Dear Wakefield MAG member,
Welcome to the Wakefield MAG e-newsletter. If you can’t attend our Wednesday meetings regularly, it’s the next best thing to keep you up to date with what we are up to.
CONTENTS
1) Easter Egg Run
2) Products
3) Rally Tickets
4) MAG AGC
5) ITV Marshals
6) Edinburgh MAG Rally
7) Wakefield Hospice May Day Gala Bike Show
8) Farmyard Party Competition
9) Wakefield MAG History
This Saturday (29th March) we will be joining our very good friends at York MAG, to participate in their annual Easter Egg Run. We are meeting at Stork Lodge Tea Rooms, Thornes Park, Wakefield at 09:00, leaving at 09:30, for a leisurely ride over to York. We will meet up with York MAG at their new meeting venue, which is the Bumper Castle Inn, Wigginton Road (B1363), Clifton Moor, York. From there, the rideout will leave (at 11:00), for the Glen Childrens Home in York. Weather permitting, York MAG intend to ride over to Helmsley, following the Easter Egg presentations. You can of course go on the longer ride-out, or come home, the choice is yours !!
Hope you can make it and see you at stork Lodge at 09:00 (Don't forget an Easter Egg, or other suitable goody for the kids).
Our first supplier order for our new revamped Wakefield MAG products range has just been made, and very shortly we will have Wakefield MAG bike flags/pendants for sale, just in time for the forthcoming rally season. Price is £15 and the stock (of 20) will be sold on a first come first served basis (and we expect them to sell fast). So, if you want a bike flag, do let me know.
In addition to bike flags/pendants, we are also taking orders for the following products:
We also have a stock of the following, available for immediate delivery:
Send an email into the branch account (wfd_district_mag@hotmail.com) or give me a ring (0772 078 4734) if you want any of the above products. Of course, you can also place an order for any of these products at the Wednesday meetings.
We now have rally tickets for sale at our branch meetings for all four of the main Yorkshire MAG events:
All of the above rallies offer concessions for MAG members. Get your tickets at the branch meetings before we sell out !!! Deadline for ticket sales at the Branch is 10th April (ITV), 29th May (FYP), 25th June (GG) & 16th July (YPR). If you can't make the meetings but still want tickets in advance, drop us an email or give me a ring (0772 078 4734) with your requirements and we will get back to you.
This years MAG AGC will be held on Saturday 26th April in Bromsgrove, Birmingham (same veue as the 2006 MAG AGC). MAG's Annual General Conference is always interesting and entertaining. It will also be worth attending so you can laugh at Justine's (Wakefield MAG Treasurer and National Finance Officer) presentation !!!
All Branch attendees at the AGC will be awarded 75 points towards their Branch Heroes tally. If you want to attend the MAG AGC, the address is:
Spadesbourne Suite,
Burcot Lane,
Bromsgrove,
B60 1AA
Directions: M1 to J23a, A42/M42 to M42 J1, then left onto A38 towards Bromsgrove and Burcot Lane is on your RHS.
The AGC starts at 10:30 but aim to be there for about 10:15 to register. Don't forget your MAG card otherwise they wont let you in !!
The call has gone out for marshals to help run this years ITV rally. MAG rallies simply couldn't run at a profit without our volunteer marshals, and all the profits made go towards the MAG fighting fund to protect rider’s rights. Marshal’s shifts are in 4 hour blocks and incentive rewards in the form of food vouchers and T Shirts etc are given. Marshalling can be great fun so if you have never given it a go, why not consider volunteering your services. Let us know if you would like to volunteer and we will give you further details and put your name(s) forward. Closing date for ITV marshal registration is Sunday 13th April.
This year, Wakefield MAG will be attending the Edinburgh MAG Rally on Friday 30th May - Sun 1st June, en-masse. At least a dozen of us are planning to venture north of the border to attend one of MAG's best kept secrets, the Ag Ol Anns An Achadh Rally at West Torphin Farm, Harburn, West Calder, West Lothian, EH55 8RT. Tickets are £12 pre-book and includes £5 worth of beer tokens !!. How can the Scot's be so generous ?!?
Last years event was brilliant, it's a proper farmyard site (bands playing in cow sheds !!!), proper toilets, cheap homecooked food (courtesy of the farmer and family), cheap bar (bottles of Newcastle Brown at £1.50 !!!), and a lovely picturesque camping field. This rally comes highly recommended. Give us a shout if you fancy going as we are taking ticket orders now. It's only 200 miles and you will have the cred of telling everyone you have been to a rally in another country !!!!
