Show - Biggar and Better

Yesterday’s Biggar Rally for veteran, vintage and classic cycles, motor cycles, cars, vans, trucks, buses, tractors, agricultural equipment and military vehicles provided a veritable feast of automotive nostalgia with many of the exhibits an awfy lot older than some of the folk showing them, although at times it was hard to tell.

This was the 49th running of the show which is designed not just to commemorate, inform and entertain but to raise money for the Biggar Albion Foundation and Biggar Museum Trust which has grand plans for a new building to store the artefacts and irreplaceable records which stretch back to the motor company’s founding in 1899.

Dungarees, khaki coats and bunnets were the apparel of choice, till the sun came up and folk had to start shedding their outer wear. The visual entertainment was further enhanced by the occasional puff of black reek shooting skywards as some truck loving worthy fired up a Perkins, Gardner or Cummins engine from a bygone age and it clattered into life with the sound rolling across the field. It was also notable that there were quite a few American V8s around the show as they rumbled into position and again when leaving at close of play.

It’s also a great place for meeting like minded folks and it would appear from the end of day exchanges that many of the exhibitors spend most weekends in the Summer (?) going to the various shows around the country. Going by the cries of “See you at Ladybank” as folk were leaving that would appear to be the next favoured port of call for many.

There was also quite a bit of handshaking going on, and even the occasional hug, as old acquaintances were re-ignited, provided one could remember the names! Advancing years don’t do many of us any favours.

One chap who claimed to be feeling his age, despite his sprightly demeanour, was 1980s Grand Prix motor cycle racer, Donnie McLeod who was showing a couple of his ex-competition machines. Not only that, he had spent most of Saturday firing up 5 of his Dad’s collection of tractors and driving each of them to the showground, before hoofing it back into town to get the next one.

And you can’t have motor cycles on show without Bill and Agnes Cadger OBE representing the Scottish Classic Racing Motor Club plus the unmistakable figure of Mose Hutchinson who was seen (and heard!) flitting from stand to stand, and display to display, gladhanding all and sundry, whether friend or foe, stranger or blood brother.

Next time I go, I’ll have to take a helper so that I can leave my modest wee stand and go and have a mooch around on my own – trouble is it might take a while!