For a minute there, with the Sherlock Holmes reference, I thought it was going to be held in Baker Street. :rofl:

Hay on Wye's a lovely little town, and with all the bookshops etc they're used to a load of oddball weirdos turning up so a few hundred dirt covered bikers probably won't even raise an eyebrow. :rofl:

The ride up from Abergavenny past Llanthony, Capel-y-ffin and over the Gospel pass is great on a bike - as long as the road isn't jammed solid with caravans meeting in the single track part. :thumbdown:

Yeah.. It's a very nice part of the U.K. lots of good riding about. The location is going to put off our far Northern brethren which is a shame but Haggs bank fills that gap nicely.

I had a look at the website. Looks like a great site. I'm looking forward to it in 2017.

Is there an irony in some of you erudite, hardened world travellers are moaning that Herefordshire is too far to travel?:rolleyes2:

methinks a lot of irony - it's only 2 hours farther from Edinburgh than Donington was! And from Glasgow, an hour and 10!

So I expect to see a LOT of northerners there, just to show Ted, they're real travellers and not put off by an hour or two extra ride. :)

An extra hour seems like a plus to me! :clap:

If that extra hour or two is sent riding down the spine of Wales then its time well spent. Personally, I think it's a great location. Wales doesn't have a motorway and that's a good thing.

Wales has it's fair share of motorways, enough to bypass Offa's dyke and enable people to leave.
You have to pay to leave on the toll bridge but it costs nothing to enter Wales; "Hotel California" style.

It is the English county of Essex which has no motorways (or so my relatives claim), but enough dual carriageways to get to London OK.

I think bikes are free on the bridge. I've never paid anyway..

The M11 went through at least a part of it (the part I used to live in as a child) when I was over there a couple of weeks ago :rofl:

I must admit it never even occurred to me that Hay on Wye would be too far for people from the north to travel to. You'll need something to drag them down, a USP for the meeting. Do they have a Starbucks there? If not, can you get a pop up one just for the weekend. :rofl:

Well Grant we are another 170 miles and 2 hours further north than Edinburgh but still hope to be there, have a friend near there who runs a canoe business if any body fancys a canoe ride.

For a real Essex girl, from the swamplands of the estuaries, that is the far side of the Moon.

I did qualify my post with the "claim of relatives" piece and I have never bothered to check where exactly the county boundaries just to the north of the Queen Elizabeth bridge (M25) are, if only because that neck of the woods gives every appearance of belonging to the estuarial fringes of the Thames, downstream of the flood barrier.
ie it is treated as being "disposable".

Correct, but vans with bikes in the back are not exempt.

It's the same for the Humber bridge but they don't charge to leave a particular piece of that estuary.
(charges both ways in other words - no inbuilt bias at the toll booth).

While I understand the sentiment and broadly agree, it is often overlooked about how long, north to south, Scotland is, especially for anyone who llives on the islands; it is not up to the mark of say Chile but that is exceptional geography.
Nor do they have those pesky motorways much beyond the lowland belt - that capital city that you mention.

But, it matters not, just about everyone chooses where to live nowadays.

Oh, and the M25 as well :rofl:

You're right though - "real" Essex isn't the East End overspill that became Harlow and Basildon in the 60's (and who are now finding the East End missing them so much it's expanding out to find them), it's further east - the mudflats and estuaries, "Sarfend" to Clacton etc.

The bit we lived in though, on the western fringes, wasn't far from the edges of London but it was particularly rural at the time and between about 8 and 15yrs old I had a childhood on a farm there that could have been straight out of the 19thC. These days the whole area is an enclave, surrounded by the M25 to the south, Harlow to the north east and the Lea Valley strip development to the west, all of them nibbling away at the edges year by year.

Urban myths
 

No cause for concern.
The great myth of urban Britain - BBC News

Or,
What percentage of land in England has buildings on? – Kgb Answers

Or,
http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/new...ales-37204.php

And,
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013...n_4254512.html

It is too far to travel when its not worked into our annual holiday - cant ride home from Hereford after HUBB on the Sunday & get back to work on the Monday. Work = wages = ability to travel.
On the plus side I am on holiday the following week for Ireland.