Hello everyone
It was great to see so many of you at our AGM. We spent some time reviewing the club year from April 2023 to March 2024 and were able to confirm that it was another very good year for the club. 132 of you rode with us at least once in that period, with 63 of those doing more than 10 rides – this gives us a feel for the core membership of the club. The highlight for me is always at the end, when we announce the winners of our two annual club prizes. This year the “best club person of the year” prize was awarded to Barry Stanton for the remarkable feat of being on 106 club rides in the year (and also for giving brilliant riding advice to a lot of other members). The “best newcomer” prize was awarded to Angie Fisher for hitting 29 rides in her first year of riding with us (and also for being so unfailingly positive and supportive to everyone else). See our Facebook page for some photos. Grateful thanks to Grove Rugby Club for hosting the event so well and also to Di for organising the fish and chips.
A few other things to bring to your attention:
– Cycling UK nationally has invited all members to an online webinar called Gearing up for Change on 5th June. Those of you who are members should have received an email about this a couple of days ago. I encourage you to attend if you can – we will hear from the CEO Sarah Mitchell on plans for the next five years.
– it has been great to see some of our new ride leaders in action in the last couple of weeks. As we discussed at the AGM, the club is entirely reliant on volunteer ride leaders to function and we are constantly grateful for all those who serve in this way. There is always room for more, so if anyone else is inspired to step forward as a ride leader, please let me know. We do have a training session coming up in the next few weeks and so it would be good timing to join onto that.
– I have been asked to take part in the Wantage Literary Festival in November by interviewing Laura Laker, a nationally known journalist on cycling matters, about her new book called “Potholes and Pavements”. This is a fascinating book about the National Cycling Network, including the history, funding and current plans, and it will be a very fun and interesting event at 2pm on Saturday 2nd November. Book your tickets here. We have a member discount for tickets if you book by 22nd May – the code is WAGAT.
– there was some discussion at the AGM about the desirability of ‘bridging rides’ to help bridge the gaps between our various ride levels (1*, 2*, etc). We hope to kick this off for the Tuesday evening pub night rides on 28th May. More details to follow on the website rides listing.
See you on a ride soon!
Best regards
John
