Let's go for our first heart attack, shall we?

Food - we bikers love it. And if it is traditional fayre (read unhealthy) and served in large quantities, all the better it seems.

Food and drink play a huge part in the lives of the biking fraternity. Pitch up at virtually any bike meet and you’ll find a caff, tea hut or fast food outlet pumping out large quantities of hot dogs/burgers/chips/bacon rolls/full breakfasts etc all washed down with gallons of tea and coffee.

In London and the South East we are well served for such places. There’s the Ace Café on the North Circular, Ryka’s at Box Hill, the caff at Newlands Corner, Whiteways on the A29, Miller’s Tea Hut in Essex (which I believe has been there since 1927!), Loomies, the West Meon hut, Rye Harbour, and my own personal favourite, the Oakdene Café just off the M20 on the outskirts of Kent – all offering variations on the same theme.   

Why is it that bikers are inextricably linked with these places? After all, you don’t often see a group of Road Rats pitching up at Starbucks for their skinny lattes and blueberry muffins. My own theory is that when biking really took off in the 1950s, the bikes themselves were unreliable, the kit that existed was extremely basic and not particularly warm, and biking generally was quite hard work – hence riders needed a network of places to pitch up to, to patch up their bikes, thaw out their pillions and get something hot to eat and drink. The rough and ready feel of these places seemed to capture the spirit of biking in these days of yore – thankfully, many still remain and have become large meeting places or start/end points for rideouts.

Box Hill in Surrey (the renowned and picturesque place that inspires this blog) has been a Mecca for bikers for donkey’s years. It was the first bike meet I ever went to back in the early 80s (pootling along on my old learner 125) and to this day it attracts hundreds upon hundreds of bikes when the sun deigns to make an appearance. And yet, the food served up by Ryka’s (the on-site café) is probably the worst out there – their burgers resemble dog food served between two lumps of cardboard, their bacon is cheap and nasty and their chips soggy. How they survive, I have no idea – I guess they have a captive market, which is simply content with the bulk that is served up.    

So what does the future hold? Will the biking world start to demand better? The idea of biker-friendly restaurants with proper cutlery and tablecloths instead of tea huts and cafes? I doubt it. After all, there’s nothing quite like milling around in a car park sipping your “cup ‘o splosh” and devouring a bacon roll, while admiring other bikes and having a good old chin-wag with like-minded people.

And long may that continue….