In what must be a record time, the Federation of UK GoldWing Clubs has provided a group of Wingers in the Midlands with a fully functional Club Website well before their new Club has even been launched.  It comes with a package of advice and training to help make a solid, perhaps even a flying start with their venture – and the same service is available, free of charge, to any group of UK Wingers who want to do something similar.

As you can see from the screen capture which heads this article the new GoldWings North Midlands website has an eye-catching design.  On closer inspection, if you click on the link to pay a visit, you will see that it comes pre-filled with a starter set of photos and even one or two articles, including one about their local riding attractions.  The aim is to equip Steve Corbishley and his colleagues with the wherewithal to capture interest in their planned Club ahead of its inaugural meeting in February, so that Wingers who might want to join can make contact and get involved from the beginning.

The Federation can do this, and could do it again tomorrow for another group of Wingers on request, because they have gathered both the skills and the experience to do this sort of continues………

If you haven’t already read it, Part 1 Strengths and Opportunities should be read first.

Membership numbers of the national Club have been in decline for over ten years and the rate of decline has been steepening, which indicates clearly that the appeal of national Club is diminishing and that the Club, or perhaps those who run it, are getting at least some things seriously wrong. Taking a proper look at the Club’s Weaknesses, i.e. its internal shortcomings and challenges, is as important as assessing the external Threats.

The more ruthlessly honest you can be with yourself about the downside, the more realistic your plan can be and so the better will be its prospects of successful implementation.

Writing this part of the analysis presents difficulties for me as an outsider to GWOCGB who has often been accused of “taking a pop” at the Club, so I hope you’ll forgive me for erring on the side of tact; it’s not my intention to rub anyone’s nose in the Club’s difficulties, merely to flag up the way forward. You may therefore have to read between the lines of what follows and apply your own knowledge to the list if you want to get to the hard truth of it.

Although it’s important to be aware of them, you don’t automatically have to do something to correct all the Weaknesses and challenge all the Threats. For example some aspects of the Club’s democratic systems may be a handicap in business terms and therefore a weakness for business planning purposes, but such an important part of the Club’s traditions or democratic nature that it might be unthinkable to change them, even if they are a handicap to competitiveness. A Club isn’t only about being competitive and financially successful – although of course it does have to be financially viable. continues………

Build on your Strengths

SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) is a business planning tool, a way of taking stock of where a business (or a not-for-profit organisation such as a club) stands and which way it should therefore try to go in order to achieve its goals.

It can also be used to conduct a feasibility study, for example to assess a development idea or to help decide whether there is a viable way forward towards the organisation’s goal or not.

There are doubtless more expert ways of doing a SWOT analysis than I have used but you don’t have to be a business guru (and I certainly wouldn’t pretend to be one) to make a useful list of planning factors under these four simple headings.    The first step is to define your organisation’s mission or aim, in the context of which the relevant strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats can be identified.

A SWOT analysis doesn’t by any means solve all the problems but it has valuable potential to point the way forwards.  Well run businesses (and voluntary organisations) do this sort of thing regularly and probably frequently, at least once per year.  On the continues………

The bottle kiln is an iconic Staffordshire building and might therefore feature on the new Club's badge

Another new and independent GoldWing Club will be forming during this winter off-season, this time in Staffordshire – although they are casting their net wide enough to cater for neighbouring areas too, hence the intended name, GoldWings North Midlands.

Steve Corbishley, who is one of the movers in this venture and the person to contact for more information, is relatively new to GoldWings.  He joined both GWOCGB (Staffordshire Wings) and GoldWings North Wales to explore his options. He even turned up at the GoldWings North West Christmas “Do” in January this year, which is when I first met him.

Having tried his new clubs for size he likes the independent model.  And having travelled to GoldWings North Wales with some other Staffordshire residents for a while, they now fancy forming their own indendent GoldWing Club closer to home.  GoldWings North Wales will be sad to lose them as members of their Club of course but the hiving off to form a separate Club in and around Staffordshire is entirely amicable and indeed GoldWings North Wales are helping them every way they can.  There is of course every chance that GoldWings North Wales and GoldWings North Midlands will see quite a lot of each other next season anyway.

There are already enough Wingers on board with this idea to form the core of the new Club so it’s a question of when rather than if it forms.  The idea of delaying the inaugural meeting until February, just prior to the start of the next biking season, is to give other Wingers a chance to hear about the plans and be in at the start if they wish.

The intention, unsurprisingly, is to affiliate with the Federation of UK GoldWing Clubs once the Club forms and so the prospective Founding Members have already approached the Federation – and have already been offered advice about how to go about things (such as delaying the formal inauguration until February) and with setting up a Club Website, which you should therefore have a chance to visit fairly soon.

Staffordshire Wings, of which Steve is still a member, got itself a bit bogged down in a protracted discussion about where to meeting in the continues………

This is what you might call a thoughtful rather than a thrilling article, so if you’re keener on entertainment than club politics you might want to give it a miss.

