Fancy a nice day out in Chester?

The first GoldWing Light Parade was held in Blackpool and over a period of several years developed into a standard format involving a seaside resort, a daytime static display, inexpensive accommodation which could also serve as a social gathering place, a best lit bike competition and finally the Parade itself, along the promenade and hopefully past lots of admiring spectators.

This formula was copied with only minor variations in Scarborough and, with a few more more variations, last year in Llandudno.  Both of these venues have proved successful, as has a smaller event in Hunstanton in Norfolk, which was the first attempt at a spring-time Light Parade and a smaller resort town.  Blackpool has been abandoned as a venue because the Parade Route became un-rideable but nevertheless the Blackpool model has proved successful and it lives on.

This year at least four GoldWing Light Parades are planned.  Three follow the Blackpool model: Hunstanton in March, Scarborough and Southport in September but a completely different and very promising GoldWing Light Parade is to be held in Chester  in April.

Firstly, and obviously, it’s not taking place in a sea-side resort – although of course Chester is a City which attracts a lot of visitors, so maybe that difference doesn’t count.  On the other hand Chester is a particularly attractive place to visit for the ladies and maybe that does count as significant.

There is inexpensive accommodation available but it’s not actually in Chester (it’s in a 3 Star Hotel about 15 minutes ride away) but that’s not very different because Southport is in a nice Hotel too and Scarborough accommodation is out of town as well.  And there is going to be a Light Parade – which will be escorted by the Police rather than merely tolerated, but that’s not the difference either.  And I guess there will be a a best Lit Bike Competition, with trophies and fleeces provides by Barry WAlton of Appleyards, so not much difference there either.

So what is the difference?  Why all the fuss about this Chester Event being ground-breaking? continues………

For the third year, Members of GoldWings North West and several other GodWing Clubs, including GWOCGB Regions, will be gathering at a Hotel in Leyland, Lancashire, for an evening of fun, food, entertainment and free drinks.

This is very much a non-political, all welcome event at which any Winger, from any club or no club, will be most welcome.

It’s a Dinner Dance and there’s an opportunity for the ladies to dress up if they want to (and the blokes) but posh frocks are not expected or compulsory – especially for the blokes.

Two scrubbed-up Grahams!

The ticket includes drinks and canapes on arrival followed by an all you-can-eat carvery-type buffet with a selection of meats, fish and veggie dishes, folowed by pud and/or cheese with unlimited wine on the tables, a free bar afterwards and a fish & chip supper at 11pm.

Further details are available on the GoldWings North West Website.  You can book directly with the Hotel by ringing  01772 422922, quoting reference GW280112.

Accommodation is also available at the Hotel at a special rate if you will be travelling from afar or want to stay in order to make full use of the free bar.

Editorial Note:  I dug Steve’s article out of the queue because it speaks with the voice of an ordinary Winger in an uncomplicated way which seems to me to present a useful reminder to all of us of what’s important as we start a new year.

A lot of Wingers reading this Blog must have at sometime or other asked themselves this question, as both organisations offer to cater for the Goldwing owners in the UK, but in different ways.

Irrespective of politics/delusions/snobbery etc, the bare facts are of importance and interest here so having read many articles I want to concentrate on these.

I believe in the present climate everyone is looking for the answer and it is not as straight forward as it looks, the doubt is creeping in and it is spreading a glum over an otherwise once very happy and stable Goldwing community here in the UK.    It’s like an “us and them” scenario which upsets me greatly and should not be the case at all.

I do not want to favour one or the other in what I’m writing here, but try to offer a suggestion so that all can move forward together and give our community a fresh start for 2012.  The Mayan calender is due to finish on 21 Dec 2012, but it does not mean the end of the world! , or does it?  LOL.  Well, one thing is for sure we can get through this and move forward.

