Friday and Saturday 2nd and 3rd November and I find myself back at Riders Edge, Builth Wells, Wales. I started coming here as a guinea pig for the newly announced Harley Davidson Riders Edge programme. I was the guest of HD and Riders Edge on their shake down day for the newly developed courses, must have been back in September 1999 and I've been back three times to take their two day advanced course, first time gaining a Silver Award and the last two their highest accolade of a Gold. But this time it's very different on a Ulysses Trek.

I'm not too old to take advice and Jen suggested I take Thursday off work to have a gentle ride down to Landrindod Wells, and guess what she was right. It was a bit wet to start with but started to dry up as I arrived at the first scheduled stop of Thunder City Motorcycles in Leeds; I took in doughnuts but what ho Paul was on a diet and as he'd already taken his belt in two notches the doughnuts were too much to ignore! Then it was a breezy ride across the Pennines towards Wales and my second scheduled stop at H.D.Chester; and blow me down Kirk their Dealer Principle remembered me and my FXRT from Just Harleys way back in 1999, what a welcome and the new purpose built site is fantastic and the stock of bikes a wonder, many CVO bikes, a fat end custom and two WLC 45's; here they are:

So to the Metropole and a warming bath and web site update.

Friday 2nd November 2007

At first I thought it was going to be a bit slow and tame, the hardest thing in the morning was selecting what we wanted for lunch and what scary things could the Welsh Showground hold for us? Carl was the first to find out; but was there separation?

The day started with introductions and three of us were there for the Ulysses Adventure Trek, James, Carl and myself, and our instructor for the two days was Clive. He's casual approach had me worried that the content of our two day adventure would be casual too but the slow start had a purpose - we were being checked out for competence. By 11:30 we had sailed through our competency tests, filled the bikes and had our lunches and it was out and about.

Mid Wales is a bikers paradise and we had this playground to ourselves and with Clive's local knowledge we rode roads, tracks and gravel paths that I bet many local Welsh people did not know existed. At one particularly sticky forest track I thought I was out of my depth because the rubber we were on definitely was. Mud in the treads has you riding as if on slime and it took all the coaching and shepherding of Clive to get me to our overnight stop unscathed!

Day 2 Click Here