Club News - January 2025
A belated Happy New Year to everyone and a warm welcome to new members. We hope the weather will improve…
In this edition:
Dates for Your Diary: Quiz evening in February; Calendar for Away days and other events including: A trip to Belgium; The Challenge Ride; Green Plus Weekend; Possible Bike-packing weekend.
AGM and Survey 2024: including winners of the Riders of the Year Awards and the Garlic Award; minutes of the AGM; survey responses and our reply.
The Route Schedule
Captain’s Charity
New web-site
Dates for Your Diary
Quiz evening
The first event of the year is a quiz evening on Friday 28 February, 7.30pm at The Pound. There will be a light-hearted mix of questions on general knowledge and cycling stuff.
We’re not providing food so it’s only £5 per head – you may win a prize – and (hopefully) there will be a bar. Teams of 4 would be great but certainly no more than 6 per team. If you want to come along, let us know via corshamcc@gmail.com with your mobile number so we can sort out arrangements and payment details.
Provisional Calendar for 2025
Set out below are the events, in addition to the usual route schedule, that we are planning for 2025.
Feb: Quiz Evening (Fri 28 Feb)
May: Long weekend to Belgium (tbc)
May: Split ride 1 WSM/Cheddar Gorge (Sun 11 May)
May: Active travel group family ride 18 May (tbc)
June: Challenge weekend (14/15 June); overnight in Taunton
July: Green+ weekend (5/6 July); two rides from Hereford
July: Century Challenge (Sun 20 July)
Aug: Flat 200k/120k (green+ oriented) (Sun 17 Aug)
Sept: Bike packing (Sept), Isle of Wight
Sept: Split ride 2 (Sun 21 Sept)
Dec: Christmas do (date tbc)
Dec: AGM (date tbc)
Long Weekend to Belgium in May (tbc)
This is a new venture aimed at riders from across the club who would like to try something different! Much of Belgium is flat but for those who want more of a challenge there are rides with bergs (steep hills) and cobbles. The idea is to travel to Belgium on a Thursday afternoon/evening, ride Friday, Saturday and Sunday, returning Sunday evening or Monday morning. Riders would arrange their own transport, accommodation and if necessary, bike hire. If you are interested in joining this event or just finding out more, please let us know via the club email here.
Challenge Weekend (14/15 June)
Previous challenge weekends to Weymouth and Malvern have proved to be, well, challenging but highly enjoyable. This is a weekend of long rides and some big hills. In the past riders have been those who typically ride ‘blue’ with some stronger ‘orange’ riders.
The day one route (127 miles/203km and 6615ft/2005m of ascent) heads for Salisbury then turns west to run roughly parallel with the A303 to Taunton. The day two route (80 miles/128km and 5187ft/1572m) of ascent takes riders on a big climb over the Quantocks then across the Somerset levels and another big climb over the Mendips before returning home. A more detailed programme is available here. If you are interested in riding or being a support driver let us know at corshamcc@gmail.com.
Green Plus Away Weekend (5/6 July)
Following successful weekends based in Malvern, Bicester and Wells, the fourth Green Plus away weekend will be based in Hereford. As the title suggests these rides are suitable for regular ‘Green+’ riders i.e. rides without long steep hills and at a Green+ pace.
Day one (49.5miles/79.2km with 2354ft/713m of ascent) takes in some of the ‘black and white’ villages of Herefordshire and the market town of Leominster. Day two (29 miles/46.4km with 1438ft/435m of ascent) explores the Wye Valley in and around Hereford. Again, we’ll publish more details next month but if you are interested, contact us at corshamcc@gmail.com.
Bike-packing (September)
Following last year’s successful event in the New Forest, this year the intention was to go to the Isle of Wight. It may be stating the obvious, but bike packing is where you carry your belongings with you on your bicycle. However, unforeseen circumstances now mean we do not have an organiser for this trip. Rather than just take it out of the programme we are asking for a volunteer or volunteers to take on the organisation of the event. If you are interested please get in touch at corshamcc@gmail.com or speak to a committee member.
AGM and Survey 2024
A big thank-you to all those who attended the AGM in December and to those who completed the survey and nominated riders for the various awards. The AGM was attended by 38 members. The elected officers for 2025 are Tom Winskill (Chair), Richard Schofield (Secretary) and Richard Davies (Treasurer). The following co-opted roles were also filled: Membership Secretary is Tom White and the Club Captain is Sue Smith.
Awards
The riders of the year awards, voted for by club members were:
Women’s Cyclist of the Year: Elinor Anderson
Men’s Cyclist of the Year: Ant Bond
The prestigious Garlic Award, selected by the Club Captain from member nominations was won by Rob Bennetts.
The full minutes of the 2024 AGM are available here.
Annual Survey 2024
24 club members completed the annual survey. Overall, the positive responses greatly outweigh the negative. Key strengths include the routes, the route schedule, the friendliness and inclusivity of the club and its riders. Nevertheless, comments and suggestions for improvement highlight the need that these strengths must be actively maintained. The full survey results and the club committee response can be found here.
The Route Schedule
Those eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed that we have published the weekend route schedule for the whole of 2025. We recognise that changing circumstances may mean some occasional modifications at later date but it does give a good picture of what’s in store for the whole year.
Our route schedule planner, Richard Schofield, has set out the rationale behind the schedule, the constraints on route planning and how the schedule can help riders who are training for an event later in the year, such as one of the longer club rides or challenges in a short article which you can read here.
The Captain’s Charity
The Captain’s Charity this year will be the Wiltshire Air Ambulance. Given the essential help provided by this service for one of our members last year, it was an obvious choice. In the first instance, any profit made from the February Quiz evening will be donated to The Air Ambulance Service.
New Website
In the next few days we will switch to our new website. The Route Schedule page stays the same but we have a much slimmed down easier to navigate version waiting in the wings.