26th ANNUAL GREAT YORKSHIRE BIKE RIDE- 13th JUNE 2009

WITH THANKS TO OUR MAJOR SPONSORS FOR 2009

  PREMIER FARNELL, MOORES FURNITURE GROUP, GOOSEMOOR ORGANICS, EUREST CATERING, CYCLESENSE. CASHFOUR.CO.UK

As the famous phrase goes - "I don't believe it!!" - yes, we finally get a wonderful sunny day for the event. I sincerely hope that this is now a permanent feature of the ride. Everything looks better in the sunshine and to see crowds of riders and their families still enjoying the afternoon in Filey until late in the day made a very welcome change from the usual sight of wet riders running for cover or trying to get 600 people into the tea tent!

We have had a lot of feedback about queuing at start this year. Since we moved the exit of the ride to the front of the racecourse in 2007 it has allowed us to get the ride off a bit quicker but the long delays this year were, in the view of the organisers, due to the fact that more riders arrived much later at the start this year. maybe it was the good weather forecast that made people a bit less worried about getting there I don't know, but where we usually have lines of people waiting to check in before 7:30, this year we had none. An hour later was a totally different picture when everyone seemed to arrive at once. As ever, we will review this issue and see if we can make any improvements for 2010.

Mind you, there are a lot of short memories. Not too many years ago, when we used to exit from the rear of the racecourse, queues of literally hundreds of people were the norm as you can see in this picture from 2003 which was taken from near the start line. You can't even see the end!

The online entry ran very well this year with a few glitches cured for the 2009 ride. We took the same number of riders on the book and ended up with a record 1,695 starters. Our warnings about inconsiderate riding were heeded by many but we still need to improve on this. A lot of the riders have taken this issue very seriously to the point of sending in rider numbers of people who they thought were not toeing the line. Expect a knock on the door any day soon!

The day passed off with little incident and only one rider having to be treated by our new-for-2009 mobile paramedic. The Farnell-sponsored lunch stop, manned by their Eurest catering staff, was as good as ever and our charity marshals and helpers did a great job. We were able have a road engineer manually controlling the traffic lights at Malton this year (at our cost) which did help to speed the cyclists through the junction. I hope we can do this again on the future with the help of North Yorkshire Highways.

We kept the current post 2007 route for this year and added/changed a couple of marshalling points which, though hard to notice, did bring the slight improvement we had planned. These were most noticeable at the 2nd drink stop in Terrington where we had made big efforts to avoid the safety issue of riders standing in the road an leaving bikes on the roadway. Some eagle-eyed entrants had also noticed that, for the first time, we had erected event pre-warning signs at over 100 points along the route to warn road users that the vent was on the following week and the times that disruption would be expected. This move came after consultations between the event and the joint-agencies Safety Advisory Group.

The tea and cakes at the last drink stop were supplied by Wold Newton School PTA who took on the baking challenge for the event for a second year.

At the finish, the Farnell-sponsored Team Spirit entertainment at the finish kept the younger supporters busy while they waited for mum or dad to arrive at the finish and were a great success as can be seen in the 2009 picture gallery. Moores Furniture Group again provided the return transport that, as ever, ran faultlessly.

Many thanks to all our sponsor companies, volunteers, charity workers and, of course, the riders themselves for making the event another great success. I hope that we see many of you at the presentations on the 8th of November.

Follow the links below to see the 2009 photos