CLUB MEMBER DAN SEDEROWSKY decided that the easiest way to get to Hampshire from Sweden was to fly to Scotland, buy a Rolls Royce and then re-mortgage his house to pay for the petrol for the 450 mile and 7 hour drive to Lyndhurst. Perhaps not the easiest way then, but certainly a lot more interesting than my crawl around the M25. We’ll come back to the ‘Roller’.

Whatever mode of transport Handlebar Club members decided to use to arrive at the AGM, arrive they did. About 40 of us descended on the attractive but traffic-jam-affected self-styled "Capital of the New Forest" and prepared to make use of all the local amenities. The pubs (of course), antique shops and a wonderful old-fashioned sweet shop proved to be especially popular. Sadly the hotel’s unheated outdoor swimming pool was closed until later in the season so I was forced to abandon my planned 6am dips!

We refreshed ourselves instead with delicious Ringwood Ale in the hotel bar as we arrived, before enduring a mercifully short meeting and then returning to the bar stools we had so recently vacated. By now we had a dozen or so full members in attendance as well as a very impressive contingent of overseas visitors who swelled our numbers considerably. A fantastic turn out from Belgium in particular - many thanks to our Flemish friends.

In deference to Mr Lear who was unable to attend I would like to ensure that I give you full details of our diet over the weekend, so I’ll start here with Friday evening which saw mountain ranges of food being consumed in Lyndhurst’s finest Chinese Restaurant, Sino-Moustache relations have never been better. Excellent food, excellent service, excellent company.

Talking about company, we were joined for the weekend by Louise, a charming student from UCA Farnham who was doing a photographic project on the Handlebar Club as an institution – what kind of institution she didn’t say but after spending the whole weekend with us I’m sure she doesn’t believe it to be a sane one. Louise quickly became one of the Handlebar ‘family’ and after a short trip in the Scandinavian roller, Dan became her new "favourite" – hmm!

The excursion in the ‘Roller’ was on Saturday morning as we all made our way to Buckler’s Hard, a ‘unique’ 18th century village and museum notable as the place where many of the warships in Nelson’s navy were built and probably more notable in Handlebar circles as the location of an excellent public house (in which, Andy, we consumed our various barbequed lunch items washed down with more excellent ale).

The highlight of the trip saw us climb aboard a magnificent ocean going frigate, swarm up the rigging and brace the mainsail for a storm tossed voyage across the high seas – well actually it was a thirty minute jaunt up the Beaulieu River on a small launch, but it was very nice!

On returning to the hotel we managed to find ourselves mixed up in a wedding. We hope that Gemma & Simon have a wonderful life together and are not too disturbed by the photograph of the happy couple and a load of hairy blokes that found its way into their wedding album.

While Gemma, Simon, family and friends partied the night away in one part of the hotel we retired to the conservatory where we had a very civilised dinner punctuated by several speeches, a raffle, the award of Prime Handlebar and a birthday cake (Andy, I had tomato soup, grilled Bream, Eton mess and coffee all helped down by a cheeky little Merlot).

The birthday cake was wheeled in to celebrate the forthcoming 90th birthday of our very own Geoff White, veteran orange sexer and newly appointed Prime Handlebar 2010.

A very civilised end to a very civilised weekend.

 Steve Parsons