Bikebusters (I blame Morrisons); September 2025
Maps
Grids
Visited Controls
On the Day
The Bournemouth and Wessex Advanced Motorcyclists (BWAM) held a scatter rally with a twist on 13th September. It was to start and finish from Holt village hall which is around 3 miles from where I live so I thought I would give it a go. The twist is that it took inspiration from the 90’s TV show Blockbusters. Remember the legend that was Bob Holness? Accordingly, they called the rally Bikebusters.
The twist was that unlike conventional scatter rallies where the objective is to optimise a route through a set of controls on a map, Bikebusters involved coming up with a route through a set of controls which corresponded to traversing a grid which contained a cell for each of those same controls. The grid had to be traversed from left to right but there was no need to visit the control cells in the left to right order shown on the grid. You just had to have visited controls that completed a left to right path through the grid by the finish. One control (HL) was manned and had to be visited while 2, 3 or 4 designated controls (DA, NT, PV and PW) could be visited to get a bronze, silver or gold award respectively. So, in choosing a set controls for a particular award you needed to keep in mind how those controls would combine to create a left to right path across the grid while distance optimising the route through those controls. Tricky!
It was quite tricky to plan especially if you wanted to have the fallback option, as I did, of going for a silver if you felt a gold was out of reach. The gold and silver routes I had planned meant that the designated control PW, Priddy, was where I had to decide to carry on for a gold or break off and do a silver. Trouble was, in order to have this option it meant I would be visiting the two controls (BP and KA) not needed for a silver if I then went on to do a silver. On traditional scatter rallies it’s much easier to break off for a lower award. On my gold route I was forced to backtrack and visit an additional control (R and AP instead of CC) to go around and avoid visiting the CC control at Calshot as this would have added huge miles to my route. CC may be adjacent to AW on the grid but Ashton Windmill is miles away from Calshot on the map.
I was disappointed to find out that the rally started at 09:00 from Holt. I would have liked it to have started an hour earlier at 08:00, as is more usual, to make best use of the light at the time of year. Sunset was around 19:30 so with twilight lasting around 30 minutes it would be dark at 20:00. Allowing 5 minutes a stop, my planned gold route saw me finishing at around 20:00 so it was going to be tight. I had no intention of being out after dark. Bad memories of riding home in the dark and sliding down a slurry covered road after the 2016 South West Peninsula Spring Rally!
After I had planned my route, I Googled the control locations I planned to visit. When I got the clues at the start, I could see that I already knew the answer to 4 of them, K, ME, HA and KA. (I had found pictures of the notice boards and blue plaques online.) However, with my wife’s words ringing in my ears “you’ll only be cheating yourself” I resisted the temptation to avoid visiting these controls as evidenced by my photos. It had been raining heavily the night before and the roads were treacherous with mud, gravel and deep pools in places. Knowlton (K) went fine but on the way to Mead End (ME) the single-track road I was on was flooded at a dip in it. I watched as an Audi drove through it and reckoned it was shallowest on the right. I didn’t want to go in the middle of the track as it was covered in slippery mud for the most part. Unfortunately, I kept too far to the right and my rear wheel slipped of the side of the track into mud and deeper water. Feet down in the water with the rear wheel spinning I was stuck. I feared my newly fitted SW-Motech crash bars were about to get tested! However, after gradually edging forward the rear wheel got some purchase and I escaped. How I wished I had cheated on that one.
My Garmin told me I was at Newton Tony (NT) but all I could see was a field. I pulled up and as I messed about with the Garmin to find out what had gone wrong a big jam sandwich pulled up next to me with a smiling policeman asking if I was okay. After I explained the nice man pointed me in the right direction. Luckily it wasn’t far.
At Netheravon (N) I rode about a bit looking for three bridges until I reread the clue. Hanging Langford (HA), Swallowcliffe (SA, Jame May’s pub), Semley (SS), Hunter’s Lodge (HL), King Alfred’s Tower (KA) and Martson Church (MA) were all straightforward. I took a while to find the church by the well at Beckington (BP) which was tucked away a bit. Norton St Philip (NS) was easy enough but a bit busy. At Priddy (PW) I ran into another rider I know, Sarah, and together we found the answer Passchendaele. Wisely she had chosen to do a silver from the start. However, as I was on planned time for gold at that point I decided to go for gold.
