We’d all like to say a special Thank You to Jonny Ashelford for organising the Follow Me raffle that raised over £100 for the BCC!!

The film was cracking with most people struggling to refrain from making “brappp” noises or giggling like little children at the awesome trails and tricks being drenched across the cinema screen.

After watching Follow Me we were treated to a screening of Seasons with the added bonus of some french subtitles….all we can say is that we wish we’d paid more attention as none of us can remember what the french for “gnarly” is… “le gnarrrr” or something like that I guess…?

Cheers to the following companies for donating to the raffle: John’s Bikes, Thor, Follow Me and KCNC and to all those who bought tickets and came along for the ride.

…and so it’s really important that all mountain bikers show respect to walkers, dog walkers and horse riders when out on the trails.
Unfortunately on the 29th May a horse rider had to be taken to hospital by ambulance after falling from her horse onto her face due to a mountain biker startling the horse she was riding. The incident occurred in Longleat (on a bridleway) when the mountain biker rode past the group of horse riders at high speed rather than slowing to a reasonable pace and giving way. Unfortunately the mountain biker rode off leaving the other horse riders to pick up the pieces.

This is very rare, but does emphasise how important it is that we all take care when riding our bikes in or around Longleat, because other then our Allotment the trails are shared by so many.

So please, ride responsibly.

We’re giving away 2 x year memberships + 2 x BCC T shirts at tonights Fund Raising raffle. So go on, buy a strip….

Date: Thursday 17th June 2010

Time: 20:00

Place: Little Theatre, Bath

TICKETS ARE ON SALE NOW FROM THEIR BOX OFFICE (just click here)!

This year we’re taking 2 test bikes to the mega courtesy of Max Bikes PR. It’s gonna be ace!

The Marin Quake XLT 180 7.9 and the Transition Blindside with their long travel, considerable seatpost extension, single crown forks and double ring + bash set-up are aimed squarely at those doing the Mega or any other all day alpine riding.
So, anyway, before throwing ourselves down any massive mountains we thought we’d take them down the Allotment for a thrash about and some pics… (click ‘em to make ‘em bigger)

Full photo set (and some context) to follow…

Hello

We’ve agreed to help set up and pack away for this years Elizabethan Evening in Corsley at the weekend (12th and 13th June), and we need all the help we can get!

We did the same last year and were kindly rewarded with a donation of £500 (which paid towards the Ride Leader Training)!!!

All you need to do is give a few hours to help put out chairs, benches and tables on Saturday – then put them away again on the Sunday.

Each day will start at 10:00am and finish around midday (we were given bacon baps last time!)

please please please put your name down bellow if you can make either, we will need all the help we can get!

Full event details here: http://www.bath360.co.uk/whats-on/elizabethan-evening-goes-victorian (it’s a great event!)

We are currently fund raising to buy a brand new (4.5mtr x 4.5mtr) event shelter for use at races, dig days, TickerTapes, dinner ’til dusk and all other club events. We will also be commissioning a feasibility study and overview plan of MTB trail development at Longleat soon so are fund raising towards this Also. This is something that will really help us move the development of XC, Skills Area and DH trails forward…

So who can help?

Please check out the Forum here or leave a comment below…

Thanks!

In addition to this Avon Valley Cyclery is having a bank holiday special sale with 15% off everything this bank holiday weekend!

The after party is TBC but most likely be at the Cork with DJ Dodd on the decks and more MTB movies on the big screens!

Date: Thursday 17th June 2010

Time: 20:00

Place: Little Theatre, Bath

TICKETS ARE ON SALE NOW FROM THEIR BOX OFFICE!

Year Three Memberships

Hello

Due to a change to the way we will be operating the forum, and the fact that the change requires a lot of technical jiggery pokery we’re not in a position to accept year three memberships just yet.

So, despite the fact that your membership cards expired about an hour ago, the club will grant an extension to the year 2 memberships until we can begin accepting year three applications.

If you’re already a year 2 member then please continue to use the allotment and other club benefits as usual. Those who are not, don’t worry, we’ll have it sorted before you can say…”so what’s a TickerTape anyways?”

We’re aiming to have all this in place for Tuesday the 6th April 2010 but will have to update you when we know a little more.

Thanks for your patience

New BCC Forum

We’re moving to a custom BCC forum, on the BCC website, so will soon stop using the southerndownhill.com club forum.

The move to the new forum will include a period of about a month where we have both, for handover purposes. You will be given new usernames and passwords for the BCC website and Forum when you join up for year three.

Rob Lewis (southerndownhill.com) has been incredibly helpful and generous in providing the club with both forum space and website hosting since we started back in 2008. We’re making this move for a number of reasons, all of which will benefit the club, but (and this is important) this is not being done because we don’t want to be a part of SDH or because they don’t want to have us.

We need to provide a forum that is more club focused, in terms of it’s functionality, ease of use, and visibility from our website. The SDH forum is in many ways better than our BCC forum, but it’s just not quite right for the current and future needs of the club.

The new BCC forum will be part of the BCC website, it’ll also be very simple. This is something that has caused problems amongst many members who’ve struggled to find their way onto the current forum – while not actually very hard, it could be easier. This is important as people who are active on the club forum are the ones who are most active within the club. Of course this is a case of chicken and egg, but it’s clear that by making the forum easier to use, more people will use it and then more people will get involved in club activities.

The new forum will display some threads to the public so that people can see what’s going on… other threads will be only visible to members once logged in, meaning that we can retain the private nature of the club forum too. As part of this change we will be able to provide ‘members only’ website content aswel, meaning that we can have areas for people to upload route maps, see club resources resources etc etc…

In addition the change will enable us to conform to online Child Protection best practice more easily, something that really is very important especially as we are growing in numbers.

So a valuable change all round…but…

All that aside, I’d like to say a special thank you to Rob Lewis for all his help, it’s probable that we would never have even existed at all if it wasn’t for the fact that some of the original Longleat riders first met on the SDH forum, and then were able to use it when setting up the club. I hope that many of you stay active members of SDH, I know I will.