This little girl was abducted from a holiday resort in Portugal four years ago and her parents and their family haven’t given up looking for her.   They are still searching with all the energy and commitment they can muster.

As motorcyclists we get around a bit and we use our eyes.

Madeleine has a very distinctive defect in her right eye which looks like a black mark, bottom left.

It’s is easy to remember and would be easy to recognise, providing you look.

She will now be four years older, so she will look like a 6 to 9 year old.

If you see a young girl in this age range with a right eye defect like this one do not hesitate to contact the police, wherever in the world you might be.  For more information click here.

The Trough of Bowland on a Spring day

It was a perfect biking day in the North West recently, clear sky and sunshine and warm enough to sit out and enjoy tea and a toasted tea cake at Slaidburn when I got there with another couple of bikers who had the same idea.  One of them was even older than me and hadn’t brought his bike that particular day, but he took the opportunity to join us for a chat, as I had done by joining the other biker at his table when I arrived.

I chatted to another elderly Honda VFR rider at the Devil’s Bridge, Kirkby Lonsdale, also in the sunshine, on another ride a day or two later.  He had ridden over from Ripon and was feeling a bit tired because he’d taken an indirect route and he was a bit worried he’d taken on too much and would be very, very tired when he got back home.

He was perhaps entitled to feel tired after that ride at 79 years of age, on a Sports Tourer like the a VFR.  My idea of the bike I will ride when it’s time to give up the Wing is more like a Honda Deauville.   I used to say I’d like to be shot by a jealous husband at the age of 85 but if I can still be enjoying a longish day out continues………

Just one little corner of their huge GoldWing Accessories Showroom

Once again Knutsford Honda will be offering big and genuine discounts to Wingers on their huge stocks of GoldWing accessories at the first Chrome Crazy Weekend of this new season.

No nonsense involving jacking up ticket prices to make the discounts look better, as you might have seen elsewhere, Knutsford Honda plays it straight and the discounts are real.

They also carry the largest stock of GoldWing accessories in UK by far, so even as a browsing opportunity it will be worth making your way there.

It’s easy to get to them (only 2 miles form M6) Junction 20) and there are displays by specialist suppliers as well as catering laid on – what better opportunity will you have this coming weekend to meet up with your old GoldWing buddies and enjoy a bit of company and oggle at the shiny bits, even if you’re not planning to buy any right now.  There’s bound to be something new to look at; there’s new stuff coming out all the time.

The Event runs all day on both Saturday and Sunday so you can take your pick or come on both.  There’ll be a big crowd turning up on both days so to meet different people and to fill your trunk with shiny bits twice and spend a bit more of the kid’s inheritance that they don’t really deserve.  Why not?

No named biking celebrities this time but Eric Warburton, the Proprietor, will be on hand and is always worth a friendly chat – and it’s nice to see the boss supporting Events like this in person isn’t it? And if Eric’s stunningly beautiful niece is on hand to meet and greet again, who needs a biker celebrity anyway?  She was much nicer to look at than Fast Freddie!

So, especially if your biking season hasn’t got going yet, next weekend at Knutsford Honda is definitely something to aim for.

For further details or directions visit their website at www.knutsfordhonda.co.uk

or telephone 01925 752600

A friendly and safe forum to visit

Regular visitors to this Blog may have seen an early version of this article  which was published recently.  It was withdrawn for re-writing after concerns arose about whether one of the new forums which were described in it could safely be recommended.

I wrote an Article about Forums for UK Wingers not all that long ago, at which time I was singing the praises of a new one (to me) the GoldWing Riders Forum which I was finding quite useful.  This was because it was non-aligned (so no club or other politics) and conspicuously friendly in its tone.  And I’ve also recently mentioned that the GWOCGB Forum is cleaning up its moderating act too, thereby becoming a friendlier, if somewhat quieter, place to browse.

In a surprising, and for me a very disappointing development, the owner of the GoldWing Riders Forum, David Williams, announced that he will be closing it down soon. He seems to have felt that it was continues………

This is the analogue clock on a GL1000 GoldWing Executive, a special and limited edition of bikes produced in UK only.

