The 20th Bulldog Bash

August is Bulldog time!! For those of you who don't know, The Bulldog Bash is basically the biggest biker festival in Europe, and is hosted by the most notorious motorcycle club in the world, the Hells Angels. Not only Hells Angels, but other regional MC groups from all over the country and Europe flock to this event to race or show off their bikes, buy equipment and parts, meet their mates and most of all to drink copious amounts of beer.
Bulldog is held on the county raceway in the beautiful town of Stratford upon Avon, Shakespere's birthplace, about an hour from the farm. My firast year was the year I passed my driving test, and I went primarily to see my favourite band, Reef, play a gig there, and have returned every year since, with the exception of 2005, because I had to save my money for going to Hawaii.

This year it was just me and Daisy, not a whole crew like usual, and we went down on the Thursday 10th after I finished work. The festival lasts for 4 days and with this year being the 20th anniversary, it was a bigger event than ever. Attractions and features went like this:

Top fuel drag racing
Jet Cars
Jet bikes
'Run what you brung' (basically for a fiver you can race your bike on the track as many times as you want against other bikers, 2 go at a time and the times are recorded. The raceway is the main location for all the demos and racing and you can just sit up in the stands all day)
Motocross demos

Stunt shows

(yes the above pic is the right way up!!)

Wall of death
Loads of top rock and metal bands on the main stage on thur, fri and sat night
A second stage featuring 30 unsigned rock bands playing throughout the day
Tons of rows of stalls
Custom bike show (inc. trikes, quads and vintage hot rods)

Fair ground
Rave tent
Bar/beer tent

Loads of food stands
Topless carwash
Strip shows (sorry, "dancing girls")
MASSIVE Firework display (the best I've ever seen, actually)

Wrestling
So there was a lot to keep us entertained, once we got over the trauma of the epic 2 hour battle putting up our unexpectedly oversized tent int he wind and dark without a torch!!

We enjoyed all the sights, sounds, smells, foods, meeting lots of very random people, and sucking many balloons of laughing gas, which is actually just nitrogen, the stuff they use in jet cars to make them zoom really fast ('Nos gas'). One of the special start guests on the Saturday finale night was a bloke who staples a block of wood to hit penis and has the skin on his back worn off with an electric sander. That didn't come on until really late though, and feeling a bit worse for wear and also squeamish, we opted out of that one.

All in all we had a really wicked time, and were lucky with the weather, too, lalthough we didn't stay long at all on the Sunday because the heavens opened and it started throwing it down with rain. So we headed back to the farm for a pit stop and then went on to Cambridge in convoy, as I had 9 days off in a row, the remaining 6 to be spent recouperating and pimping my car in Cambridge and then going up to Scotland...

So if that looks like fun, and you fancy four days of hanging out in a huge field surrounded by more bikes, beer guts, bad ass viking-style beards, leather waist jackets, army combat gear, mohawks, tattoos and dodgy, dyded red black or peroxide blonde hair (that tends to be the ladies) and grisly entertainments than you you can shake a stick at, I hope you'll join us next year!!