I simply wished to remind you of our final monthly meeting of 2017 which will be held on Monday 11th December at Bilton Cricket Club starting at 7:30 pm.
The meeting will be light-hearted and given over to our now traditional Christmas Quiz or competition. Yes, there will be some questions and activities linked to bikes and riding, but other skills and knowledge will be very useful. So, the evening is one to invite your partner or friends and introduce them to some of the camaraderie and interests of our club.
That reminds me that I will need to see that there are some prizes as well as our usual supper.
I hope that you will be able to come and look forward to seeing you.
Our Annual General Meeting is held as part of our monthly meeting in March. The forthcoming AGM will be held on Monday 12th March 2018.
All the elected officer posts and vacancies on the committee are decided by members’ votes but I wanted to give advanced notice for the elections of two positions where there will not be the option for members to fill them by re-electing the present post holders. Our Treasurer, Andy Pratt, is taking retirement from his job at the end of the year and has some grand plans. For my part as Chair of the group, I do not wish to put myself forward to continue in that capacity next year although I hope to remain an active member of our club.
Like all clubs and societies, Harrogate Advanced Bikes draws strength and inspiration from its members and through new people arriving on the committee to take up positions of responsibility. I sincerely hope that there will be a good level of interest in the vacancies that will arise at our AGM and I would earnestly encourage you to consider putting yourself forward to help in some way or other. Our work supporting the aims of IAM and helping associates gain ‘Skills for Life’ is very worthwhile and I hope that it will long continue. Please help our club to remain strong.
Our December meeting will take the form of our Christmas Quiz event. The word quiz does not exactly cover what is planned. There will certainly be some questions on bikes and biking but also fun activities that that require no knowledge or skills about riding and the evening will just be about having fun meeting up together at the end of the season. We will have our usual supper as part of the proceedings.
Do please put the date in your diary and persuade your partner or biker friends to come along in order to make up your own small group of competitors. There may even be some prizes!
We will meet, as usual, at Bilton Cricket club from 7:30 pm and I look forward to seeing you there.
Roy Beniston has contacted the club to invite members to contact him if they might be interested in touring Ireland next year in May / June 2018.
Roy writes: –
I will be going again in May/June 2018 having experienced a fantastic Whole of Ireland tour in May of this year.
The tour will be conducted through “Wild Irish Motorcycle Tours” on a twin centre basis with trips radiating out shamrock fashion with three to four days at each hotel. The tours would cover the spectacular coast-line of the west coast of Ireland, including the “Ring of Kerry” and the “Ring of Beara” plus other lesser known routes.
Likely cost including 3/4 star hotels B&B will be approx €105 per day for Guided Tours or €85 per day for Self-Guided [Guided versus Self Guided will depend on numbers] – minimum six people required for a full Guided Tour.
Anyone interested to please contact me via e-mail using roy.beniston@icloud.com or mobile 07539 690274 for further details.
If interested, I have made a short video of the trip I took in May of this year, which I would be happy to show at one of our meetings to give people some idea of the scenery etc. [can’t guarantee the weather!]
Wild Irish would do all the arrangements and the tour would be fully insured through them.
This event is being arranged by Colin Appleyard Ltd on Friday 15th December from 6 p.m. at their motorcycle branch premises in Keighley. Keith will be up on stage with stories from his championship winning season where he kept us all on the edge of our seats until the very last race. He’ll also be joined by the team’s Superstock rider Brad Jones who finished 3rd in the Championship and is certainly one to watch in the future.
Barry Ring has booked four places (one for himself I presume) and is offering to fill his car, offering places to any friends from the Harrogate area who might wish to go along with him. It is also possible to book tickets directly with Appleyards at www.colinappleyard.com/motorcycles
If you are interested in going with Barry, please email him at barry.ring@which.net
I am delighted to inform you that, thanks to the efforts of Bob Hill, we have secured a speaker for our club meeting on Monday 13th November. We shall be joined by one of our former members, Graeme Rimer who is both a historian and a biker.