Ashton Windmill (AW) was straightforward and next was Butleigh (B). I had filled up before the start and by this point I needed fuel so I stopped at Glastonbury’s Morrison’s on the way to B to fill up. At AW I had told my Garmin to take me to B. When I got to Glastonbury, I then told my Garmin to take me to the nearest petrol station which was Morrison’s. I arrived at the forecourt and impatiently waited for the pump to activate. When nothing was happening, I looked over at the kiosk to see a young person signalling for me to take my helmet off. I stopped myself giving him the finger and in a fit of frustration I got back on my bike and rode to the other petrol station in Glastonbury which, as luck would have it, was out of commission. Well, I wasn’t going back to Morrison’s, was I? I tasked my Garmin to resume going to B and I would find a petrol station on the way. At least, that’s what I thought I did. Unfortunately, when I went into my Garmin’s history, I selected resume AW instead of resume B and rode all the way back to Ashton Windmill! The feeling as I saw the windmill for the second time that day. Doh! I then had to ride on a bit further to the nearest petrol station to fill up as the bike was running on fumes by then. When I eventually got to B, which was straightforward enough, I had done an additional 35 miles.
The morning’s weather had been fine but it wasn’t so good in the afternoon when every now and again a very heavy shower would unload on me. The going was hard and my cock-up at Glastonbury told me I was getting tired. It was at this point I made another mistake at B when I selected Haynes Museum Café (HM) instead of Ham Hill (HH). (They were close together on my Garmin’s favourites list.) On the way to HM, I realised fairly soon I had done this but I also realised that I was running around an hour late against my gold plan timings and that going to HM would get me a silver. So I continued on to HM for a silver.
At HM, I went into the museum and asked the young lady on the desk if she knew where I could find a Land Rover door with something hanging out of it. She didn’t know of such a thing. I wandered down into the café where they were closing up for the day where a helpful young lady showed me what I was looking for. From HM it was onto to Sherborne (SR) where I searched high and low without success for a red sign at the specified junction. There wasn’t one. A mistake on the part of the organisers. I left SR at 18:00 to ride to Portland (PV). I must admit that the prospect of riding north to south across Dorset didn’t thrill me. At Portland, I rode through Fortuneswell and made the long winding climb up the Verne to find out when the citadel had been used as a barracks. You get great views from the Verne of Chesil beach and the harbour. However, the weather on the mainland looked biblical and on the way to Puddletown (PT) to my last control I got very wet indeed.
Tired, wet and hungry I got back to the Holt finish a little after 19:30 just as light was fading. There was a warm welcome from the BWAM boys and I tucked into a nice curry. My trip readout was telling me I had done 310 miles. My planned gold and silver routes were for 306 and 248 miles respectively so I had done quite a few more miles for my silver than I had planned. My planning was fine but my Glastonbury cock-up and issues finding some of the answers had cost me the extra miles. In going for a gold my silver had meant that I had visited 4 extra controls than I would have done if I had opted to go for a silver from the start. (Not to mention visiting AW twice.) Having said that, I’m happy with the silver. I think if all had gone as planned it would have been a big ask to complete the gold route by riding to Ham Hill (HH), Chard (C), Dunkeswell Aerodrome (DA), Ryall (R), Portland (PV), Puddletown (PT) and Affpuddle (AF) before dark. Especially given the riding conditions and my advanced age.
I really applaud BWAM for coming up with a new rally format. I think it would benefit from a few changes, e.g. start time and maybe revert back to 3, 2 and 1 designated controls for the gold, silver and bronze awards but it’s early days. I don’t know if anyone got a gold but that’s really good going if they did. It was a hard day for me. Did I enjoy it? Not necessarily all the time but I think it’s good to test yourself now and again.