7) Wakefield Hospice May Day Gala Bike Show
Our preparations for the Wakefield MAG Bike Show at the forthcoming Wakefield Hospice May Day Gala are going well and already, we have a lot of interest from local classic bike clubs looking to attend.
The Bike Show and Hospice Gala is to be held on Bank Holiday Monday (5th May) at Clarence Park (Thornes Park) in Wakefield. The format will be the same as last year's bike show (why change a winning formula):
Free Bike show entry (but a donation to the Hospice would be appreciated)
Prizes for:
Last years Summer Fayre bike show was very well attended and we had entrants from as far afield as Manchester. This year, we would like to make the show even bigger. Wakefield, unlike a number of other local towns & cities, doesn't have it's own bike show, well, it didn't until now !!
Please tell all your mates about this show as we need a good turnout to make this a success. All are most welcome to come along and show off their pride & Joy. Let's put Wakefield on the map with this one. Hope to see you there.
A quick reminder that you still have a few days left to enter the Farmyard party competition. The competition is simple. All you have to do is log onto the competition page on the Farmyard Party website and answer one easy question about MAG's premier event, the largest motorcycle only rally in Europe, the one and only Farmyard Party. The answer is on the website so it shouldn't be too difficult.
Ten Lucky winners will receive a pair of tickets to each of the 4 Yorkshire MAG events (ITV, FYP, Ganton Gathering & YPR). That's a whopping saving of £190 per winner and it could be yours. It's pure madness!
Go to the Farmyard Party website for a chance to win. Got to be in it to win it as they say. Competition closes at midnight on Monday 31st March.
Wakefield MAG held it's inaugural meeting on Wednesday 9th January 2002 at the White Horse pub on Westgate. The branch was formed as a part relaunch of Castleford MAG (which had become defunct in Spring 2001), and part trial of MAG's Local Group Expansion Plan (LGEP) concept, to develop MAG branches in Hub towns (and Wakefield having that much bigger catchment area than Castleford). The branch was formed by the then MAG Chairman, Neil Liversedge.
We were somewhat successful in our first year, attending MAG rallies en-masse, holding numerous rideouts and other social events, and supporting other Yorkshire MAG branches with their events. We raised MAG membership in the WF postcode area by over 60%, raised funds for MAG and made a very generous donation of £250 to the Wakefield Express Breast Cancer Scanner Appeal. We even hosted a talk by MAG founder and El Presidente, Ian Mutch. For our first year we continued to meet at the White Hart pub on Westgate. The White Hart is a biker friendly pub but we didn't have a private meeting room, frequently having to 'share' our meeting with other drinkers, and had to compete with a very loud jukebox, all in all, not the best venue to hold meetings.
At our first AGM in January 2003, we voted for a change of venue and moved a few doors down to the Waterloo, at Westgate End. The AGM also saw the election of a new Joint Rep, Steve Travis, who would be taking alternate meetings. We also changed meeting nights to Thursdays. 2003 proved to be another very good year for the branch. We attended the local Eastmoor carnival procession and show, raising £100 for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance in the process. We were again very active both supporting MAG campaigning activity & fund raising, generating nearly £2,500 for the MAG fighting fund, through MAG event ticket sales, donations from branch funds, payment for MotoX event marshalling (in conjunction with York MAG) and MAG raffle ticket sales. Socially we were also very active with rideouts and other events and by now our regular pub crawls were becoming quite legendary. We made another charitable donation, this time to Lineham Farm Children’s Trust, in memory of Tony Berry, the Leeds MAG Rep who tragically lost his life in a motorcycle accident in July 2003. May 2003 saw Neil resign as Branch Rep and his somewhat sizeable shoes (literally) were promptly filled by Steve Travis, who has remained Rep to this day (the mad fool).
Initially, the Waterloo proved to be an excellent choice of venue. We had the back room all to ourselves, which even had it's own bar (the perfect venue ?!?). We stayed at the Waterloo for a year but for various reasons, the likelihood of ourselves being able to continue meeting at the Waterloo looked in doubt. At our second AGM in January 2004, we voted to find a new venue. So, for the second time in two years we found ourselves looking for yet another new venue. There are not actually that many city centre pubs which satisfied our criteria for a large private room, secure parking, and reasonably priced drinks (it was fun searching though !!!). We stumbled across the Grey Horse on one of our legendary pub crawls and it certainly ticked all the right boxes - large private room with a PA system if we needed it, secure bike parking (with CCTV) & cheap beer, what more could you ask for ?!?. Only problem was that on Thursday's the room was used by a Jazz group. So, we reverted back to meeting on Wednesday's again and moved to the Grey Horse in 2004. The Grey Horse has been our home ever since.
