BANK HOLIDAY MONDAY RIDE OUT 26th May:The Rally Action Group Cymru

[BaZa ®]

Click on logo below for website:





BANK HOLIDAY MONDAY RIDE OUT – 26th MAY 2008

The town of Builth Wells, according to the tourist board take an average of 3/4 million pounds over the weekend of the Welsh Motorcycle Show. The show has always benefitted many different businesses in the town from petrol sales, beer sales at the pubs and off licences, as well as food and day to day essentials. The hotels and guest houses are always fully booked for miles around, months in advance.

This year, the Dyfed Powys Police, in their infinite wisdom, decided to approach the organisers for them to cancel the show, when the organiser refused, they then approached the Welsh Showground Committee and persuaded them to cancel the show, regretfully and reluctantly, they did. 7 WORKING DAYS BEFORE THE SHOW WAS DUE TO START!!!!!!!

The local townspeople are pretty annoyed with the closure of this year’s Rally, even the local councillor, Avril Yorke, is annoyed as she owns a shop in Builth Wells high street and stands to lose out as much as the other traders. The local police have always had a big problem with the bikers doing this yearly jaunt to the town and had arranged with the local Spar not to sell footballs that weekend so the annual football game that happens in the high street would not happen, and YES, that’s was the only problem they wanted to avoid !!!!

There has never been any violence or any other reason for the police to be called to the Rally, apart from the odd petty theft; it has always been a peaceful and family orientated weekend. There is more violence in a night on the town than there is at the weekend rally. One woman who was taking both her children this year stated that she would never go to Cardiff town centre on a Saturday night for fear of party revellers, but had never had a problem with being at the rally or taking her children.

What the proposed idea is that as bikers, so many of us for 15 years have been doing the same vigil year after year to the show in Builth Wells, and this year we all meet in the town on a Bank Holiday Monday ride out.

The idea is to ride to the town, we can then spend a few hours there, buy some fuel to get home, spend some money in the shops buy some food and drinks and show the town that we still support the local businesses.

A peaceful ride out by an amalgamation of like-minded people will have a better impact than a demonstration which requires too much organisation, and anyway, we don’t want to get into trouble with the local police as we hope that next year we will have the show back. If we are lucky, we may get media coverage of the event if we get a nice amount of people – but please remember, this is just a peaceful ride out, we don’t want to annoy any locals.

All laws must be adhered to as the police won’t be long in noticing a lot of bikers en-route. So drinking and riding will be the responsibility of the rider, it’s not advised. We don’t want to give the police any reason whatsoever to pull even one person over for drink riding.

We don’t want anyone pulled over for speeding, it only adds to the bad publicity.

It is the responsibility of every rider to ensure that their motorcycle is legal for road use; this includes MOT, Tax & Insurance as well as tyre tread and the correct size number plate. Remember, if the police can’t find any obvious reason to stop anyone, they will start being picky, so keep back those black visors for another time J


The show organiser has been financially stricken by the last minute closure of the show and may not be able to afford to take the legal action needed for the injustice of the show closure. It was only 10 days before the day that the police shut the show, The hope is that we can do a collection on the day in aid of the legal action needed, he plans to sue in aid of all the businesses and bikers that are owed money, for what was paid out in ticket money and businesses for stock they purchased up on and can’t pay for, for example a Cardiff motorcycle shop used to have a stall at the Motorcycle show a few years ago, about 2 weeks before it they used to spend about £5000.00 on extra stock just for the show, £5000.00 that has to be paid within the month normally two weeks after the show. If they had done this, this year they would not have sold any of it and then not had the money to pay the suppliers.

Many other small businesses could also suffer the same consequence from this show being cancelled. 10 days is really not sufficient enough time to fairly impose a closure on such a peaceful show. Multiply this injustice across the country with other shows that have been cancelled and the police have a lot to answer for as far as small businesses are concerned.

The monies collected would be held in the South Wales Alliance Bank Account, for anyone that does not know, this is an alliance of all the motorcycle clubs in South Wales. Thus ensuring the money can be accounted for and no one person can misuse the funds. For example If there were a request for financial support to fight the action taken by the police the money would be used in such instance.

A group will be leaving Junction 33, M4 Services (Cardiff West), at 11 am and riding along the A470 into Builth Wells which is the usual route, hopefully with media coverage (film crew). More locations will be added as they are requested. We will spend a few hours in the town, have a collection ready for the campaign fund and have a spokesperson to outline the disgruntlement felt buy the biking community at the recent developments.

Please pass this information onto all those you know with a bike and interested in supporting this event.

You don’t have to have a bike to do this. Families can come by car and follow behind the bikes. Again, the onus is on the car owner to ensure the legality of the vehicle. Alternatively, you can make your own way to Builth Wells to meet in the town centre at about 1pm