AS the current Coronavirus situation does not yet permit a return to The Red Lion for real meetings, and following on from the success of the first Virtual Car and Bike held on April 30, which was “attended” by 73 different vehicles, it has been decided to repeat the online experiment with Virtual Car and Bike Night 2 on Thursday, May 28.

As before, the event will be run through the Facebook page of Classic and Specialist Car and Bike Night, which can be found at: www.facebook.com/rlcarbikenight/ and where further details of the event can be found.

As always, this page is set to Public Access and so does not require a Facebook account to view, although one will be required if you wish to actively interact with the page.

The format of the event will be as per its predecessor. At about 7pm on the appointed date a post will be put up on the Facebook page containing a picture of the famous “Car Park Closed” sign as supplied by Natalie and the team at The Red Lion. This post will, in effect, become the meet.

People will be able to “attend” by posting a picture of their vehicle or vehicles in the comments section, this hopefully setting off some friendly chat very much as would occur at the real meets.

Exactly as at the real meets, the field (or rather the car park) is open to whatever vehicles people choose to bring along. Thus machines of all ages, conditions, values, levels of performance and levels of originality have happily coexisted, and the ethos of “Enthusiasm Equals Eligibility” has carried through unchanged into the online events.

An added benefit of being in the virtual world is that, provided pictures can be found, people are welcome to “bring” vehicles they no longer own.

To see how this worked out last time, and to see what gems were unearthed, please visit the Facebook page where the content from the April 30 meet is still available to view.

While it will undoubtedly be a great relief to everyone when we can safely get back to proper face-to-face “analogue” meets, hopefully these “digital” equivalents will offer an hour or two’s light relief at a difficult time.