where we want to be. On both occasions we had to turn around. I said nothing.
Having arrived at Boyds of Bedford we parked up the bikes and had a look at the bikes and a rather nice old classic car that were in the car park before venturing inside.
It was lovely and warm inside and I headed over to get a coffee. Well the breakfast that I thought would keep me going all day would probably have done so had I not seen the cakes on offer – my downfall! I had to try the salted caramel cake as I thought it would have been very rude of me not to especially as it was sitting there calling me. Mmmm, mmmm, absolutely delicious. It was one of those occasions where I wish I hadn’t had the breakfast just so I could have more cake. Next time …..
Sitting proudly on display and looking beautiful was an absolutely gorgeous bike that was made as a promotional bike for a clothing company called Two Gun Salute by Jamie Smith of Smith & Son in Cambridge. It really was a work of art and one that I could quite easily have taken home with me. It turns out that this bike has been featured in Built magazine (a copy of which was conveniently to hand) and so I wrote down what it is as there is no way I would know myself.
So for those of you that like the technical stuff, here goes: it is a brat-style Yamaha single 1992 SR400 Yamaha imported from Japan; it took 13 weeks to build; the brat style rear hoop has been lowered by 3 inches and the forks are lowered by a similar amount; the shocks are Harley slammers – 10 inch long, the yokes are stock too but cut down. See, I would never have known that.
Also sitting up on display was a classic Honda. Unfortunately I do not know anything about the technical side of this as there was no information conveniently to hand written down for me but I can tell you that it looks awesome. I am sure that there are a few of you out there that will be able to give me the low down on exactly what it is.
Unfortunately it was beginning to be a toss up as to which bike I would take home with me. Oh, to actually be in the position to have to make that decision!
When we went back to the car park there were some new bikes that had arrived during our visit and so on leaving we had a look around theseones before heading off.
We headed for home and found ourselves going through Woburn (I am not sure if we were actually supposed to go this way but I have learnt it is best not to ask) but we came across Woburn Triumph and so stopped to have a little look round.
They are undergoing some refurb work at the moment but there were still quite a few bikes on display for us to drool over and more fantasy decision making dilemmas over which bike(s) we would take home.
Looking forward to going back there again soon to check out the new look showroom.
We had a great day riding here, there and everywhere eating cake and drinking coffee – perfect!
BK