Event Reports

12th Yorkshire Pudding Rally - Fri 31st July - Sun 2nd August 2015

An advance contingent of 4 Wakefield MAG members travelled to the Yorkie Pud site on the Thursday afternoon / evening as we had early Friday morning marshalling shifts. We bagged our now favorite spot right next to the main gate (very convenient for marshalling), in what has now become a Wakefield MAG village !! Thursday is marshals only and it was great to say hello to all our fellow marshals - no bars or food vans open, and only our own entertainment, but that's easily achieved after a few goblets of foaming ale. Thursday night was freezing (for the middle of Summer) and it must have only been a few degrees above zero ... we all hoped it would get a bit warmer over the weekend.

The rest of our contingent arrived at various stages throughout Friday.

The Wakefield MAG village

By 8pm, everyone had finished their shifts and were ready to PARTY !!! New for this year was the Real Ale Marquee, which as well as selling a huge selection of real ales, also had live entertainment, in the form of Scott Dangleberry (one man, his guitar, and some superb renditions of various well known songs). We also watched the bands in the main marquee, but spent most of the evening outside as it was a nice evening, chilling and catching up with news, gossip, banter and merciless p**s taking.

headlining the main marquee

Saturday, those who weren't marshalling, wandered into Eskrick Village to the Social Club they found last year. Unfortunately, it had changed hands and reportedly wasn't as good, so it looks like the village pub next year instead.

Back on site, the bike show was marshalled by Wakefield MAG, with around 40 entrants and a quite exceptional standard. Lots of people were visiting the show until the heavens opened and it poured down with rain, but they soon appeared again once the sky cleared up. Back Street Heroes Magazine provided the judges and had a particularly difficult time judging ... but after several rounds, the winners were finally decided as:

The Bike Show Winners

We had a problem tracking down the owners of the 2nd Trike but managed to locate them after the official prize giving, but before the BSH photographer had packed up, so they will still get to appear in the magazines rally report.

Saturday evening was a more sedate affair as most of us had peaked too early, but it wasn't raining and it was very pleasant stood outside the marquee listening to the bands inside and chewing the fat with old (and new) friends.

Later on there was a bonfire (as there had been on Friday night), but only a few Wakefield MAG members went to watch it.

The Bonfire

Sunday morning arrived all too soon but we weren't in a rush, so had breakfast on-site using our marshals food vouchers, packed up the tents in the dry (always a bonus), then headed en-masse to Squires for a coffee, before making our seperate ways home.

All in all a totally fantastic weekend. Some of the best bits were actually just sitting around the tents laughing, joking and being particularly crude and politically uncorrect (a Wakefield MAG speciality). The YPR has always been special to Wakefield MAG as we were one of the founding Groups to launch the event back in 2004, and it just gets better every year.

The Site
The Site

Last but not least a massive THANK YOU to MAP (the organisers), the volunteer marshals (incl. all those lovely Wakefield MAG marshals who gave sterling service over the weekend), everyone involved and of course the punters, because without any of these it just wouldn't have happened.