His illustrated talk is called The Motor Machine Gun Service in the Great War. The title might seem misleading, but the ‘Motor’ bit actually means ‘Motor Cycle’, and Graeme’s talk discusses the formation and something of the deployment in British military service of motorcycle combinations mounted with Vickers machine guns.
His presentation will comprise some 50 images, starting from the late 19th century with the development by Hiram Maxim of the first fully-automatic machine gun, which developed into the Vickers Gun by 1912. The factor which sparked Graeme’s original interest was that among the first specially-designed motor cycle combinations which saw active service in WWI were those built by the Scott company at Shipley (actually Saltaire). His presentation includes quite a few photos of them which few people have seen, but they went down very well when Graeme spoke recently to Scott Owners’ Club and then the NE Section of the VMCC.
The talk begins with a 5-minute modern animation which helps to explain the working and construction of the Vickers Gun, to assist understanding of the weapon which is really the subject of the talk, focussing on motorcycles, all illustrated by slides. The photograph on this page shows a Scott ‘Gun Carrier’ – one of Alfred Angas Scott’s special machine gun outfits.
Scott Gun Carrier
We are very grateful to Graeme for being willing to come along at short notice to add to our programme. I hope as many members as possible will attend for what promises to be a very interesting, different and enjoyable evening. It is not the first time that Graeme has contributed to our club programme. Some years ago, when he was then employed in a senior position at the Leeds Royal Armouries, Graeme arranged a very interesting special visit to the museum for club members which I know was vividly remembered by all those who attended.
I regret to inform you that our speaker scheduled for our club evening in November is no longer able to come along due to personal reasons. We were to welcome Mike Coward, proud owner of two Ducatis which he rides in Spain on track days. I hope that it may be possible for him to come along and speak to us on a future occasion.
This does leave us with a gap in our programme. Our meeting will go ahead whatever, and we are scratching our heads to see if we can find a suitable speaker or activity to put on that evening. If anyone has any firm suggestions or leads, please do let me or any member of the committee know. I hope to see as many of you as possible, nevertheless, as it is always good to meet up socially and talk about bikes.
Our Christmas meeting will be held on Monday 11th December at Bilton Cricket Club and scheduled to start at 7:30 pm. It will be our now well established Christmas Quiz. Please see if you can bring someone along with you and help make up a team. You can offer any guests the assurance that the questions will not all be about bikes and road safety, but will comprise a range of memory and task activities designed to inform and amuse. We will have our usual supper.
The club will be holding its now long-established event on Saturday 3rd February 2018. The Not-Christmas-Dinner will take place at The Old Spring Well, Otley Road, Harrogate HG3 2AP at 7:30pm for 8:00pm.
Mike Fourie has kindly agreed to organise our annual dinner once again and those wishing to come along should send their names to Mike at mike.fourie38@gmail.com
Remember that partners are more than welcome and it would be good to have a splendid turn out, once again, for what is a most enjoyable evening.
The cost is £25:00 per person and payment should be made to the club, either by cheque (made out to Harrogate Advanced Bikes) and given to Andy Pratt our treasurer, or preferably, transferred by BACS directly to the club account – Lloyds Bank, Sort Code 30-93-91, Account Number 01807888 together with your name as a reference.
DO NOT MISS our last Group Sunday run of the Season.
Meet Asda lorry park from 9.00 am for 9.30am prompt start.
Alternative pick up 10-00am The Bull at Broughton ( A 59 )
Andrew will lead the last Sunday ride of the season, through Bowland, coffee at Tosside, then Ingleton, Dentdale & on to the Kearton Country Hotel, Thwaite, for Lunch. Bob will sweep up as tail ender
Look forward to great views, a good mixture of B roads and minor roads & of course a chin wag with your HAB Biker mates.
We shall finish at Ripley for Ice Creams after 145 miles
