British Treffen

The British Treffen, in Carmarthen, Wales, was held the following weekend to the Irish Treffen.  We would like to have had a little more time to visit Ireland.  We arrived on Thursday afternoon and checked in, we were the 429th bike to register.  We saw our English friend (the one with the American flag) and he pointed to where he was camped, we joined him.  Later the other members of his chapter arrived and they adopted us into their Broadlands Wings.  This picture was actually taken after we had packed to leave and we all gathered around our trailer.  As you can see the weather was a lot better for the British Treffen.  Only one small sprinkle of rain the first night, then sun with scattered clouds.  There were nearly 700 GoldWings here for the weekend.

The first major event was the "60's Night Dance".  This is the Broadlands group headed to the pavilion for the dance.  We didn't dress up, we don't have room for non-essential clothes!

Several bikes were showing off before the "Light Parade".  Many GoldWingers have added lights to their bikes, strobes, LED and neon in all the colors possible.  These guys make quite a show after dark with their various flashing and color-changing lights.  They have lights that shine outward and lights that reflect off the ground for quite a show.  In Blackpool, England on the first weekend in September is a huge Light Parade of bikes that draws thousands of visitors to the town.  We may make it there or maybe not.  We have some things to see in between.

Now we know where Elvis is, alive and well in Wales.

And all the "Flower Children" (who are a loooong ways from childhood).

At the European Treffens there is a bar and under-age people are allowed in, but not to drink.  This young man was going around and collecting the empty plastic beer glasses and making monuments.

We went on the "Parade of Nations" ride here too.  That is us in the foreground (again with the borrowed US flag).  Directly above the red helmeted person (in light blue with the pale rain/sun fly) is our tent.  This is the getting ready, we took movies during the parade but they didn't turn out well.

After the parade the Broadlands Club had their regular B-B-Q and get-together.  They invited us to join them.  It was fun and very interesting to listen to their accents.  (Of course Kathy and I are the only people in the British Isles that don't have an accent!)  With my hearing loss, and their accent, I often have to ask them to repeat themselves.  They never got mad at me for that, their patience and understanding was great.  This was the same night that the International Awards were handed out, but we were having so much fun with these folks that we forgot to go.  We don't know how the Portuguese club scored in the points.  We heard later that we were mentioned as the representatives of the USA.  And we had the same mileage problem as at the Irish Treffen.  They didn't like me putting down the kilometers from here to home.

We saw this travel trailer ("caravan" to the Europeans) at the treffen.  It was pulled by a matching yellow trike.  I would have liked to seen the inside, but no one was around when I was by it.  It has dual axels and I've wondered how it tows.  Behind a trike would be better, I wouldn't want it behind my two-wheeler.

Next is Wales.