We hosted our popular annual bike show at the Wakefield May Day Gala, on Monday 6th May (May Day Bank Holiday), at Clarence Park Arena. We have appeared at the Gala for a good number of years now, hosting the Yorkshire MAG stand and a free to enter bike show, which is a very popular attraction with the 'public' at the Gala.
Our advance party arrived at the site at 09:00am to set up our new MAG stand, in the same prominent spot as the past few years: an elevated slightly sloping plot above the main arena, highly visible from the entire site, and conveniently next to the access road.
We quickly erected our new stand (this was it's inaugural outing and proved to be a lot easier to manage than the old one), and populated it with lots of MAG promotional material, leaflets, posters, copies of the Road magazine, together with Wakefield MAG products for sale. We also set out our fund raising tombola, raffling prizes most of the branch had donated.
So, with our stand all set up, we then waited for the show entrants to start rolling in. The weather forecast was good until the afternoon when rain was forecast (and it did prove to be very accurate !!!!). We did get lots of entrants into this years show, lots of coming and goings throughout the day and at one point we counted over 40 bikes in attendance. At the time of the judging we had 22 bikes, 1 motorcycle combination and 6 trikes to choose from.
The bike show judging started around 1:45pm and following the success of last years revised format (and taking a cue from the Yorkshire MAG rally custom shows we marshal), we dispensed with categories and instead had 5 show winners and an Overall Best in Show. This format works well as you never quite know what will get entered. As always, the judges decisions were difficult (downright impossible !!) as there was some quality machinery on display, but we eventually came up with a consensus. With the winners decided, it was time for the prize giving .... cue drum roll:
Six well deserved show winners !!! Another excellent show and a most popular attraction at the Wakefield May Day Gala.
The MAG stand did very well and we gave out huge amounts of literature and back copies of the Road magazine, fielded countless queries, joined up a new member, sold a few Wakefield MAG products and sold 3 Yorkshire Pudding Rally tickets and 2 Farmyard Party tickets. The tombola was particularly successful pulling in £101, all of which goes towards the MAG fighting fund. Seperately, donations also raised a further £34.50. Not bad for a days work.
A huge thanks to everyone who brought along their bikes / trikes to show, visited us, spent lots of money on the tombola and products, and of course, a huge thanks to all our volunteer marshals who were there early, stayed late, and helped make the show the great success it was - you are all heroes !!!!
And to everyone we spoke to and invited along to our meetings, we are in the back room of the Grey Horse on Kirkgate, Wakefield, every Wednesday at 8:30pm ... hope to see you all down at a meeting soon.
We will be hosting another show at the Wakefield Gala next year, so hope to see you in 2020.