Heart Beat
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Heart Beat

Summer Music and Bike Festival Brighton

as seen in

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Heartbeat, Sunday July 5th, Brighton Marina .

 

When something is very successful there are often great spin offs, for example, “Back Street Heroes” begat “StreetFighters”, Harley Davidson begat Buell, and “Happy days” begat “Lavine and Shirley” and “Joanie Loves Chachi” but maybe we shall gloss over the final two.

So when it was announced that Brightona the big charity show, for the Brighton Heart Trust, Myself and Yoda are fond of, has given birth to a July Bike and Music show the event was immediately pencilled in on my overfilled diary, I really am considering giving up work soon as my social life is getting in the way of my social life.

We need not have worried about the weather, as the gods of Brightona were to look after that, and I know my way to Brighton , which was all good.

Now I have been to lots of rallies and events in car parks (or should we call them bike parks when a show is on) it’s kind of the norm but a multi-storey car park this is a novelty and a first as far as I know. (And best here I do not recall the old joke of God asking Noah to build a second boat, this time with 40 floors all full of fish, because he wanted a multi story carp ark)

But here we were at a Free event on the top two levels of the Marina multi story car park (the world’s darkest car park at allegedly Europe’s largest marina complex), with only stairs and no lift this did make it a little difficult for disabled access but made a superb noise as bikes roared around the levels inside, a bit like wasps trapped in a jar. The young ladies walking around collecting for the heart trust were quietly unobtrusive but seemed to be good at extracting cash from the visitors.

With the main event for bikes in a kind of corral there were still spaces where you could see out over the roofs to the sea it was almost as picturesque as the October event.

A reasonable selection of bands kept the masses happy, while ice creams did the best to keep them cool a huge Thai kitchen was tempting, but consideration for my figure and trying to keep in shape (round is a shape) kept me away.

The multi level effect was interesting with a few cars as well, and it seemed a steadily moving selection of bikes kept the interest along with seemingly different corners where friends popped out from it has exactly the same friend atmosphere as Brightona as well, which gives it that special edge.

There was a bike show as well, Bike-wise there were many of the usual suspects, from the local area but a few new ones including a rather nice R1 sports bike with Nitrous, not really my normal cup of Darjeeling but very well done, there were also a plethora of scooters which are always turned out so well. In my usual inept way I also have no idea who won what.

If I was to have one comment it may be the fact that to get anywhere, down to the seafront and the lure of fish and chips or to Brighton, itself  there were masses of stairs so this may be why bikes seemed constantly on the move, that and a cracking day for riding.

I met many folk there who thought like me that this is going to be another must on the every straining calendar. Keep and eye out for it next year folks…

 

Bosun