Both organisations have advantages for GoldWing owner’s:

Goldwing Owners Club of Great Britain (GWOCGB): is the older club internationally recognised by GWEF and offer centrally and local club run events throughout the year both at home and abroad.  They have a club magazine “Wingspan” and also have a membership directory which lists members willing to offer help if you have a breakdown or need emergency accommodation as part of their membership package.  The central committee have reps which cover most aspects of the regional clubs activities on a national level ie, Treffens, Events, PLI cover etc, they also have national rules which apply to all regional clubs but leave local events more to the regional committees to run as long as they do not breach national policy.  The club membership fees are flat rate for all and reflect this level of service for the national club as a whole.

The Federation of United Kingdom GoldWing Clubs: Formed more recently for Goldwing owners who   want more freedom of choice in what they want.   This concept involves local clubs running themselves totally but under the help and if required guidance of FUKGC which offers PLI cover for all the events which the individual clubs wish to organise.  Membership fees are set by the membership themselves and this is generally minimal depending on how the club intends to run.  As with the former organisation these local clubs have a Chairman, Secretary and a treasurer and meetings are held monthly.

These are the bare facts and I think you should choose which club suits you more to your own personal expectations and who’s to say you can’t join both!

So as can be seen there is light at the end of the tunnel, both offer similar or different benefits and outlooks depending on what you want out of being a member.

The bottom line is we all have a great hobby and the friendliness and joy of sharing our passion should not be marred by who’s in what club, we should have a sense of common ground or good foundation on which to build a thriving community as a whole and accept personal preference as to whom we hand over our membership monies to be it GWOCGB or Federation.  Let’s just get on with it and have a great time!

Wishing all a bright future in 2012!

The Federation of UK GoldWing Clubs has wished all Wingers a Happy New Year and started the year off with a bang by announcing a reshuffle of its volunteer team.

This reshuffle brings in a new Chairman and involves two other job changes; the official announcement can be viewed here.

Ian Duxbury, already Chariman of GoldWings North West will also now be Chairman of the Federation and Bob Summers, who is reliquishing the Chairman’s job, becomes the Secretary, which is the job I used to do.  I will now be taking more of a background role, still one of the Team but concerned with development issues and with trade relations.

Dave Turvey(Treasurer) and Nigel Mackintosh (Webmaster) stay in the same nominal roles but their division of the labour will probably change too.

It helps to understand why and how these changes have been made (and that someone can come straight into the Team as its Chairman) if you bear in mind that the Federation isn’t a conventional bike club.  There isn’t a conventional committee structure or any hierarchy and indeed one of the cornerstones of the Federation’s approach is that it exists to provide a service to GoldWing clubs and Wingers in UK, rather than being anything like a ruling or regulating committee.

So Ian will chair the Federation Team Meetings if indeed chairing is needed; in practice the Team meets infrequently and mostly communicates by telephone and email and has never had difficulty achieving consensus without resorting to voting.  It’s a small team of volunteers each of whom does what he’s good at doing but consults freely with colleagues as he goes along rather than going solo.

Ian Duxbury is a Training Officer in his Day job and so he brings valuable presentational skills to the party.  Bob and Dave are seen as having diplomatic skills as well as good looks, so continues………

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Stylish or what!

Following a hugely successful Light Parade in Llandudno this year, the Federation Club’s premier Light Parade moves to Southport for 2012!

A plan was hatched some time ago that GoldWings North West and GoldWings North Wales, the two founding Federation Clubs, would take turns to hold a Light Parade in September to continue the spirit and fun of the Blackpool Light Parade when that could no longer continue and so for 2012 we have another new Light Parade Resort to look forward to experiencing.

Jeff Thornton of GoldWings North West is the Lead Organiser and he confirmed to his Club Meeting last Sunday that all the fundamentals for a great Light Parade Weekend are already in place with a keen and cooperative Town Council, excellent cooperation from Merseyside Police and a cracking venue, the 154 bedroom Prince of Wales Hotel on Lord Street, the Town’s main street, in Southport.

