4th 5th & 6th of April 2008.

Friday 4th, A few of us arrived at the rally site in the afternoon to begin setting up and much to our surprize we came across 10 real keen rally folk, we just had time to get out the entry sheets before we were inundated by them keen to hand over the cash. A good start. The few of us there just about had everything set up before the main contingent of the club arrived and then into the Cafe for a well earned beer and dinner. The club started running a few raffles and everyone was keen to take part, one of the raffles for a helmet donated by City Scooters was snapped up fairly quickly. Thanks for donation guys we made $250 on that, all towards Cholmondeley.
Not a lot of time was spent relaxing as motorbikes were pouring in until about 10pm, a little revelling held at the camp site and the Cafe and off to bed in a nice warm dry tent, but it wasn't to stay like that for long, 4am and the wind struck then the horizonal rain, fortunately all the gazebo's and tents stayed up.
Saturday morning dawned looking quite miserable, but word filtered through that the weather was quite nice in Christchurch and north of Kaikoura. The dampness in Greta Valley sure didn't put anyone off, they just kept coming. Again the fundraising started with the sale of raffles, the helmet was soon sold out and drawn and won by a lucky lady in Kaikoura. 8 raffles for $50 were sold altogether, one of the winners had left the rally and after making contact he donated the winnings to Chomley, thanks for that it made our total to $700 to donate just from raffles.
1pm the guys set off on the ride to Kaikoura via Culverden, while they were gone the others just kept on hard at work at the gate, checking in the many rally goers, quite a number of people visited for the day and paid the walkin fee of $15, some others decided they didn't need to pay and just walked in via other routes, shame on them, but at least one of them has made the $15 donation, good on ya, your a good bloke.
Evening arrived and with the weather cooling a little the publican allowed a few of the guys to use some of his firewood and drums and they partied most of the night in the camp, tough buggers those west coasters.
The Cafe was choker block most of the evening and the games were pretty popular with the horizontal bungy getting most of the attention. The Best Bike, furtherest Travelled and Rat bike awards were announced and prizes given out, thanks to all those that donated items, you can check them out in the links page. The band played until just after midnight, stopped just a bit short of expectations for some, but the party continued until after 3 in the morning and by that time this writer had seccumbed to the top shelf a bit and was a little on the cheerful side, the party continued until I finaly found my tent and sleeping bag at about 6am.
Not much time to sleep so up at 9 and started dismantling the camp, rather slowly on my part, being still so tender. A check on the breathalizer before heading off towing the trailer and down to Amberley for a well deserved Coffee at the Nor'Wester Cafe.

All up the rally was a great success for the club, which for the first time in a few years can fund the Cholmondeley Childrens Home Fund Run with proceeds from the rally and have an additional $868 to donate from raffles. We had run several raffles at AutoX where we had promoted the Club and the things we do.