OK, here's an update for anyone still reading. I went along to the Thames Valley meeting in Wokingham yesterday.
As Bobh hinted, there were a lot of bikes there. A LOT of them. Several hundred I reckon, out of apparently a membership of 900 or so. Big club!
Couple of slightly amusing things - firstly, if you've ever been to somewhere like Boxhill on a Sunday, you'll know what a typical gathering of bikers looks like - everything from fresh out of the showroom beemers with Schuberth sporting riders, to 1980s shitboxes whose riders are wearing an old potty for a helmet.
The bikes gathered at TVAM looked like a motor show. Not a clunker among them. This isn't a bad thing, and I guess not unexpected, but very unusual to see. There was no shortage of dayglo hi viz either.
The other thing that tickled me - to get into the place you have to weave through a series of car parks, then very slowly sweep round in a fairly confined space to park. I watched for a while, saw maybe 50 bikes do this, and not a single person ever touched their foot down or stopped to manouvre - every one looped round and stopped in the correct space. This was clearly a matter of honour, I suspect anyone who messed it up would have been made to buy 200 cups of tea.
Anyway, onto what actually happened. I was quickly helped and pointed in the right direction by a easy to find greeter, and sent over for my free cup of tea (very welcome, but it's worth saying even if you aren't getting a free one, it's only 25p - bargain of the century there).
For the first half an hour we were given an introduction, a kind of 'here's what will happen' talk, and details of costs etc were discussed. After this I was introduced to my observer (a guy called Nick), who took me out on the roads for about an hour.
Have to say, that area has some really good biking roads. It was quite good fun.
I was told to ride naturally, which I did. We did mostly country lanes, through a few villages, once through a town, and a short dual carriageway blast. Most of the time Nick was following me, occasionally he would ride ahead. We stopped a couple of times to discuss the ride. The last 5 mins were through some fast derestricted winding lanes, which was a bit of a hoot.
Seems there isn't anything too badly wrong with my riding. The only points I was told needed work were my positioning in the road (and even in that hour we were out, I was able to learn how to start improving that), and my tendency to let physics take over and slow me down when exiting a bend. I guess more than 30 years of riding bikes has taught me something, but I was fairly pleased with the assessment. I had expected to find a lot more dirty habits.
So I think I will go ahead and do the advanced test. The club itself does somewhat give this the hard sell - you are sort of expected to join, and at the end are sat down in front of the membership people - this isn't a complaint, and it should be noted that the club itself is not a for-profit at all (and only takes a small part of the one off cost). The observers and the instructors are not paid in any way, they volunteer and pay their own costs for doing so, as do all the other people who run it.
My impression of the club - very positive. They are the largest in the UK, and have a very high pass rate (they said 96%, but I read elsewhere nobody has ever failed). I was treated very well, my observer, Nick, was a very pleasant guy who was obviously very keen and willing to pass on his knowledge.
Watch this space . . .
