Mel Galley - RIP

And whilst Planet Rock played "Crying in the Rain" we wiped our eyes and raised our glasses as the Buzzards flew high and the rain poured down.


Lynyrd Skynyrd - Simple Man

The Peak District - For a Change

When you're going for a bike ride to the Isle of Anglesey at 1.30pm in the afternoon it doesn't help when your fellow biking buddy doesn't turn up until 3.00pm. A brief calculation confirmed the fact that if we departed for Anglesey at 3.00 in the afternoon (more like 3.30 by the time we'd finished faffing around), not only would we be unlikely to find anything touristy open by the time we got there, we were also in danger of not making it back to The Local in time for last orders at the bar. The realisation of the latter saw us taking no chances as we headed for the High Peaks instead.

Peak District National Park is a paradise for walkers, cyclists, hang gliders, paragliders, rock climbers, cavers and motorcyclists to name but a few. Brochures, funnily enough, never seem to mention the latter in their advertising campaigns but don't let that deter you. The Peaks have some of the best biking roads in Britain, and with 555 square miles of space there's plenty of them to choose from.

Amongst bikers the most infamous road in the High Peak area, known as the Cat & Fiddle, links Buxton to Macclesfield. For me a far nicer and certainly safer road up in that neck of the woods is Snake Pass heading east from Glossop to Ladybower reservoir. Or the other way round obviously.

That's where we headed for yesterday, the Snake Pass, taking in all manner of great roads, nice villages, gorgeous scenery and dodgy sandwiches out of triangulated plastic packets.


Ashbourne - A rather attractive town at the southern end of the Peaks but suffering from a constant traffic jam. If you need to drive through the place allow several days extra for your journey. Alternatively find a secret way round like I have, but don't tell anybody...... Just like I haven't ;)

Upon reaching Ladybower reservoir I thought it was my duty to pull over and get some photos for the website. This however led Matt to inform me that my photography was interfering with the bike riding. But I soon noticed this didn't stop him sprawling himself all over his bike for a photo once he knew I'd got my camera out. That's if you can call a mobile phone a camera. Incidentally, neither did it stop him getting excited at the prospect of having an action shot taken of him riding his bike. Anyway where was I? Ladybower. Below which lies the villages of Ashopton and Derwent, now only visible during droughts or with scuba equipment. Ladybower was also used by the "Dambusters" squadron of the RAF for practise with their bouncing bombs famously used on the Ruhr dams.


Ladybower Reservoir, or at least part of it. It's a bit sort of T shaped with several dams strewn along the way.


Ladybower Reservoir again.

Somewhere along our travels the flowing bike ride was rudely interrupted not by photography this time but by a couple of thousand sheep wandering down the road. The highlight of this little halt in proceedings was watching a sheep trying to kick the sheepdog's ass.


Waiting for the sheep to kindly move out of the way.

As the crow flies, three miles south west of Ladybower lies the little town of Castleton, home to some fascinating caves including Blue John, Speedwell and Peak Caverns. Running between these caves lies Winnat's Pass, one of the most stunning stretches of road in the Peaks. The following two photos don't do the place justice, nor do they show just how steep the road is. It's only when you look at the third picture of my bike precariously parked up that you get some sort of idea.


Myself and Winnie on Winnat's Pass.


Matt - Not complaining about photographs now!


It's a good job there's plenty of compression.

That's just about all the time we had for sightseeing. The rest of our five hour journey was spent enjoying the ride. It would have been nice to cover more of the area but you can't do it all in one day. And anyway, it gives us another excuse to go back, this time visiting the Goyt Valley just off the superb A5004 between Whaley Bridge and Buxton.

Next week I'll make another attempt at getting to Anglesey.

We Haven't Fled the Country (Yet)

In case anyone is wondering, we haven't all disappeared off the face of the planet, we've been just a little busy, that's all. I've been working pretty much seven days a week since Christmas refurbing the factory. Weekends have been the best time to be getting on with this job so any riding I've been doing has been when I take the occasional half day off work. Even then my rides have only been local travelling no further than the Peak District. Loz has been busy organising and preparing for a ride to Iceland in August (More of that later). Matt (Joey) is busy attaining his commercial helicopter pilots licence and has been snowed under with exams. Dean currently is landscaping his garden. Neil has had a career change and is concentrating on that, and finally there's Gaz who has been busy learning to skydive. At some point this year things will come together and no doubt we'll all end up catching up on lost time.