I’ve been getting a bit more feedback than usual lately, for which I have been grateful, even though some of it implies criticism – in particular of the stuff I have been continuing to write about GWOCGB’s problems and club politics.

Fortunately there’s been plenty of positive feedback too but I learned to be self-critical in my riding when I did advanced training with the IAM and it’s something I’ve tried to apply to other aspects of my motorcycling hobby too, including writing this Blog.  I’ve almost always bounced ideas for articles off Winger friends before publishing on potentially controversial topics and sometimes gone as far as getting them to look at a draft.  I’m well aware of the responsibilities of access to a readership such as this Blog has built up.  I have Ian Duxbury as Deputy Editor too now, for which I’m grateful.

But a Winger, a friend, took the trouble to mention his concerns recently that I might be doing harm, so as well as taking that opportunity to pause, yet again, for serious thought about the balance I try to strike, I decided I would share with you some of my thinking about the role of this Blog – in particular relation to bringing the divisions and the unfriendlinesswhich has been prevelant in the UK GoldWing community to an end, which is hopefully what all of us would like to see happening.

My aim has always been to provide information and entertainment for the whole UK GoldWing community and, since GWOCGB has historically been the predominant UK GoldWing club and has also been suffering a serious decline in membership, news stories about GWOCGB have generally been newsworthy.  But dragging out the agonies or flogging a dead horse, if that’s what I’m now in danger of doing, wouldn’t score well with me, let alone with any GWOCGB Members I’ve been upsetting along the way, so I certainly wouldn’t want to do that.  I’ve tried to emphasise several times that it’s not the Club itself I’ve been criticising, or the many nice people among its membership, just those who have made such a mess or running the Club or who have been damaging it by their own poor behaviour towards other Wingers that they have been ruining a once great Club.

I would much prefer to see GWOCGB turn its fortunes and adapt its ways in order to become a friendly part of a friendly UK GoldWing community than any other outcome.  It’s going to be tricky to achieve that because the way things are going it seems more likely that GWOCGB will shrink to become an embittered and beleagured shadow of its former self.  That prospect carries with a serious risk of long  term divisions, rivalry and bad feeling among UK Wingers which we should all be willing to work to avoid and I certainly am.

But GWOCGB, or at least those who run it, have continued to show a lack of ideas and initiative and to be almost consumed by inertia – perhaps even to be stuck in some sort of delusional time warp in which they can continue to be unfriendly ((and continue to allow some of their Members to be particularly unfriendly) to other Wingers with impunity.   With only the merest hints of light beginning to dawn that change has to happen, there’s a long way to go before any hope of a turn in fortunes can arise.  And as I see it the inertia and the lack of ideas are still there in spades so the boat still needs rocking.

I don’t think I’ve gone OTT in that respect so far but it’s important that I listen carefully to the opinions of others about this sort of thing, and I do.  My underlying aim is constructive; I want to see the UK GoldWing community as a whole move into happier times and that includes seeing GWOCGB resolve its difficulties without a legacy of bitterness and resentment.  If I fail to strike the right balance my writings could increase the risk of such a legacy and I’m keen to avoid that if I can.

There will (hopefully, and soon) come a point when it will be time for me to stop being critical altogether and concentrate on being entirely constructive – and indeed I’ve already given quite a lot of thought to how a reformed or restructured GWOCGB can make a useful contribution to a universally friendly UK GoldWing community.  Can anyone realistically hope to continues………

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All credit to Chris Phillips and his Team in GoldWings North Wales for a stunningly successful first ever Llandudno Light Parade.

The sun shines on the righteous and it certainly did in Llandudno this weekend with warm sunshine on Friday, warm and dry all day Saturday and the rain creeping in only as we were all getting ready to set off home.

OK, so the Organisers had the benefit of having seen and experienced both Blackpool and Scarborough Light Parades and that will have helped them quite a bit.  But this was a new town, a new set of options and obstacles and the Organisers did a fantastic job in their planning and execution of a stunningly successful Event.  They have established extremely good relationships in Llandudno and the Town Mayor was positively glowing in his praise.  He had spent most of the day at the Event, travelled by trike in the Parade and had clearly thoroughly enjoyed himself, as had the Chair of the County Council and several other dignitaries.

The size of the crowds on the Promenade during the day and lining the streets were impressive too – encouragingly so for a first time Event.

There were lots of fun aspects, including the chief Organiser Chris Phillips nearly ending up leading the Parade without any trousers but the best thing of all from my viewpoint, was the conspicuously and genuinely friendly atmosphere among the Wingers.  There were Wingers from lots of GWOCGB Regions as well as from other Federation clubs and Wingers who might not have belonged to any club at all and it didn’t matter a jot.  Not a hint of club politics cropped up anywhere as far as I could tell.  We were there as Wingers, joining in and offering to help out as Wingers, simple as that. continues………

The Armed Forces Memorial, otherwise known as The Wall

This coming weekend is set to be exceptionally warm and sunny for most of UK and there are extremely unlikely to be any more of them like this until next riding season, in 2012.

