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rides they were, mind the speed limits in town and don’t cross solid white lines but once out onto the unrestricted roads, it was every man, and one woman in skin tight leathers riding a bright yellow café racer Kwacker special, for themselves.
But none of those was ever anything like this.
    Damage had talked to me about the discipline, the presence of an outlaw pack. But hearing about it and being part of it, even in such a tangential way at the back, was such a different thing.
Wibble had been right about one thing though. There was no need to wear anything fluorescent, not riding with this mob.
     
No one, not even the blindest Volvo driving twat, was going to do a sorrydidn’t-see-you-guv-pull-out on an outlaw convoy like this.
    The lights were red as we came to the junction with the North Circular so as I pulled in at the back of the pack behind the two staggered lines of slowing bikes in the column, I was just bathed in the noise washing over me of the clattering and banging rumble of the overruns as The Brethren braked.
    The Japs had copied the look of the Harley, they’d even produced some fantastically close looking clones, but it was all surface. They had never managed to capture the souls of the machines, the feel, the heart, or most gloriously, the noise. That indescribable deep melodic throaty booming rumbling burbling growl emanating from the mouths of the slash cut shotgun exhausts.
    Ahead of me I could see rear mudguards shaking and juddering from the Harleys’ tick overs as we waited at the lights, a sound that at idle always seemed to clutter almost to a ragged dying halt, before tumbling over in its cycle again, the inimitable uneven mechanical heartbeat of the big V twin.
    I was the only one in a leather jacket. The Brethren didn’t tend to go in for the traditional British biker uniform, distaining its practical safety aspect. Black bomber jackets or donkey jackets were their riding outfit of choice underneath leather waistcoats bearing their sacred patches.
    So the riders ahead of me were a contrast of black, red and steel. The high widespread handlebars of the big bikes putting the riders into a wide shouldered stance that flew their colours in an arrogant and open challenge to the world, while below the fat bulbous chrome steel dome of the primary drive cover hanging out low down on the left side of the bike, shining proud behind the riders’ feet and hanging ponderously low, close to the rolling tarmac beneath, giving the bikes and riders that classic Harley profile from the rear.
    Then the lights turned green and the noise picked up into a full throated roar as the heavy machines launched forward again in pairs and swayed in a heavy curve through the corner and out onto the main road.
*
    A couple of hours later we swept through the high street of what would otherwise be a quiet Cambridgeshire fenland town like an invading army, the bikes’ reflections flashing in the windows, and the harsh bark of the exhausts bouncing between the buildings, heads turning at the approaching guttural noise, the bikers’ eyes fixed rigidly ahead, ignoring the everyday Saturday morning shoppers as they stopped and turned to watch the convoy rumble past like some kind of fearsome pageant.
    Our destination was a rugby club just on the outskirts, where once through the gates we rode along a tarmaced track through a small orchard and then out at the edge of an open playing field with the sets of posts at either end, and a reasonable sized red brick built club house behind which the first bikes were pulling in.
    We were here.
As we parked up at the back of the pack, Wibble was already striding straight across towards us, pulling off his lid as he did so.
    ‘Alright?’ he asked with a friendly grin as he reached us where I was settling the bike down onto its side stand and swinging myself off it. ‘Enjoy the ride?’
    ‘Yeah, it was great thanks,’ I replied honestly, grinning right back. It was true. There was