There are obviously some people who physically have to be on four wheels, rather than two, but when we finally got to the checkpoint to sort out our press accreditation – we’d ditched the car at the pub at the foot of the hill and walked it – the number of tin boxes of all shapes and sizes filling one of the camping areas was worrying. There were a few bikes dotted about among the sheet metal, but I hadn’t realised that the cars were being held in a separate area to the bikes. The bottleneck had been caused by a lot of cars slipping and sliding almost everywhere except into that area, and the snaking queue of four-wheeled traffic stretched back to the main Ripley road, engines off, watching with some envy the constant stream of bikes running past and on to the slightly less boggy part of the site.

To their great credit, the organisers took a responsible attitude to traffic control and managed to keep the bikes moving while holding newly arriving cars back. It stopped that particular part of Derbyshire for a couple of hours but the alternative would have been mayhem. Four-by-fours were getting bogged down, heavy plant was called in to shift the blockages and ultimately to lay down enough straw to provide sufficient purchase.

I worked out that the chances of getting an overloaded motor, magazines and all, onto the site was too marginal so, having sorted out our wristbands, we ambled back down the hill and headed for home intent on arriving properly the following day. Marie hadn’t wanted to go in the car in the first place and was only annoyed that the Buell was in desperate need of a new pair of tyres before I took it that sort of distance.

Truth is, I’d sooner have been on the Cyclone because the Electra was a handful on the soft mud because of its sheer bulk, and having quickly cleared the track that had been so completely blocked the previous evening we got to see the problem. It’s been many years since I did the Rock & Blues and I’d forgotten just how hilly the site was, but while the undulations were obviously the cause of the problems, they also gave a spectacular view of the main camping area: street after street of dome tents, and not a car in sight; rising up the hill, and down the other side beyond its crest. The green of the field had long since been turned to its underlying brown but there were still brave riders riding about, arriving or returning to their pitch: no-one was running about for fun.

All ‘roads’ were fed off a main road running down the valley: a quagmire that could only be reached after descending the straw-strewn valley side. Easily the width of a two carriageway road, it was a test for both bikes and riders that was more than the equal of many. I tried for the second street, considering it would be less churned up, but I scarcely made it across the main thoroughfare before giving up and, using its entire width, just managed to spin the Glide round and park up on the relatively dry straw at the side of the traders area.

I’ll bet you’re wondering where this is leading, aren’t you? Not painting an especially rosy picture to encourage you to take the chance next year, am I? Well, you’d be wrong on all counts. The site was packed with every style, shape and size of motorcycle you could think of, which shattered any illusions that current bikers were increasingly fair-weather riders. They’d come, they’d seen what was going on, and they’d stayed. And having stayed, they weren’t about to nip out into town for a session before nipping back for the bands, they stayed on-site and the site was busy. Bodies slipping and sliding in the mud, but no trace of anyone looking ‘hard done by’. You could’ve left the site, but there wasn’t much point really unless you wanted to demonstrate your handling prowess: we managed it once to get supplies but weren’t about to attempt to repeat it having safely returned: no point tempting providence.

But it didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter either that the weather wasn’t as quick to clear up as had been suggested by the Met office, because by then everyone was covered in mud, slightly damp and knew well where the covered areas were. There was a sneaking desire at the back of my mind to make a clean getaway the following morning, before the volume of traffic churned the thoroughfares up again, but I’m given to understand that it wasn’t an issue in the end.

Not only did it not matter, it actually made the show for me, because it meant that everyone was there, and the experience was a shared one. Folk were either relaxing by their tents, on the bank in front of the stage, in and around the market stalls, or in the Crossed Piston Saloon where bands played through the day, interspersed with broad appeal activities like the tug-o-war, Miss RCBS Bikini Babe and Mr RCBS Beer Belly contests.

On a more adult theme, pole dancers and male strippers were strutting their stuff within an enclosed marquee, and of course no bike show is complete without a bike show, and the Rock & Blues is one of the majors. As expected, the quality was spot on and the ride-in requirement was welcome, to give everyone a chance, although I confess there were one or two that I wouldn’t have fancied riding from the tent to the stage to collect a prize … but then there are a lot of road-going chops that I’d look at twice before straddling, so that’s just me.