There are at least two GoldWing-specific events, maybe more; Elite Wings have a hotel based riding weekend planned and GoldWings North Wales are organising the Llandudno Light Parade.

These two Events will come together on Saturday because the Elite Wings riding itinerary includes a visit to Llandudno to join in the fun.  The Light Parade takes place on Saturday evening at dusk but there is a full day of meeting, greeting and displaying the bikes to the general public in support of the RNLI – and there’s also a Ride Out arranged for the Sunday morning for those staying overnight.

There’s also the huge and awesome Ride to the Wall this weekend, when bikers gather en masse to show their respects to those members of our Armed Services, which this year is likely to attract over 10,000 bikers, perhaps as many as 15,000, at the National Memorial Arboretum.  Being part of this gathering is a very moving experience.

There are a number of mustering locations for the RTTW which are detailed on their website;  you need to plan to get to one of  these in good time.

It will even be possible to combine the Ride to the Wall with the Llandudno Light Parade since they are only 130 miles apart; you could get to Llandudno in time for the Parade and the subsequent Best Lit Bike Competition and Display if you contrive to get away from the RTTW reasonably promptly after the formalities.

What a way to round off the biking season!

So what’s the connection between 12 people, an empty car park and eight hundred and eighteen days?

Well, it’s all to do with Goldwings NorthWest, and I found myself considering all these things recently when looking back at the formation of GWNW and its progress to date. It’s been an interesting ride……….

Born from an embryonic idea within a group of friends, the Club had relatively humble beginnings, starting off with that group and an empty car park at the Swallow Hotel on the A59 near Blackburn. Although all former members of a national club, those present felt that things could be better than they were and that perhaps the spirit of the club had been somewhat lost, that is, to be out and about on your bike with friends and simply having a good time in the process. So, the decision was made to launch a new club with some important features, such as:

1. No rules, unless a situation arose which could potentially cause harm to the Club and would require the formation of a rule or procedure.

2. No Ruling Committee – only the minimum number of Officers needed to enable the Club to open a bank account.

3. Decisions to be made by the Members for the Members – members deciding for themselves as to what, where, when and how we would do things.

features which, it was hoped, it would appeal and offer something different to the Wing rider. continues………

How do you get blokes to dress up as flowers?

The weather over the recent Bank Holiday weekend in UK was distinctly curate’s eggish and it depended whereabouts in UK you were how much wind, precipitation, sunshine and hot air you encountered.  We suffered continuous heavy rain for most of Friday but otherwise had a dry and mostly sunny weekend of a novel and thotough;y entertaining sort.  It’s not every day that you get to see an attempt on a world record for the Guiness Book of Records, in this case for the number of people assembled in one place dressed as Robin Hood.

As a change from biking events my wife and I took our motorhome to the annual national rally, called the Festival of Lanterns, of the Camping & Caravanning Club.  It wasn’t a complete escape from biking because there was an illuminated GoldWing on display as part of one of the Street Scenes and I also had a test ride on a completely new type of electric motorcycle.  But essentially it was a very big and very well organised camping weekend which proved to be educational and benficial as well as enjoyable, even though I did fall for temptation end up spending a lot of money on new gadgetry.

Liz and I had been Members of the Camping and Caravanning Club (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to give it it’s full title) for some years but only really for access to their network of Club Camping Sites, one of which is handily placed to allow us to visit one of our sets of grandchildren.  It’s a very big and long established Club and is not to be confused with The Caravan Club (CC), the other very large caravan club in UK.  The Camping & Caravanning Club (C&CC) might be said to aim at a slightly more basic level of facilities on its Club Sites (for example the toilet blocks might not be fully tiled or centrally heated) and is often more open-plan in the layout of pitches and more accommodating to tents and suchlike.

Liz and I are Members of both and used both Club’s Sites according to their geographical availability more than for any other reason.  We always enjoyed staying on the Camping & continues………

Approaching the Millau Bridge

Dave Sharp, who writes the Wanderers write-ups, has a colourful and entertaining style and this report of their Summer Tour to the South of France and the Pyrenees is no exception.

Lots of good photos and lots and lots of words – a good read of what was obviously a very enjoyable tour – except that is for the gravillions and Tina’s Dripping Tush, whatever that might have been.  Perhaps its Yorkshire dialect.

The Group met up at a hotel in Kent before crossing via Eurotunnel, then rode all the way down through France staying at Tours, Narbonne and Lourdes, where the aim was presumably to cure Barry of his hyper-articulation disorder.  I’ve spoken to him since he got back and I don’t think it’s really worked.

It’s a story of spectacular and sometimes challenging roads but above all of Wingers enjoying themselves together with their bikes and trikes.

You can read Dave’s write up by clicking here.