News
This page will contain News articles relating to the Biking world with an emphasis on our group and what we’ve been up to.
Notice – It’s Official!
Coventry Riders Action Group are proud to announce that as from 1st November 2015 Motorcycles are legally allowed to use the Bus Lanes in Coventry. Our campaign has been running for two years now and we would like to thank everybody who has got involved from signing our petitions to emailing the Council or just showing support by attending our events. Lastly a big thank you to Coventry City Council and Cllr Rachel Lancaster for listening to us and working with us towards this goal. Cheers Ian.P.
DECEMBER 2015
SATURDAY DECEMBER 19th 2015 – CHRISTMAS PARTY. A very Merry Christmas to all from Coventry Riders Action Group. This year we held the party at the Hare and Hounds, Keresley. I’m pretty sure we all had a great time again. We were very well fed and watered and to top off a great night we were entertained by our very good friends Filthy Money who played for our delight – cheers Guys.
NOVEMBER 2015
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 28th 2015 – BLOOD BIKERS CHRISTMAS TOY RUN. What a fantastic turnout. The day started with a Cheque handover of £500 to the Warwickshire and Solihull Blood Bikers and £500 to Abbie’s Hideaway. We were able to raise this money at our Annual party Sent2Coventry back in July. We managed to give £623 in cash donations to Zoe’s Place baby’s hospice so they can buy their own special needs toys. The value of the toys that were donated and bought come to around £750 which we gave to the ‘George Eliot Hospital A&E’ also the ‘University Hospital Coventry & Warwick children’s ward’. All this was achieved from your generosity.
On behalf of Coventry Riders Action Group & the Warwickshire & Solihull Blood bikes, we would like to thank everyone for taking part in the Toy Run, without you guys there wouldn’t be a Toy Run so thank you for your support. We would also like to thank ASDA for making us welcome with tea & cakes, and for donating over £200 worth of toys!
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 8th 2015 – PHOTO SHOOT AND REMEMBRANCE DAY. In order to try and get some publicity for the success of the Bikes in Bus Lanes campaign we organised a photo shoot outside the front of the Council House with the Lord Mayor and Councillor Rachel Lancaster. We had a good turn out with lots of photos taken by the Council’s photographer with a promise of a press release. We managed to get a mention a few days later in the Coventry Observer but unfortunately the Coventry Telegraph still insist in ignoring us. See here… Observer Article
After posing for the photos we then attended the annual Remembrance Day Parade at the War Memorial Park where our good friend Baz Hadley laid a wreath on our behalf – thanks Baz.
OCTOBER 2015
SATURDAY 3rd OCTOBER – RTTW 2015. ‘RTTW is a unique motorcycling event which gives motorcyclists an opportunity to gather together at a place of remembrance, to pay their respects to our serving and fallen service men and women and in doing so, raise funds solely for the purpose of perpetuating their memory and recognising the sacrifice made.’ This is a must do event for us here at Coventry RAG, in it’s 8th year the event just gets bigger and better. A very emotional and memorable day. We will be planning another visit for the group some time in 2016.
SEPTEMBER 2015
11th-12th SEPTEMBER – TWISTED IRON the HAPPENING. What a fantastic show. Organised by our good friends Russell and Beverley Cort of ‘Dirty Donkey’ fame. A great time with the best of people and the best of British Custom building. Well done Russ and Bev for organising a brilliant event, thanks for having us. Same again next year?
SATURDAY 5TH – BIKER DOWN COURSE. Today we had our first ‘Biker Down’ course, with from West Midlands Fire Service. This course is ran informally with a relaxed approach, but very informative, and I will recommend it to anyone. There were 20 + of us on today’s course, But I will organise another before the end of the year. If you are interested you are welcome to come along to one of our meetings and we can tell you a little more about it.
A big thank you to Alan & Lenny from the Biker Down team well done guys, cheers Baz.