As part of a restoration of one of these bikes a UK Winger needs the plastic mounting pod and ideally also the clock.

The pod is about two inches in diameter and four inches long.

It’s quite possible that this mounting pod was sold as an accessory or used for other vehicle applications in the late 1970s so if these pictures ring a bell of any sort and you might be able to help, please contact me via this Blog.

In addition to a fair price you will be rewarded with personal fame via this Blog. Please do your bit to help a fellow Winger by searching your nooks and crannies and peeling your eyes at auto-jumbles and the like. He will be very grateful.

Spring is here!

Winter is all very well in small doses and I suppose we’d miss it if it never happened but exceptionally cold weather and dark afternoons do get wearing after a while and the sight of daffodils and other spring flowers has really cheered me up.

Not that I’m any sort of gardener, indeed I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to avoid learning the difference between the plants and the weeds, but after a couple of weeks away from home in Lancashire, coming back to see colour appearing (or at least colours other than green appearing) is really heartening.

Getting the bike back on the road might have had something to with it too of course and with a weather forecast set fair for today and the weekend, life feels pretty good at the moment.  Bit of a struggle to fasten my biking gear but nothing a few less pies won’t fix.  I’m retired, so no daily grindstone to trouble my nose – and endless list of jobs at home to be done of course but I’ve dealt with the urgent ones, so I’m off the leash.  For a day or two anyway.

At this time of year the Lake District is a delightful biking area; the tourist season never quite stops up continues………

During the past two weeks or so, while the Blog’s had to do without me except for approving the odd Comment, I hadn’t actually been transported to the colonies for a stint of hard labour, it just felt a bit like it. I was merely in Suffolk, without broadband internet access, finishing off a DIY project.

It’s not Suffolk’s fault that I felt this way of course, they do have broadband, and electricity and stuff like that, and Adnams local beverages are very palatable; it was just the grind of doing a lot of odd jobs and having to de-clutter the accumulated unnecessaries of ten years of occupation, when I wanted to be out on the bike.  Driving around the country lanes in Suffolk, which are not all flat and boring, quite the opposite, made it even worse; the weather was good and these were good biking roads – it was purgatory!

But the bike was in Lancashire and despite my successful struggle, eventually, to re-tax it, the bike needed to have an MOT before my riding season could get going properly.  This was top of the list of things to do as soon as I got back home.

Well, a three year old GL1800 with only 13,000 miles on the clock which has been properly serviced regularly serviced would take that in its stride wouldn’t it? continues………

Click on the image for an enlarged view

Thank you to all you Readers for your interest in this Blog, as reflected in the viewing rates, which have increased markedly yet again.

Last week there were just over 7,500 unique visits, which is a new milestone.  Visits have been running at about 5,500 in recent weeks, which was up 1,000 or so since the turn of the year, but they jumped by another 2,000 during this past week, presumably helped by the release of information about the new GoldWing Model.

This probably doesn’t mean that an extra 2,000 people found the Blog for the first time this week of course but there must have been a few new Readers, so welcome to you all.  The Blog was visited from 77 different countries last week which is quite something.

If you are new to the Blog you might want to browse the Contents List as well as reading what’s on the front page because quite a back list of articles has built up since the Blog was launched in November 2009, many of which could well be of interest.

There’s also a system of Categories which may help you to find what you are looking for and a Search facility, both of which you will find on the right hand side of the screen.

Comments on the Articles are most welcome, especially if you have something interesting or informative to say.  This Blog is an On-Line Magazine rather than a forum or a message board, so Comments are not automatically published and they may be edited – although usually only to correct typos and to help make them more easily readable, that sort of thing.

Guest writers are also most welcome.  Articles on any topic which is event remotely to do with GoldWings will be considered so tell us about your rides, your bike, your club, anything at all.  This is a non-commercial website so there’s no money on offer but if your article is published you will get a free “Contributor” badge as a token of thanks.  Articles are better when they are illustrated, so photos or other images are particularly welcome.  Writing style, grammar and spelling are much less important because I will always help out with those if necessary.  Please contact me with your ideas and offers – you’ll be guaranteed a fairly big readership of Wingers!