Event Reports

Wakefield MAG Bike Show - Monday 1st May 2017

Wakefield MAG Bike Show

We hosted our popular annual bike show at the Wakefield May Day Gala, on Monday 1st 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 the 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 the Yorkshire MAG stand (well, pending a few head scratching moments as we desperately tried to remember how it had gone up the previous year), and populated it with lots of MAG promotional material, leaflets, posters, copies of the Road magazine, together with Wakefield MAG products for sale. Following the success of last year, we also repeated the tombola, raffling prizes most of the branch had donated.

And last by not least, we also had a 'Prize Pops' pull the lucky sweets game.

Our Stand

So, with our stand all set up, we then waited for the show entrants to start rolling in. The bike show entries remained fairly light in the morning as the weather forecast wasn't that promising and the clouds looked ominous, so people were obviously holding back and keeping an eye on the weather ... come lunchtime though, it brightened up (we even had the sun out), and the bikes came flooding in. We had lots of coming and goings throughout the day but had around 40 bikes, combos and trikes in total, which was a brilliant turn-out.

Some bikes in the Show

The bike show judging started around 1:45pm and following the MAP rally bike show format, 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, sold quite a few Wakefield MAG products (incl. our last jacket for £30) and joined up 6 new MAG members. The tombola was particularly successful pulling in £142, whilst the sweets game raised a further £38, all of which goes towards the MAG fighting fund.

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 the Wakefield MAG members who were there early in the morning to put the stand up, man it all day and pack it all up again at the end of the day - 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 2018.

The Gala is a popular event