As I mentioned earlier, Loz is starting out for Iceland on the 2nd of August. On the 8th August he'll be catching a ferry from John O'groats. Dean and I will be taking a week off work to ride up to John O'groats with him whereby we'll leave him to head northward to a chillier climate. We meanwhile will head back down the country via Edinburgh taking in the Festival and the Royal Yacht Britannia. Rock on!

Other stuff in the news, our mate Tim who recently passed his test has bought himself a Honda CBR 600 (pictured below).


Tim and his CBR 600

Although we've all been busy, it hasn't stopped us getting up the pub for the usual rounds of silliness....... Oh no.


A somewhat spooky looking Matt (Joey)

I'll leave you with three short but funny videos of Pete Miller in his usual top form. I'll pre warn you that we're not all like this in Staffordshire!

This Month's Limited Edition T- Shirts

Jangle on..... And sing your song. That's the theme for this months brilliant limited edition T-shirts. On sale until the end of June whereby another staggering design will hit Downtown Tinterweb.

Snapshot from Shropshire

Leaving things until the last minute and being unable to muster up a gaggle of janglers on the spur of the moment, Billy no mates here took a ride out around Shropshire last Saturday on his own. With no particular destination in mind it was nice just to amble from place to place discovering previously unvisited towns and villages. Armed with a camera I stopped off at various picturesque places to reel off a few snaps. This is probably one of the better efforts of the day.


Photo taken just south of Burlton on the A528 between Ellesmere and Shrewsbury.... Cracking little road for biking.

Gravel Rash

If you've ever wondered what grounds out first on a Honda Blackbird whilst cranking it over, I can reliably inform you that it's the fairing. Some people might argue it's actually the hero blob on the footpeg, but mine has snapped off so in this case it doesn't count.

I'm not sure if I should be proud of the gravel rash or not. Winnie now has battle scars, the sort of which doesn't look good when I come to sell her. I wouldn't mind but it's not exactly a fair representation of my riding because I really don't ride all that fast. However, I now join Gaz in the rather elite club of Fairing Scrapers*, no badge, no T-shirt, just a big grin.

*Achieved without the aid of crashing.

Our Very Own Merchandise!

At long last we now have our very own range of merchandise! Why, I have no idea. I can't imagine anybody wanting to walk around with Jangle Jangle blazoned across their chest. But I suppose it's no more ridiculous than having the word Bench, table or even cauliflower for that matter.

Should you wish to take a look at our online shop you can find it here. You'll either be pleased to know or not give a toss that all items are at cost and we're not in it for the money. Good eh?

Wait, there's more! We also have another online shop selling our limited edition items. Great idea, I know! Limited edition stuff is on sale until the last day of every month whereby it gets replaced with another limited edition item or two...... So long as I get round to it, obviously.

This months limited edition product is our vandalised road sign "Bends for Smiles" T-shirt in both men's and ladies cut, and as you can appreciate, it's worn by cool folk.


You wanna be a cool folk?

Moto Guzzi Club Mid-Shires Campover 2008

The small village of Ashover in Derbyshire was the destination for our Saturday night campover magnificently organised by Richard Bailey and Monica Vaughan of the Moto Guzzi Owners Club. The 50 miles or so it took to get there saw Loz, Zak, Matt, Dean and myself enjoying some wonderful roads. I must admit it was probably more enjoyable for everyone other than Loz because he had what's called terminal gearbox failure on his XT. Now this is the bike he's riding up to Iceland on in August. Of course absolutely nobody took the piss, and comments like "If I were you I'd swap it for a Honda C90 for your Icelandic adventure" were never mentioned, and the attempt to stuff his bike into a black bin liner was nothing more than an alcohol inspired figment of the imagination.


Not quite as "brrooom brrooom" as five minutes earlier.



With tents pitched in a farmers field and some beer drunk we wandered off down a convenient public footpath to The Old Poets' Corner. Obviously we weren't exactly there for the good of our health so, and quite rightly so, took it upon ourselves to drink some more beer. The actual main purpose of heading down the pub at four O'clock in the afternoon was to listen to a couple of guest speakers. Lois Pryce who rode a 20,000 mile journey from the top to the bottom of the Americas and more recently rode from north to south of Africa was the first speaker, with Austin Vince being the second. Austin has twice ridden round the world.


