Celebrating Mrs Windsors Birthday 2014

A big thank you to Sir Al for writing this report on what looks and sounds like a wonderful day out in this great motorcycling country of ours.

Never let a chance go by. So the 3-day weekend to celebrate HMs birthday was a good opportunity to arrange a full day ride on the Sunday. And as luck would have it the weather was perfect all day.

Paul, Dion, Ian, Bruce A, and myself met at Manawatu Motorcycles at 9.30 and made our out to Sanson to meet up with Bruce S, Bruce C from Wellington, Dave, and Alan and Di from Levin.

Then over to Wanganui to collect Wayne on his Yamaha RZ500. This made for an interesting collection of bikes; 71 Kawasaki A7, 72 Suzuki GT750, 74 Suzuki GT750, Honda NS400R, Suzuki GSX600, Moto Guzzi Le Mans, Yamaha TZR250, BMW adventure bike, and a very large Honda cruiser!

From Wanganui we headed up the River Road past Jerusalem and through to Pipiriki. This road is now tar-sealed which looks to have been quite an achievement in places. Some corners won’t see any sun through the winter and there was signs of frost on roadside grass. The locals don’t waste any time traversing this piece of road so it doesn’t pay to be looking around too much.

The ride up from Pipiriki to Raetihi is excellent, a twisting climbing road with quite a few damp corners. We stopped at the Angel Louise Café in Raetihi for lunch about 1.30, and sat outside in the sunshine with jackets off. Good food and good coffee. Great company.

All too soon it was time to get back on the road, and after a fill up for the thirsty 2-strokes, it was off down the Parapara road. This is really a great bit of road starting out with faster corners and getting tighter further down the hill. I followed Paul and Dave all the way and really enjoyed the ride on the A7.

By the time we reached Wanganui it was getting quite cool. We fuelled up the bikes again (a couple of us at least), and headed for home. The dusk was just setting in at Sanson were Bruce C turned south, and we carried on to Palmerston North arriving home in the dark.

The only problem all day was a fuse on the Paul’s Gt that came apart. I hadn’t ridden the A7 for many months due to the amount of smoke being generated (apologies to those that followed in its wake. At least your bikes won’t rust), and was very pleasantly surprised at how well it goes given its 338cc. Comfortable too. New crank seals about to be fitted.