The Light Parade Website will be updated shortly and booking information which has continues………

I’ve run quite a series of articles over the past few weeks dealing with some of the history and other background to the decline of the GoldWing Owners Club of Great Britain (GWOCGB) and while they’ve attracted plenty of interest and I still feel that those who are thinking about renewing their GWOCGB membership are entitled to know the score, the Blog has perhaps been getting a bit too political of late.

We’re approaching Christmas, so I have decided to call a halt to coverage of club politics for the time being in favour of something lighter and more entertaining.  I will be pulling or modifying some of the recent articles for the same reason – although not, I hasten to add, as a retraction of any kind.  I have always taken some trouble to establish the accuracy of what I have revealed and that still stands.

The viewing figures for the Blog show, as they always seem to do, that revelations and analysis of club politics is popular reading so I will continue to cover it but I was starting to get unnecessarily personal in some of the criticism I had written and that was a change of style which I’m not comfortable with, so as well as taking a break I’ve removed or modified (or will be doing so) a few things accordingly.  If you haven’t read all the recent stuff yet and want to do so you’d better be quick!

So for the time being at least, unless newsworthiness or other provocation dictates otherwise, I will be steering clear of GWOCGB’s problems in favour of more seasonal and entertaining fayre.  Sadly that won’t mean that GWOCGB’s problems have gone away of course and there are unfinished and newsworthy stories which I will probably cover as they come to fruition.  But I’ll try harder to focus on issues rather than individuals from now on.

It’s the run up to Christmas, we’ve all got to get the decorations up and think about the presents (other than bike bits) which we should have bought by now but haven’t, so I’ll give politics, or at least the contentious side of things, a rest at least until next year.

Happy Christmas to all my Blog readers, whatever your club affialtions or aspirations might be and however you prefer to pursue your own GoldWing interests.

With a GoldWing engine, would this fit the Rules?

Lots of bikers, and lots of Wingers, like to combine their motorcycling hobby with camping; it offers social opportunities which are broader than simply gathering for a meal and a few drinks in a hotel after a day’s riding on tour – and of course camping can be significantly cheaper than other ways of getting accommodation when you are away from home territory.

Indeed camping will have been associated with motorcycling way back when motorcycling was the working man’s affordable transport rather than a predominantly recreational vehicle, so it was natural to try to make use of the bike, and especially sidecar combinations, for family outings and holidays too, including going to bike club camping gatherings – all of this long before GoldWings came on to the scene.

Camping gatherings would therefore have been the natural way for Wingers from different parts of the Country to get together and why from its earliest days, GWOCGB formed as a camping-based Club.  And for some Wingers camping with other Wingers might even have been and still be the sole or main reason for buying their GoldWing, which they might never have used for the long distance touring for which the bike was designed.  A substantial number of GWOCGB Members still look forward, above all else, to their season of WingDings and the annual major gathering, the Treffen, where they can meet up again with familiar faces, enjoy a bit of group riding and maybe get some new accessories and some technical help or advice, but above all enjoy the company of like-minded friends. continues………

The title of this Article is a recent quotation from a long-standing GWOCGB Member which seems to me to sum up the Club’s current position very clearly.

GWOCGB has only ever tried to be a national Club.  If the Club’s National Committee lose the confidence of the membership and there is no prospect of replacing them with people who could  run the Club as a national Club, GWOCGB as we have known it will indeed fail.

And with the announcement today that another Region, Surrey Wings, has folded, things are not going well.

The National Committee were told recently of another Region which is currently tottering on the verge of leaving the fold.  The first reaction was to point out that all remaining funds would have to be handed over.   Perhaps they thought it would discourage desertion.  Don’t worry was the reply, we’ll have a party or something, there won’t be any money left.

It hasn’t been a good NEC Show for the Club this year either; the Club usually gets a decent crop of new recruits each year and has had over a hundred in the past – this year there have been less than a handful, indeed if I overheard correctly when I was there yesterday only one couple have been signed up all week.  And all week long Members of GWOCGB have been calling at the NEC Stand to make it clear that they won’t be renewing this time.  Things are not going well at all.