Short of writing out a list of the entertainments laid on, I’m inevitably going to miss out on some so I’m not even going to attempt it – any more than I attempted to see them either up-close or from a distance. Instead we walked our feet off round the stalls, the camp site and wandering towards friendly faces from the four corners of the country, all congregated in this central location. Rich joined us at around mid-day, and we cased a section of the campsite looking for feature bikes and friends, and finding plenty of each.

I’m not going to attempt a band-by-band analysis either, partly because there were too many of them. The Rock and Blues has set itself up as part music festival, and the bands feature heavily. This year’s line up featured some big names, and there would have been some revellers who came specifically for them, but not me I have to say. It would have been good to see Arthur Brown fronting Hawkwind, but we missed that by returning home. I was more interested in seeing the cross-section of people who had come to see so varied a listing, from Rock’s album days through the punk era, Main bands hit the big stage in the natural amphitheatre, as the evening drew in, but the Crossed Piston Saloon played host to a second stage throughout, and there was a third stage which sadly only ran on the Friday night, but which brought things closer to the present day with Nu Punk, which I won’t try to explain because I don’t understand it. The third stage replaced last year’s rave tent, which I perhaps understand rather less – entirely, I have to say, by choice. If you wanted significantly older stuff, the hard drumming Saor Patrol took music way back past the blues roots of the daytime bands in the Crossed Piston Saloon.

The flow of the stage acts – and the competitions – was held together by a couple of MCs in the form of Clive and Charlie, who are now a part of the fabric of the show, and I’d defy anyone on site not to recognise Clive’s voice – or laugh – by the time they packed up to leave: not sure Charlie got a word in edgeways. When there wasn’t a band playing, he was keeping the party rolling with an energy that is frankly staggering: he went quiet for a couple of hours on the Saturday night, leaving Charlie to shout himself hoarse, but he wasn’t preening backstage with his feet up: oh no, he’d double booked and was an hour and a half down the road fronting Doctor and the Medics, returning in time for the grand finale, and the euphemistically named wet t-shirt contest.

Something else that has changed immeasurably in the intervening thirteen years is the number of registered Harleys on the road, and the sheer numbers of them scattered around the camp site, echoed that. From a 1978 Low Rider with all the right bits in the right places, which will be featured in AmV6, through Iron Sportsters, plenty of other Shovels, a smattering of Pans, Knuckles and Flatheads: all ridden and showing signs of evolution, the patina of use and a general lack of accessories for their own sake. Evo big twins and Sportsters were well represented too, with more FXRs than I’ve seen in one place for a long, long time, and more Softails than you could shake a stick at. It wasn’t Minehead, but the variety was greater and just lacked for the rarities, and it was good to see them all rubbing shoulders with a wide variety of other bikes, some mimicking their style, others providing inspiration for future evolutions.

Against this broader backdrop a Harley can look that little bit more special: line up a dozen Fat Boys and you really can’t see the wood for the trees, but drop one in among a group of cruisers or sports bikes and the lines are so much clearer, the design so much more distinct – and, it has to be said, you can see where the cruiser designers have nicked the odd styling cue, and oft-times see how they’ve used it, missing the point completely.

Against this broader background you can see other, non-Harley riding folk picking out what you’ve done with your bike too, free of the official licensed blinkers that we donned too quickly, and free of the influences of this catalogue or that. They are realising the potential that lives within an American-built V-twin, sometimes for the first time, just as you did when a specific model was launched or you saw it in the metal for the first time and knew you had to have it.

Some will be dismissive of bikes that they don’t aspire to, desire, understand or believe they can afford, but it’s a free country and there’s nothing wrong with that. Many others will be inspired by a detail here or there, and some will wonder how they can incorporate an element of one bike into something entirely different, and generally with a lot more success than the big four’s design departments. One thing’s a certainty though: there’s a lot more of us out there, and a lot more coming through all the time and the diversity of interests, styles, aspirations and engineering solutions bode well for the next generation, and the one after that.

When you see the diversity at major custom shows it’s easy to see HOG rallies, whether at local or national level, as insular and introspective but they are a good way to get into the whole motorcycle lifestyle thing. Just as long as you are aware that it doesn’t begin and end with a pig on a spit in the company of close friends, you might just be tempted to venture into a manic, sometimes muddy, infectiously enthusiastic environment in the company of thousands of complete strangers. And if you do, if it’s as laid back but involving as the Rock & Blues was in 2003, you’ll be very glad you did.