2004 saw the branch host it's first Post Christmas Auction, which is now firmly established as one of our 'must attend' annual events. The auction raised £135, which we donated to the MAG Foundation. We hosted the 20th Anniversary Fred Hill Memorial Run, getting significant coverage in the Wakefield Express in the process. Wakefield MAG members had a big role in the organisation and running of the 1st Yorkshire Pudding Rally, an event we have seen grow in popularity and stature, from our initial 'shoestring' set-up to what is now a very professionally run event, under the Magic Action Promotions 'portfolio'. Early 2004 saw us launch our monthly newsletter, emailed to those Wakefield MAG members (and friends) who cannot attend weekly meetings regularly, but still want to keep abreast of what we are up to. We also launched another annual Wakefield MAG event, hosting the first Biker Quiz Night in November 2004.
2005 saw us add yet another new event to our ever expanding events portfolio when we hosted our first ever Treasure Hunt. Six teams took part in the inaugural Treasure Hunt and a good time was had by all. We also began our long term relationship with Wakefield Hospice, our local charity, by attending their Summer Garden Party. We hosted a bike show at the Garden Party, which proved a popular attraction and good fund raiser for the Hospice. The Hospice were so impressed by our bike show that they have invited us to exhibit at their shows ever since. Early 2005 also saw the branch adopt an informal nickname, chosen by popular demand and very apt - "The Lost Riders", as anyone who has ever been on a rideout with us will be able to testify. 2005 was a big year for Yorkshire MAG, as that saw the Flash Floods hit the Farmyard Party site in Helmsley. By a miracle, no one was hurt but a number of marshals, including Wakefield MAG members, lost a lot of personal belongings and suffered considerable expense. We descended en-masse to help with the clear up operation alongside a good number of other MAG stalwarts. We contributed to the Marshals Flood appeal and Steve Travis, our Rep, became 'Poster Boy', appearing on the flood appeal posters (even though he was no where near the site at the time of the flood, the big fraud !!!!)
2006 saw us again supporting Wakefield Hospice, this time by providing mobile marshals for their hugely popular Wakefield Hospice 10K race. Marshalling this charity event involves providing an escort for the races wheelchair competitors (1 bike per wheelchair competitor), plus a back marker. The bikes provide protection to the wheelchair competitors from traffic, as the race is held on normal open public roads. This charity event is very well attended, and attracts some seriously good athletes, including Dame Tanni Grey Thompson, the British 10K wheelchair champion. We have helped the Hospice with this event ever since. As well as supporting and attending all the major Yorkshire MAG events, and our own annual events (Quiz, Treasure Hunt, Wakefield Hospice Bike show & Post Christmas Auction), this year we also attended the VJMCC Show at Lotherton Hall, manning the MAG stand, taking memberships and generally promoting MAG. The Wakefield MAG stand at the VJMCC Show at Lotherton Hall is yet another event we keep getting invited back to, and which we are more than pleased to attend and support.
January 2007 was a significant date for Wakefield MAG, for we were 5 years old. We celebrated our 5th Birthday in March 2007, when 23 of us all went 10 pin bowling. Early 2007 saw us relaunch neighbouring Barnsley MAG, our 'buddy' branch. Since then we have held a number of joint events, including a highly entertaining joint Christmas pub crawl in Barnsley. In 2007 we expanded the Bike Show we hold at the Wakefield Hospice Summer Fayre, by advertising it far and wide. The publicity worked and we had a most impressive turnout of bikes, the bike show was a huge success, and was a great attraction at the Fayre. Our aim is now to turn this into a major annual Wakefield attraction. 2007 also saw us host the Yorkshire MAG AGM and post AGM party for the first time.
Wakefield MAG has a large number of committed members and we are particularly proud to have a significant number who were at that very first meeting in January 2002, and who are still active members to this day. So, we obviously must be doing something right.
We have said it before and we'll say it again - 'Wakefield MAG continues to go from strength to Strength'
That's all for this month and I hope to see you all soon.
Ride Safe
Steve Travis
Chairman
Wakefield MAG
0772 078 4734
Wakefield MAG meet at the Grey Horse, Kirkgate, Wakefield at 8:30pm every Wednesday. New (and Old) faces are always welcome.