Rallies Preview

Left:

Dambusters makes for a friendly event (Simon Finlay Photography) Right: Chris Kelly and friend enjoyed last year’s NRR…we think

National Road Rally – 2nd-3rd July

The 2022 National Road Rally is all but ready to go, but it’s not too late to get your entry in – last entries are on 30th June. This year we have an amazing 126 controls with a mixed format of attended and unattended controls, plus the bright dayglo signs with codes to be collected and entered onto the results page which allow for ‘live’ results on the website.

Riders have access to the map of controls (the matrix) and list of control locations up to two weeks before rally weekend. They can plan their own routes around the matrix to achieve awards. For details go to www.nationalroadrally.co.uk.

So why not give it a go? The NRR is open to all fully-licenced riders, any style, any size, ride on your own or in a group or team. Whether on two wheels or three, with pillion or solo, NRR is the BEST excuse for a ride-out.

BMF Dambuster Rally – 19th-21st August

AKA ‘Dambuster 6,’ this is a traditional, laid-back camping rally, which has become a very special annual motorcycling event. There are limited tickets due to the enclosed venue, making this a great friendly rally.

There’s live music on both evenings, fantastic food, our own event beer, rally games and plenty of opportunities to catch up with old friends in a venue steeped in history. Thorpe Camp, situated in deepest Lincolnshire ‘bomber country,’ provides an excellent base for ride-outs to explore the fabulous countryside, catch the racing at Cadwell Park or even a trip to the seaside. It is also the ideal venue to celebrate the heroic deeds of the famous Dambuster raid in 1943.

At the Dambuster, you pitch your tents among the historic display planes and World War Two artefacts. All of the museum’s buildings will be open to explore, as will the NAAFI on Saturday afternoon. Thorpe Camp Visitor Centre, Tattershall Thorpe, Lincoln LN4 4PE

Tickets on sale NOW BMF Members £20 Non-Members £25 Contact: 07918 903 500 Mon - Fri 9-5

Above: Be part of wwII history at the Dambusters (Simon Finlay Photography)

Scottish National Road Rally – 2nd-4th September

Again, this is the first year the National Road Rally committee have taken over the running of the event from the previous long-time organisers. We have identified 73 locations to use as ‘controls’ – these will all be unmanned and be linked via a matrix (a map - like in the NRR).

To achieve a chosen award, a rider will have to visit a certain number of controls and various 1, 2 or 3-day options will be available, including visiting some of the Scottish islands. Riders will be able to choose their own start and finish locations. More information will be posted on the Facebook page and the website (www.snrr.co.uk) shortly. Entries will open in August 2022.

Read ‘eM and weeP

As an old inky whose career was forged in print magazines and newspapers, I have a sort of hate-love relationship with online media, especially when it comes to motorbikery.

Naturally in what is the third decade of the internet age when virtually everyone has a laptop, tablet and/or phone with seamless access to the world wide web, I find it invaluable for researching anything I write about bikes, whereas in The Days Before Digital (TDBD), it involved leafing through back issues of MCN, MotorCycle, Bike and Which Bike?, or phone calls to knowledgeable experts. I also couldn’t repair, rebuild or customise the machines I’ve owned without fleaBay, Gargle and the extensive list of online providers I’d long bookmarked.

But where those conveniences end and my despair begins is when it comes to actually reading about bikes for pleasure and enlightenment which, in TDBD, meant those and many other periodicals. And it still does. Fortunately for me and other such Luddites, some paper periodicals still exist, though their number steadily diminishes as do the number of pages therein. And of course that’s because a whole generation has been weaned on a media diet that’s free to view, contains moving images, and attention spans have shrunk accordingly. Thus it is that websites and webzines like Visordown, MCN online and BikeSocial have proliferated, one of the latest being BikerRated, launched a couple of years ago by Ben Cope, who indeed founded Visordown back in 2009.

I was frankly surprised to hear of Cope’s latest baby, not least because the last new biking webzine, MotoFire, launched by two disgruntled MCN employees, has already disappeared. The once innovative Lanesplitter has been emasculated into a mere strand on the motoring webzine Jalopnik and although it claims a million hits a month, I would argue that Visordown has lost its spark if not its relevance. And for why?

Well thanks to the aforementioned availability of just about anything you want to know online, all these digital media have access to the same product news and press releases (often thinly disguised as ‘riding impressions’), so these webzines can only distinguish themselves in the matter of style, and possibly the opinions expressed in commentary or blogs – which for me are rarely original or even entertaining.

And looking at BikerRated, the formula is still the same, with the now almost inevitable reliance on what’s tweely known as ‘affiliate advertising’ i.e. every time the link on one of its stories, reviews and news items leads to a sale, the online publisher gets a commission. In TDBD, we sometimes emulated such commercial behaviour with coupon results, but generally only as a last resort – welcome to the world of bodybuilding devices! Now it’s a sole business model, with the consequence that reviews almost inevitably cease to be partial and link to suppliers’ websites or online retailers’ pages which are definitely not impartial. This is unabashedly the case with BikerRated.

Arguably none of that matters because arguably the people who subscribe to such webzines are cynical enough to know that the whole thing is – indeed has to be about getting them to buy stuff, and stuff they can return for a refund – albeit with some hassle – if it doesn’t meet expectations. And as there are so few neighbourhood bike shops left, there’s an unspoken acceptance that online is increasingly the only way to buy clothing, accessories and parts, never mind actual motorbikes.

However, and inevitably, as long as I’m still an end user who actually rides the blighters, then it’s print and paper that I’ll still rely on for my motorcycling reading. True, and sadly, the quality and extent of journalism in the dwindling number of printed bike mags has in my view largely diminished, with especially the classic-oriented titles having become formulaic to the point of predictability. Still, the fact that as a reader you pay primarily for the magazine, and not the advertisers who’ve increasingly deserted print for the easier pickings online, it ensures that there’s more to get your teeth into.

And although I won’t be around to witness it, I wonder if in 30 years' time, online motorcycle media will still be as confident of its future as I was about the printed variety 40 years ago?