Loz's little'un Zak and Lois Pryce


The Old Poets' Corner.

Two hours later, chit chat and heckling over with, it was back to the tents for some culinary delights mustered up on the camping stoves.


Matt (Joey), Loz and Zak (The future of biking)


Now then, tough man Dean (He's only tough because he can eat Dynamite Hot Stag Chilli) has a Thomas The Tank Engine Plate!


Matt (Joey) is on a plate full of chicken curry.


I got a bit more adventurous with sirloin steak marinated in garlic and mustard with a red wine sauce accompanied by sautéed potatoes and mushrooms all wash down with beer and a little red wine. Keith Floyd would be impressed.


The usual round of sillyness.

By 9 O'clock we were back in the Old Poets' to witness some absolutely fantastic music by Crossroads Unplugged. The bass player and singer (below) also happens to be the pub Landlord. The set started off with Eric Clapton's awesome Cocaine and ended with the mighty Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd. Everything in between is a bit of a blur and it's only now I realise I should have taken more video footage for memory jogging purposes.


Bass player, singer and pub gaffer.





Now this guy here on the left of the above picture, who later remarked to me that his legs no longer worked due to excessive beer consumption (And I could clearly see he wasn't making this up) was part of the Moto Guzzi Owners Club. He managed to get himself on stage as it were to play the blues harp with the band. All credit to the guy, he was fantastic. Shortly after this obvious turning point in the evening, drunken crowd enthusiasm saw people elevating themselves to higher levels by dancing on tables and chairs. There was singing (to a fashion), air guitar, ball guitar (see video below), air drums, air harmonica, air tambourines and jiggly titties. Oh yes it was all going on.




Top left in picture; Richard, rally organiser. Bottom left and right of picture: Relatives?

By about 12.30 we were back at the tents, taking time out to record a crap and quite frankly pointless movie (see below) before heading off to mingle with fellow bikers.


* Warning: Not suitable for minors or those of a prudish disposition due to the use of naughty words such as f*&% and to&*%r *

After not going to bed until about half two, Sunday morning left us feeling somewhat woolly.



At least the weather remained dry for us. that was until we left the campsite to ride home where upon the heavens opened and stayed open for the entire journey home. We left Loz and Zak behind whilst they waited for our mate to turn up with a car and trailer to transport the trusty old XT back home.

The rally was a great little event. I think there was a maximum of 60 people due to the size of the function room for the guest speakers. All in all a thoroughly pleasant little jangle.

Hurrah For Mark

Well there we have it, our new logo. I'd love to take credit for it but that has to go to matey Mark Galley who very kindly took some time out to design it.

Cheers pal.

RAF Cosford Museum

Another fine day of weather has led to another half day off work and an enjoyable ride into the Shropshire countryside to take a peep at things that once flew.

The museum at RAF Cosford is home to around 70 aircraft. As well as war planes, there's also a great collection of missiles, some transportation and a who pile of research and development malarkey. All of which is totally free, and that includes the Cold War Museum (More of that later). There's also a shop on site and a cafe of which I haven't tested. Sat outside with a drink, I had the pleasure of a couple of jet planes thrusting up on the runway, the sound of which is far sexier than a motorcycle... unless of course the motorcycle is powered by a jet engine.


A Spitfire


A Tornado


Hawker Hind. Light bomber 1935-1943


Yokosuka Ohka single seat rocket powered suicide attack aircraft. This was primarily used against ships. The plane would be flown to the target area on the belly of a larger plane and then dropped. The pilot with the death wish would glide it in the general direction of the target, then when nearing, spark up the rocket engine and attempt to crash into the enemy.


British Aircraft Corporation TSR 2

As well as the original museum, 2007 saw the opening of the fantastic Cold War Museum.


This award winning shiny silver thing harbours the Cold War exhibition.


Handley Page Victor









What appeared to be a television company were on site doing a spot of filming (see above photo above left mirror). I would just like to apologise for firing Winnie up mid film and no doubt causing retake number 37.