Dragon - done for another year

[jules]

At €20 I wonder if BVDM make a profit? I'm betting they sell the drinks/food/cuddly toy selling rights.

Andy

At €20,which is cheaper than the Dragon,if theres money to be made it will be,especially at something like the Elephantentreffen,the BVDM is a massively subscribed motorcycle club,
something along the lines of MAG but much bigger

[Andy M]

It'll help the BVDM that it's three days plus. When I go to the Dragon I buy very little as I can bring IPA/Jamesons/Coq Au Van from home and thus avoid the warm Boddingtons/Grants/Burger and chips. At a full/proper elefant you need to shop. The Elefant also seems to have a lot of support from the villages there about, while I'm betting Dragon is probably quite tough to even find a place that'll take it away from the race track.

Andy

[guest7]

I was talking to the woman who runs the camping shop at was once the A5 services (the petrol station just up the road from the old Capel Curig site) and she said that nobody in Betws y coed really cared about the Dragon Rally, despite the massive boost to the economy that it brings. She also said that the farmer who owns the 'waterworks' site wasn't all that fussed either, despite the £1,000 for one weekend that the rally gave him.

Frankly I find it amazing that no-one in North Wales seems to have tried to bag the rally as a regular event in their area. Just one example, the pub up the road from the rally this year must have had perhaps up to 80 times more business than on a regular February saturday.

GC

[Richard]

Generally speaking I find North Wales a miserable place.  Apologies in advance to the many exceptions to that general statement but I have spent many years living on its borders.

Trawsfynydd - I always think they want to eat me.

Blaenau Ffestiniog - so ugly in so pretty a place.

Don't even start me on Anglesey.

Richard

[guest7]

Blaenau Ffestiniog  - it's just like a grim valleys mining town transplanted into God's back garden. This story typifies the place, five years ago I stopped at a petrol station there and noticed that the MOT garage next door was in an attractive old church. I wandered in and found, to my amazement, that the church interior was mostly intact and the only concession to the garage business was a concrete floor and a four post car ramp in the middle. Surreal. The next time we rode through Ffestiniog I wanted to show the lads this mad place, but in the meantime they had knocked the whole thing down. This year I noticed that it's still bare plot. Classy 

GC

[jules]

I stopped at that garage the year before that as i needed petrol,bike ran like a bag of sh*t after,didn't notice the church bit until i rode back through,that said i didn't see it at all this year not even the plot it once stood on,i love riding through Blaenau,i think its great me!!,does that make me classy

[Richard]

To be fair to Blaenau.............

Back in the mid 80's I turned up there with a bunch of caving mates to join in a demonstration/rally etc in support of the striking slate quarry workers.  We were pretty poor/tight at the time being just out of college so were all planning on camping, sharing my (biggish) tent.  This was mid winter and pretty bad weather.  We couldn't find a field for the tent so did our best to pitch it on the nearest nearly flat bit that wasn't all broken slate.  Couldn't peg it down so we weighed it down with slate lumps.  Off to town for a beer then to the chippy.

To cut a long story short they were so chuffed at us turning up they let us sleep on their living room floor as they felt sorry for us.

So its not all bad.