AUGUST 2015
SUNDAY 16TH – BRACKLEY FESTIVAL OF MOTORCYCLING 2015. What a lovely day for a ride out! This time down to Brackley for another great day out with loads of lovely machines and stalls full of goodies.
August saw a lot of members away on their holidays but we still managed to fit in a couple of ride outs to various Hostelries in the surrounding countryside.
JULY 2015
SATURDAY 25TH JULY. Congratulations to our very good friends and member Roger Ford and Jez Howard on their wedding day. It was a beautiful day, a lovely ceremony and we would like to wish Roger and Jez, Mr and Mrs Ford, a long and happy life together.
17th-19th JULY – SENT2COVENTRY 2015. Time again for our annual fundraising event in aid of Warwickshire and Solihull Blood Bikers WSBB and Abby’s Hideaway. What can I say? Well I think this year’s party was the best yet. Great bands, great people, great fun. So many people got stuck in and helped out, too many for me to mention here but a big a THANK YOU to everyone. We raised £1000 for our nominated Charities and we will arrange a handover event at some point in the near future.
SUNDAY 12TH – TON UP DAY 2015. Another great ride out to Jack’s Hill Café on the A5 at Towcester for Ton up day. A fantastic event with lots of stalls, food, music and bikes of all ages.
JUNE 2015
June brought us a brand new rally, the British Bikers Relief Foundation BBRF EVEREADY RALLY 2015 held on the 19th -21st July. A friendly, chilled rally raising funds to help support Bikers in their times of need. Thanks to Baz Price for putting them in touch with our good friends at Barker Butts RFC who kindly hosted the event.
PETITION -Armadillo Lane Segregators. As we all know, dealing with potholes and rubble on our roads causes Bikers a daily danger. Having these installed is a huge risk factor for anyone with less than 4 wheels! Clipping one of these when needing to use a cycle lane to ride into in case of an emergency will now be near impossible without the danger of coming off and causing more injurys. PLEASE CLICK HERE AND SIGN THE PETITION TO REMOVE THESE DEATHTRAPS
MAY 2015
17th MAY RUGBY BIKEFEST 2015. In its second year and it’s bigger and better and sure to be a must do annual trip. A great opportunity to litter the whole place with flyers for the Group and Sent2Coventry 2015.
SUNDAY 10th MAY – DOGS TRUST PET FOOD RUN 2015. Organised by our good friend Em Bell to the Dogs Trust at Evesham with the Boring Old Farts MCC. This was Em’s first attempt at organising such an event and it was a resounding success… we look forward to supporting any more events she would like to organise.
BMAD FESTIVAL PAIGNTON 1st-3rd May 2015. A few of the group headed down to Paignton again this year in what can only be described as typical English weather – wet! A good weekend was had by all apart from Baz’s bike deciding to give in on the way down, 30 miles from Paignton. Thanks to one of our members Ian Armstrong for rescuing Baz and Anita and getting them and the poorly Kwak back home.
UPDATE – THE KAWASAKI IS DEAD… LONG LIVE THE YAMAHA!
Baz saw a couple of these at Bike4Life and another at Paignton… ‘yer Kwak must have heard you talking about it Baz and committed Hari Kiri… Happy new bike mate – lovely.’
APRIL 2015
Sunday 26th – Bike4Life 2015. Held at RAF Cosford, the Bike for Life Festival in aid of the Midlands Air Ambulance gets bigger every year. The weather favoured us and we had a lovely ride out and a great day out spending time looking over all the gorgeous bikes and checking out the RAF museum.
Sunday 12th – Prescott Bike Festival. Some of us headed down to the Bugatti Owners Club for the Prescott Bike Festival and Hill climb, a brilliant day watching all sorts of bikes attempt the hill climb. The sights, sounds and smells of an event like this are what memories are made of, I also met one of my heroes – Darth Vader!
DVLA – Driving licence changes…
From 8 June 2015, the paper counterpart to the photocard driving licence will not be valid and will no longer be issued. See here… DVLA.
