The Fifth Chinnor Bike Day took take place on Friday/Saturday 29th/30th.June 2001 once again at The Sports & Social Club and Sports Fields in Chinnor. The Friday night party featured Headroom, stand up comic Steve Horner and The Cosy Cat Band who went down a storm. A good start to the weekend.

Having had glorious weather in the week leading up to the event, we were all looking forward to a Run-In the next morning in beautiful sunshine. Fat chance. Around 280 of us set off from Thame Service Station at 11.00am and within two minutes we were basking in adoration of the non existant crowds on Thame High Street in pouring rain. The rain slowly cleared and by the time we got to Longwick, the sun was making a half hearted attempt to shine. Then disaster struck. I won't go into too much detail here for various reasons (some legal), but a elderly local woman ploughed into the back section of the convoy, writing off three bikes and putting local rider Keith Mills in hospital with a badly broken right leg, badly pulled ligaments in the left leg, broken finger, broken toe, various cuts (some very deep) and to cap it all, a suspected broken neck. Fortunately, this proved not to be the case and Keith is making a steady recovery. We were very fortunate indeed to have PC Andy Martin riding with us who was on the scene within 30 seconds and very quickly took control.

This obviously created a rather large cloud over those of us who knew what had happened, but when it was clear that Keith was going to be OK an announcement was made to the assembled throng at the Event Site and when it was announced that some of the profits from the day would go into a fund for Keith, many people came forward with very generous donations. I have to say that I found this more than a little touching. We'll be sorting out payment for some of the things that Keith lost or damaged in the crash - notably his glasses that bizarrely disappeared! 19.8.01: We have today given Keith a cheque for £200 from the event profits to help him out short term.

Once we'd made this announcement, things noticeably livened up. Following Headroom's acoustic set on the outside stage, Wycombe band Lithic put up a sterling performance while Wycombe MAG's judging team (which included Steve Wilson of Classic Bike Guide) tackled the job of picking the Bike Show winners; this year we had twelve trophies for the best bikes to give away. Blue of AWOL magazine was due to turn up and join the team, but due to personal reasons was unable to get there - she was most apologetic and has promised us a write up in the next issue of AWOL. Anyway, after much deliberation we picked these winners: