As Long As We Move

Malle Rally 100, Royal Tunbridge Wells, 2 August 2026

A hundred miles, an old Ariel, a suspicious screwdriver and a Sunday spent getting lost on purpose.

The day started early, with the hope of a smooth ride from London to Tunbridge Wells, where the real journey would begin. Before the smell of coffee had even managed its first attempt at waking us up, we were already breathing engine fumes. I arrived at our meeting point to meet the small team I was about to tackle my first rally with. Conquer was probably the wrong word. As always with Malle, this was not really a race. Nobody was there to prove anything. It was simply a good day spent together, preferably with a little speed.

The first surprise of the morning came with a broken heart and a pacemaker that refused to work. A Ducati had arrived at the meeting point and decided that was far enough. We pushed the big bike along an almost perfectly flat road, trying to jump-start her. Several grown adults ran beside a motorcycle while it quietly refused to participate. Her heart had apparently been broken by spending too much time standing still. After nearly forty minutes of CPR, encouragement and increasingly optimistic theories, we accepted that she was not joining the adventure. We left her behind and headed towards whatever problems were waiting for the rest of us.

By the time the Malle flags appeared on The Pantiles in Tunbridge Wells, the smell of coffee finally had another chance. The Rally 100 was Malle’s shorter way into rallying: a hundred miles guided by route cards and checkpoints, with small teams leaving at intervals before eventually returning to where they began. This edition started and finished inside the Royal Tunbridge Wells Festival of Motoring, whose local motoring story reaches back to the Horseless Carriage Exhibition of 1895. Getting deliberately lost among all that history felt strangely appropriate. Riders gathered. Helmets came off, hands were shaken and little teams formed naturally. A few minutes earlier we had been strangers. Now we were competitors, although that word never really worked either.

There was that familiar Malle feeling again, a crowd somehow behaving like a family that had not seen each other for a while. A fist bump, the flag dropped, and off we went. Route cards, rally numbers and the last practical questions before departure. Robert briefed the riders before the teams began leaving at intervals.

Packed for the road, with London still waiting at the other end of the day. Weekend traffic disappeared behind us and the country roads began folding through Kent and towards Ashdown Forest. After the first arguments with our maps, and the usual discussion about whether we were actually going in the right direction, we found our rhythm. The group stretched along the lanes like a slightly confused centipede. Bodies leaned together, brakes came on almost at the same time and corners arrived and disappeared beneath us. Separate riders slowly became one moving shape.

There were wrong turns and small mistakes waiting around corners. In that sense, it was not very different from life. You moved forward, occasionally had no idea where you were, then somebody pointed in a direction and everybody believed them. Our first checkpoint appeared with a friendly smile. We collected our stamps, drank something cold and stood in the shade as if it had been prepared for us in advance.

For a while, nobody cared about horsepower, another riding mode or the next piece of luggage to buy. We were no longer sitting on a sofa watching somebody else live. We were living it, and that felt like a better use of the afternoon. The first checkpoint. Old, new, polished and improvised all waited for the same hundred miles. At the first checkpoint, the conversation wandered away from horsepower for a while.

Some stops made, maps checked and moved on to the next point. A few calls were made home. Water bottles were filled. Helmets went back on and we returned to our modern horses. The roads became narrower. Trees leaned above us and threw shade across the tarmac as though they had been waiting all morning for us to arrive. At one stop our little team grew. Another group joined us, bringing more voices, more engines and more stories for the next break.

Then the Ariel started refusing to stay with us. We pulled over, gave her a quick fix and carried on. Twenty minutes later she changed her mind again. At a petrol station Jon traced the oil pipe while the rest of us found some shade. Someone called, “You guys go. We will catch up.” No. That was not how we were playing. If one bike stopped, the journey stopped for a while. Nobody seemed in a hurry to leave anyone behind. A few tools, some patience, and soon the Ariel was running again. The first roadside pause arrived without being invited. Nobody left while the Ariel was being persuaded back into the journey. The oil pipe needed persuasion before the Ariel was ready to continue.

The Harley waited nearby with a wooden crate and one screwdriver that seemed unusually interested in the road behind it. Now the old Ariel was riding beside a beautiful vintage Harley-Davidson, and I found myself behind both of them listening to the music coming from their engines. It was a lovely sound. My attention, however, was fixed on a screwdriver sticking its pointy head out of a makeshift wooden crate attached to the Harley. Every bump made it jump. I quietly added another metre between us.

Somewhere between the old engines and my new respect for loose tools, we reached the next checkpoint. Some quick food, and we were ready for the last stretch. By then riders were passing in both directions. We had all learned the small language of the road: a nod, a leg stretched out, occasionally a hand when speed allowed it. The whole countryside had become one enormous dance floor, miles and miles long. Getting lost was part of it. Perhaps it was the point.

For a few hours we could disappear from the routines waiting at home, from work, tiredness and whatever had been following us around all week. What sane person woke at six on a Sunday morning, rode fifty or a hundred miles just to reach the beginning of another hundred-mile ride? Riders, apparently. Perfectly sane people. At least according to us.

The rumble became a mantra. Heat rose through the machine, wind moved around the helmet and the road continued ahead. Where we were going mattered less than the fact that we were moving. Eventually the signs for Tunbridge Wells returned. The circle was closing. We rolled back into the Festival of Motoring, collected our final stamps and found ourselves almost exactly where we had started hours earlier. The last stretch towards Checkpoint 3, with the road still unwinding ahead. We had returned to the same place with new names in our phones, stories already improving themselves and a few motorcycles wearing the evidence of the day.

The Malle Rally 100 was finished. The journey was not. London was still waiting for us. The sun was beginning to fall and Sunday was slowly running out. Behind us were the lanes and the people who had been strangers that morning. Ahead of us was the road home. I started the engine. As long as we moved, it did not really matter where we were going.