There was a brilliant turnout at Trowell and the support along the way was fantastic Great time at Squires later and good to catch up with a few BMers and of course my lovely mate Alice Hope to get over again soon and looking forward to RTTW Saturday .......HB x
We left from corley services junction 3 of the M6 heading for M1, final destination Watford Gap services.
We got about 200 metres from Corley services and unfortunately a bike burst into flames. The guy managed to pull up on the hard shoulder and put the sidestand down with flames licking all around him. Not really an auspicious start!
Someone stopped to help him and the rest of us carried on at roughly 30mph blocking all 3 carriages.
There were several hundred bikers and some peeled off at Junction 1 of the M6 (Rugby).
The rest of us carried on through the Catthorpe interchange to join the M1.
As we Joined the M1 another group from I assume Leicester Forest East or Donnington were passing at exactly the same time. We merged with this other group and proceeded on to Watford Gap.
Lots of bikes at Keele on the M6. Went down to the next services and most stopped for a while then, all left seperately.. Didnt get much over 30mph for most of the run. Good turnout but, I didnt see any coverage on the news last night. Did I miss it somewhere?.
It was the weekend of the Jennings run in Cornwall (1000 + bikes) so we joined up with the MAG demo at the lunchtime stop and travelled down the A30, no idea how many bikes in total when we all joined up but all you could see was bikes . It was fantastic and hopefully it helped to get the message across.
Weirdoraptor In: Brough, E. Yorks
Posts: 2087
Karma:
S24 - "I was the one on the main picture pulling out the car park right next to the camera man. Black/pink ZXR who waved. "
Yes i saw you on the box mate. A friend of mine was just behind you on her yellow SV650.
Can i have your autograph?
Moonstone and I ended up going to the Warwick Services on the M40 because she had contacts in Warwickshire MAG. There were several hundred bikes there with, as far as I could see everyone riding sensibly. The local MAG rep gave a pep talk about not getting into arguments with other road users so although we slowed everything up all the way up the M40/M42 to Frankley Services, there didn't appear to be any issues. Shame it started raining towards the end of the run.
And to answer your question, Bill, no I haven't seen anything in the media. They may well do their usual stunt of trying to ignore us. However, from various reports, if some meeting places had over 1000 and most had a few hundred then it does sound like an impressive turnout. Maybe MCN will produce a figure.
MAG member Jon Strong has had success in his highly detailed challenge to some of the EU Commission's most lazy assertions about what's good for you and me as riders.Now we can do something very simple that will help Jon press his case and shine a spotlight on the Commission's attempts to steam-roller further restrictions on bike design, modification and use.The European Ombudsman ( responsible for checking whether the EU is playing the game fairly ) recently found that the European Commission unjustifiably refused to answer Jon's queries or to supply official documents relating to a range of issues that will have a big impact on biking, eg; the changes to EU Type Approval, the potential for a Europe -wide super MOT test and development of safety technologies that could threaten biking as we know it. Jon has also asked to be shown the evidence in favour of EU proposals for random/ regular roadside inspections of motorcycles and for the Commission to show whether it has properly considered the liberty issues.ACTIONAll that is needed to show the authorities that there is genuine public concern about this, is for enough people reading this or hearing about it via us guys to contact the Ombudsman asking for copies of Jon's original complaint and the supporting documents. That will make sure the complaint wont get buried.GO HERE ; Ombudsman.europa.eu/shortcuts/contacts.facesQUOTE Ref ; 0875/2011/jf in your request, just asking for it will send the right message.The reason we need to do this are that the Ombudsman isn't totally convinced or supportive of Jon's efforts in trying to hold the Commission to account, he just needs some support from more members of the public i.e US!!So please carry out the simple email, re-post onto other forums you may be members on, this is the nitty gritty behind the scenes stuff that we dont see much of, the real campaigning by the likes of MAG etc, intelligent gentlemen who also happen to be bikers, taking the fight to the EU and picking loop holes with their oppresive ways.Cheers