Their advice is to destroy the paper counterpart of the licence, our advice is DON’T! There have been numerous cases of people losing various categories when updating or replacing their licences in the past. With this in mind we recommend keeping the paper counterpart just in case… at least you will be able to prove that you did have the categories. Getting rid of the Tax disc has caused enough problems so confidence isn’t high.
Great news, Coventry Bees will be attending this years Sent2Coventry. A fantastic opportunity to come along and meet the riders and have your photograph taken on one of the bikes.
James May and Richard Hammond have a clear out…
Take a look at what’s coming up for sale at Bonhams Auctions in their Spring Stafford Sale. Lot’s of goodies (if only i had the money) including a selection of Motorcycles belong to James May and Richard Hammond of Top Gear fame… nothing from Mr Clarkson though, i wonder why. See here – http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/22720/
Website Launch…
6th April 2015 – Our brand new website has been launched after securing our .co.uk Domain name and Hosting. It’s a big step for us as we open our window to the world and we hope to fill the pages with lots of lovely information for you all. We’ve had some good feedback so far and would like to know what you think of it and maybe give us some ideas or contributions. If so please fill out the form on our Contact Us page or better still, come and join one of our bi-monthly meetings at The Old Dyers Arms PH where you can air your views.
Latest up date from Baz Price on the Bikes in Bus lanes trials…
It’s looking very promising,
I have announced before about the existing five Bus lanes, that were used for the bikes in bus lanes trials, have now been made permanent. I have been informed the rest of the bus lanes in Coventry will maybe be included by 1st July hopefully, but this is subject to any further objections! So if you haven’t already emailed the council in Support for the scheme, can you please do so, it really does make a difference, thanks. Cheers Baz
This is who you need to email
(Rachel.Lancaster@coventry.gov.uk)
Thanks again please share
C’mon Guys n Gals, you know it makes sense, get typing, cheers.
MARCH 2015
London toll charge – From September 7 2020 Motorcycles made before July 2007 will have to pay a daily charge of £12.50 to enter Central London after the approval of a new Ultra Low Emission Zone, thanks for nothing Boris!
Click here for more info… Ultra Low Emission Zone.
Triumph Street Triple owners wanted – Anyone fancy showing off their Street Triple in MCN?… Click here.
Green Party Policy on Motorcycles – “Smaller, low powered motorcycles are generally preferable to cars, they emit pollution and noise, strict noise limits, speed limiters.” To quote an old MAG campaign “Riders are Voters”. There’s more, see TR320 – TR322 here.
FEBRUARY 2015
Following on from the success of the Bikes in Bus Lanes trial which started in February 2014 Baz Price gave us some great news…Now 12 months on, I have been told the the Motorcycles in the Bus Lane trials have been a success, we get to keep the 5 Bus Lanes that were used in the trials.
The letters & emails to the Council with positive support have really helped and the Council only had one objection.
Thank you to everyone who put pen to paper or emailed the Council, Now we’re asking for all of the bus lanes in Coventry to be opened up to motorcycles, I believe we have a very good chance!
Thank again BazIf you haven’t already done so, please email the Traffic Team at the City Council and give your support…
Email: trafficmanagement@coventry.gov.uk
Tel: 024 7683 2035
Civic Centre 4
Much Park Street
Coventry
CV1 2PY
JANUARY 2015
Coventry Riders Action Group held their Inaugural AGM on Sunday 11th January at one of our favourite venues – The Arches, who we wish to thank for letting us use their facilities and making us so welcome.
After disbanding Coventry MAG and reforming as Coventry RAG back in November 2014 this was our chance to formally put ourselves back on the map. The meeting was attended by most of the original MAG members as well as some new ones. A new Constitution and a new start was unanimously voted in and members were elected to hold various posts within the Group and as part of the Management Committee.
We would like to thank everyone for their support and good wishes for the future.
