You may have noticed that a “Donate” button has appeared on the right hand side of the Blog screen.

This will allow (but certainly is not intended to oblige) readers who enjoy reading the Blog to show their appreciation by contributing to its upkeep. Likewise Wingers who have sold something by advertising something For Sale on the Blog might like to make a donation.  There are costs associated with running a Blog like this one and the modest amount of paid advertising the Blog carries doesn’t cover them.

Anything you decide to donate will be appreciated, even 50p or £1 will be helpful.

Clicking on the button will take you to PayPal but you don’t need a PayPal account to donate;  you may use any debit or credit card.

In the unlikely event that I get swamped with money, any surplus will go to a good biking cause!

The Blog Badge - free to to contributors!

This Blog has been running for less than two years and has, thanks to you Readers, steadily increased its circulation so that it’s now getting over 4,000 unique visits per week.

Since I’ve written most of the Articles I suppose I should take some credit for raising this level of interest but I’m very grateful to the guest writers who have contributed too, without whom I suspect that the Blog would lack the breadth of appeal which it seems to have.  And maybe I’ve been lucky in seeing a gap in communications within the UK GoldWing Community which was itching to be filled.

Anyway, thank you Readers, for making it all worthwhile by visiting the Blog and dipping in to what is building up to be a source of reference articles as well as topical news and comment.  The fresh Comments which pop up about Articles which were written some time ago illustrate this encouraging aspect of readers’ interest.

This Blog was intended from the outset to be a “non-denominational” internet magazine for UK Wingers rather than an outlet for any particular club or faction.  The more contributors it has the better it will get, so let’s have more offers from Guest Contributors.

There are other ways of reporting on and publicising your activities or interests as a Winger on the internet or in club magazines of course, but this Blog offers pretty immediate and widespread exposure to the UK GoldWing Community, so it does now provide an outlet which can be useful to many Wingers and to their clubs or special interest groups.  I would be delighted to see any Winger and any GoldWing Club (or Region) using this Blog to spread his, her or its word.  No real restrictions, just an expectation of a friendly and decent approach.

I will help with any formatting or editing which is necessary and I will also process any pictures you want to include.  All you need to do is tap out whatever you want to say on the keyboard or send it to me by email (using the Contact facility on this Blog) and we’ll work on it together from there.

And if you contribute an Article you will be offered, in way of thanks for your efforts, a free sew on Blog Badge, as illustrated.

By the way if you haven’t tried it yet the Contents and Site Map facility is a very useful way of seeing what’s on offer in the way of back Articles on this Blog – there’s quite a selection to choose from.

Sharing the back seat driving

Apologies to regular visitors for disappearing from the internet for a couple of days over the recent weekend.

No sinister explanation for this, just a problem at the web-hosting server which couldn’t be corrected until after the weekend, so we may now be looking for an alternative home.

Meantime service will hopefully not be interrupted again either prior to or during any switch-over which may follow and the domain name of this and all associated sites will remain the same and there will be no need for viewers to change bookmarks or anything else on their computers.

Meanwhile I watched Drill Team Practice again on Sunday morning and here’s a picture of Trudi and Smitty doing their seat-swapping routine I mentioned in my Postcard from America article.  More pictures coming soon.

Click on the image for an enlargement

This Blog is predominantly a collection of feature articles for Wingers, with occasional bits of topical news or comment on the GoldWing club scene thrown in.  It’s not a personal blog, so you won’t find much about me on it, although I did once get a bit carried away and wrote about my own hip replacement operation.

The Blog seems to have captured the interest of quite a few UK Wingers (and others, but hopefully mostly Wingers) since it started in November 2008 and it is currently attracting very nearly 4,000 hits (unique visits) each week.  So my thanks are due to all of you for making my efforts to do something useful worthwhile.  I’m by no means a computer techie and all credit for the overall appearance and functionality of the Blog is due to my friend Nigel Mackintosh, who also dreamed up the clever backdrop of a tiled image of the yellow GL1800.

There are (as this one is being written) 145 Posts (i.e. Articles) altogether.  They are usually fairly well continues………

Last week, from July 20th to 26th,  2,786 unique visits were made to this Blog.  This reflects the steady increase in readership ever since its launch last November.

It’s already got a very much bigger ‘circulation’ than any other UK GoldWing  publication.  For example Wingspan, GWOCGB’s  magazine, might still be in second place but it’s only distributed monthly and its circulation has now fallen below 1,000 copies.  And of course it has a month’s lead time for copy whereas this Blog can respond quickly – the Tram Sunday article and pictures were published the very next day.

The Blackpool Light Parade website gets similar numbers of hits too and that’s currently being updated almost daily, so it’s well worth a regular visit too.  There are some very promising irons continues………

I am heartened by the response to this Blog and grateful for the comments which are being made, favourable or otherwise, which I would therefore like to encourage. 

This is a Blog not a forum, but comments, especially innovative ideas, are welcomed and will be usually be accepted without alteration (except editing for typos, spelling  etc) unless they are either offensive in nature or irrelevant to the Article.  Elements of a Comment may therefore be edited out if the Comment is otherwise acceptable, rather than lose the whole thing.  If you would like your comment removed please contact me using the email link at the foot of the page.