The principal value of having a national Club, as GWOCGB has always focused on, is that friendships across the whole country can be fostered.   Every member has a right to attend continues………

It's ALL about Freedom of Choice!

It’s a bit early to be writing the history of the Federation of UK GoldWing Clubs but it is now approaching the end of its third year and it’s having a very big impact on the UK GoldWings scene, so perhaps it is time to record how and why the Federation came into being – not least because its origins have had a big impact on what the Federation is and where it’s going.

The idea of a federated GoldWing club organisation in UK, or rather the seeds of the idea, arose one evening in January 2008 when I was having a quiet moment in the bath with a glass of whiskey in my hand.  I was reflecting on problems I was facing at the time and probably feeling a bit hard done to or sorry for myself because they were only partly of my own making.  But soaking in the bath and sipping a good whiskey is a privilege which reminds you to count your blessings and look on the bright side and it might have been this effect which turned my thoughts away from the immediate problems towards the bigger picture and the longer term.

It might even have been my favourite whiskey, Lagavulin, one of the peatiest and most aromatic of the Islays and now a rare treat at over £40 per bottle.  In 2008 it could be bought for around £25 per bottle and sometimes less but even so it would have been a special treat, worthy of sipping slowly rather than drinking for effect.   Nearly three years on, with the Federation established and thriving and the problems I was facing back then water which has long since flown under the bridge, it’s perhaps time I treated myself to some more of that magical fluid to say thank you.

In January 2008 however the problem of the failed launch on the GWOCGB Forum of the Blackpool Light Parade was a big one and it was potentially insurmountable.  I’d taken over the reins from Bob Summers after a successful 2007 Event with ambitions expand it and I was already, within less than three months, facing something of a disaster. continues………

Click on the image for an enlargement

One of the benefits for an existing GoldWing Club or Region which affiliates with the Federation of UK GoldWing Clubs is a free, ready to go club website and Elite Wings have just taken advantage of this and taken control of their new one.  It’s on the same domain name they’ve had for years, www.elite-wings.co.uk, but they are now benefitting from a new, high performance webhosting service and new, specially adapted website software has been installed.  And it hasn’t and won’t cost them a penny.  Even the webhosting charges are covered by the Federation.

The reason why it was worth Elite Wings going to the trouble of switching to a new website is that as well as being free of charge, the Federation’s club websites are user-controlled and easy to operate, so that the Wingers who run Elite Wings can add and modify stuff themselves, including adding pictures to a sophisticated (i.e. easy to load) photo gallery.

They will now be able to enter their own information about forthcoming or past events, add images if they wish and update the information any time they wish.  All their Members can also comment on anything which appears, for example to say “count us in for that one” and suchlike, so it works as well as having a club forum for most purposes, without having any of the risks or responsibilities of having a club forum.  Elite Wings like many clubs these days, also has a Facebook Page on which real-time chat can take place so the combination of the two works well.

If you visit the recently launched GoldWings North Midlands website, which the Federation provided from scratch in less than three weeks, you will notice similarities but also differences.  If you know what to look for you could also recognise that the GoldWings North West website has similarities too – and since that one is more established and has a lot more stuff on it, you will also see how much scope Elite Wings will now have to develop the content of their new website.

All this comes with a friendly support package of training and troubleshooting as the operators of these websites learn the ropes.  “Driving” one of these websites is a lot less complicated than operating the switches on an average GoldWing and it is completely unnecessary to be a geek to be the Club’s website operator.  Or one of the operators because there is no reason why several Club Members can’t have access to put stuff on the website if that’s the way Elite Wings wants it.  Parts of the website can be (and in this case already are) restricted access, for Elite Wings Members only, protected by a password which the Club itself can update anytime it wishes.

The Federation can provide this service to GoldWing clubs, free of charge, because the underlying development work to construct the website system is shared across all of them, so that although they look different and will look more different as their varying content builds up, they use the same website “engine and chassis”.  So there is economy of scale and there are advantages of commonality for purposes of training, troubleshooting and so on.