Trouble hits the quiet Tenby town

We held our AGM this morning and I gave a brief report to those present on the last year within the club.

This article is to give a little more information to the  members and public alike.

We started off the 2nd year of GoldWings North Wales with 20 bikes .

The year has seen a steady increase in the club membership, currently we have 36 bikes at this time.

I am also aware of another 2 bike owners going to join us in January 2011.

Fund-raising for ASDA Tickled Pink Day

We have had a modest but successful year in our events and rides.

Chris Phillips, our ride co-ordinator, has managed to arrange some very well received rides over new routes for the members to enjoy and a weekend away for the club members to Tenby, which was a great success.

He has been requested to continue with arranging the rides in the same vein as this last year.

He has also been tasked to arrange another weekend away for the club members, again to a similar sort of venue.

A mix of Wings in Germany

We had a few of our bikes travel to Germany for a week’s holiday in the Mosel Valley, where they met up with some German Goldwing friends from Dortmund, and other GoldWingers from GoldWings North West.

As a result of the success of this trip another trip to foreign lands is arranged for 2011, again to Germany but further to the East this time, to the Harz Mountains area for a longer period.

The profile of GoldWings North Wales has been helped this year by participation in several charity fund raising events for the RNLI, ASDA’s Tickled Pink Charity which raises funds for breast cancer research and Ride for Rotary.

Ian - the new Vice Chairman

The RNLI events were held at Rhyl and Hoylake. Rhyl was a 2nd time for our club but Hoylake was a new request to help with fund-raising and it was a very successful event, with plenty of crowds seeing and sitting on GoldWings. We were also joined by a member from GoldWings North West.

For the second year running, ASDA requested the attendance of GoldWings to help with their fund-raising at their Queensferry store and we were able to supply a good number of bikes for this display. Again, we were joined by members from GoldWings North West.

We were also requested as a club to assist with the marshalling of the 2010 Ride for Rotary from Ewloe to the Ponderosa, which due to the efforts of Nigel, assisted by Chris and myself, went off very well.

Dave and Elaine- Tresurer and Membership Sec

The profile of the club this year has been raised by the use of a new club banner, purchased through a grant given by the Federation of UK GoldWing Clubs.

This sail banner is portable enough to be carried on a solo Goldwing with ease, and is useful as a focal point at events as well as a publicity tool for the club and has helped to increase the awareness of the public to the GoldWings North Wales Club.

Additional publicity methods are being looked at by the club at this time to increase even further our profile in the GoldWing Community and to the public in general.

The election of additional club members to the ‘management team’ reflects on the success of the club and the necessity of more help to run the club with the growing numbers of members.

'Do I talk about engines or do I eat these?' - Eddy Quayle

We welcome Ian Murison as Vice Chairman of the club, Dave Large as Treasurer and Elaine Large as Membership Secretary.

We also benefit from the technical advice of our own mechanical guru, Eddy.

The next years ambition is to increase membership even more and to provide more interesting rides and events for the enjoyment of the members.

Dave T

Our Logo

It is now 12 months since that inaugural meeting at The Chase when GoldWingers from the region were invited to attend to discuss the formation of a new club in North Wales.

It was obvious that there was a lot of feeling at the meeting about the way that the club scene within GWOCGB had gone, and particularly, at the way the members of GWOCGB has rejected suggestions for improvement within its regions to attract and involve more GoldWingers to the club.

This club was formed to give more choice to GoldWingers, rather than the camping weekends which all followed the same theme. Great if you like that style of weekend but for those who don’t camp then they didn’t derive as much from the club as they should have been able to, with other events being very restricted.

It was clear from the onset that this club was to be in addition to other clubs that a Winger may be in, and not instead of them, and that membership of this club was open to anyone with an interest in GoldWings.

The first few months were a bit on the quiet side as the riding season was finished except for those hardy souls who ride all year around. We have tried to keep a varied list of events for members to take part in, and due to the formation of Goldwings North West, another independent club, we have been successful in having a good calender.

Blackpool Light Parade

The formation of the Federation, an umbrella organisation created to assist independent clubs, has also created a lot of interest within GoldWing circles. The Federation role was to assist these independent clubs but not be in charge of them. The Federation was to assist with organising some events of it’s own. These events were to be open to any GoldWinger to attend and not just members of the Federation.

This fact has caused upset amongst members of certain GWOCGB regions who are opposed to anything that the Federation do. For god’s sake, why?

A good example of this is the attempts by GWOCGB committee and others within that club to sabotage the Blackpool Light Parade with a series of misinformation that was put out. Another example is meeting up with a set of GoldWingers from Lancs and Lakes Region at a recent event and one of them refused to greet me as a friend, despite having been a friend before the new club was formed. I have never done or said anything for him to act this way.

Expensive purchase at the Treffen

I attended two GWOCGB events during this year, the Treffen at Kelso and the Scarborough Light Parade. At both events I enjoyed the company of many old friends and with so many people coming up to me for more details on the Federation.

In June, Jan and I managed to take a European trip under the guidance of Stuart Ormerod, an experienced Foreign Tour Leader. This trip was to the Mosel Valley in Germany. It was so enjoyable that Jan and I are going back and are prepared to lead a smallish group ourselves. See elsewhere on this website for details.

We have been fortunate to increase our membership considerably since we started and there are new faces to GoldWinging joining our club, after having seen what is on offer from other local clubs. I must thank other local clubs for their attitude towards us as this has encouraged our membership to grow.

A view of the Rhine

The AGM, which was held 2 days ago, was a well attended affair and it was heartening  to see that we have a good base of members to work with during the next year. We have a new rides co-ordinator, Chris Phillips, who is keen to get on with the task of organising a full and interesting rides calendar for the next season.

We anticipate more clubs joining the Federation which will hopefully give more national events for our members to attend, if they wish. I hope that the Federation will also be putting on more foreign trips for members to join in.

I sincerely hope the next 12 months brings about a surge forward in the GoldWinging scene, nationally and locally, and that we are part of that growth.

Dave T