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So yesterday, I decided to join the other members of the (NZ) BSA Owners club at a local cafe. Due to an alarming oil leek in my BSA A10 Golden Flash that developed after an oil change I decided to take my 1937 Ariel Red Hunter along. It was a little bit of a leap of faith, as a couple of weeks ago my normally 100% reliable Ariel refused to start! However I quickly diagnosed a lack of sparks, cleaned up the points and normal service was resumed.

I decided to leave home about 10am, a good plan, however all morning we had experienced this dense fog. So, do you take your classic bike out in dense fog?

Although I have ridden in heavy rain – a horrible experience and one I try and avoid – I had not tried riding an old bike with minimal lighting in fog. I did have a halogen bulb in my headlight which looked great at night when i tested it, but in fog it looked like a candle! Hmmm, what to do, I decided to go as far as my local garage for fuel and check the conditions there.

From the garage the road looked ok, it was clear with foggy cloud above the road, perhaps the traffic had dispersed it? I decided to continue with a mind-set that if it got bad I would return home. Further on, it got quite thick and I was thinking this is getting quite sketchy, however I only had a few miles to go until I hit a remote back road so kept going.

There was no traffic around after turning off, so I continued and eventually the fog cleared. The road turns in to a forestry road and climbs a decent sized hill and on the top it was even quite sunny, phew!

It was great riding the mostly deserted forestry road, which had a decent surface but didn’t go so far as supplying road markings! I felt the Red Hunter was in it’s element in the twisties, it really handles suprisingly well for a bike of it’s age, it was great fun.

The forestry road turns into another rural road and comes out in the village of Waitoki and the cafe was only a couple of hundred meters away, great. There was about 25 bikes at the cafe, predominantly old classic BSA’s but some other makes and a few moderns as well. I have to apologise about the lack of bike photo’s here but I got chatting to people and somehow forgot, rookie mistake!

The other guys were greatly impressed as they hadn’t seen the Ariel before and one guy was friends with ‘Vic’, the restorer of my bike, and he was able to give me some great background info. After a couple of hours I decided to head back, by now it was a beautiful sunny day and I had a great time riding back through the remote tight and twisty roads.

All in all, it was a great day, fantastic riding and equally enjoyable to hang out with a very friendly bunch of like-minded individuals.