Freewheelers EVS

On May 4th, Mike Burns and Andrew Jolliffe left John O'Groats to cycle to Lands End raising money for Freewheelers as they rode. They arrived on Saturday May 22nd after 1,200 hard miles having raised an incredible £8,900 including Gift Aid. The money will go towards a new BMW R1200RT blood bike which the pair hope to present to Freewheelers in July.

You can read more about the trip on their blog, and donate money to boost their total even further at their JustGiving page.

All the volunteers at Freewheelers would like to thank Mike and Andrew for their outstanding effort. Well done!

Freewheelers volunteer Joanne Wingate has joined NG Road Racing and is launching her motorcycle racing career later this month on the Spring Bank Holiday weekend at Pembrey. Joanne will be racing in the Streetstocks 700-1300cc and Newcomers classes, and must attend ten meetings at three different circuits, finishing in every race. If Joanne achieves this she will get her Clubman licence - the first step towards her ultimate aim of reaching the Isle of Man TT before she is sixty.

Joanne's bike is a Yamaha R1, fitted with Metzler Race Tec tyres and uprated suspension. Otherwise it is a standard production bike. The bike has Freewheelers' logo on the side and Joanne will be publicising our work at each race meeting she attends.

More photos of Joanne and her bike can be seen in the CVAM SmugMug galleries. You can also track her progress at CVAM's forum.

As always, Freewheelers volunteers are on duty 24 hours a day during the weekend and bank holidays. So for a continuous period of 108 hours, from 7:00pm on Thursday April 1st until 7:00am on Tuesday, our riders and coordinators were on permanent call.

During that 108 hour period our volunteers took a record breaking 64 calls, including one emergency which necessitated the use of blue lights and sirens. At the start of the 1990s when Freewheelers was just beginning, we didn't get that many calls in a whole year! Our thanks go to the duty riders and coordinators for giving up a holiday weekend to deliver such a valuable service.

On May 4th, Mike Burns and Andrew Jolliffe began a 20 day cycle ride from John o'Groats to Lands End. Their aim is to raise £10,000 to buy a new bike for Freewheelers.

To see their planned route look at bloodbikes.co.uk, to follow their progress during the ride, read their blog at bloodbikes.wordpress.com

To sponsor Mike or Andrew go to their dedicated JustGiving page at justgiving.com/bloodbikes JustGiving will allow you to donate using credit/debit card, or PayPal. They will also reclaim Gift Aid on your behalf to boost the value of your donation.

UPDATE: Mike & Andrew have finished their ride and have raised £6,914 — just over £8,000 when Gift Aid is included. However, it isn't too late to give as the fundraising page is still open for your donations.

On Sunday March 7th, John Reeves from Knorr-Bemse United Kingdom will run in the Bath Half Marathon. Knorr-Bremse is the world’s leading manufacturer of braking systems for rail and commercial vehicles. Another of its employees, Simon Whitelock, is a Freewheelers volunteer rider. John will be running to raise money for Freewheelers. We wish him well and encourage you all to support him on the day.

UPDATE: John raised £378 for Freewheelers. Click the article on the right to read more about John's run. Thanks John!

Each year, Neil Mossman, managing director of Total Triumph near Taunton, arranges a charity rideout in memory of his late father. This year 50% of the proceeds were donated to Freewheelers EVS.

We would like to thank the Mossman family and the customers of Total Triumph for their incredibly generous donation of £960.40. Pictured left is the presentation which took place at the Total Triumph showrooms.

The Motorcycle Action Group (MAG) is a group that campaigns on behalf of motorcyclists. The Weston & North Somerset branch and the Bristol branch of MAG have been supporters of Freewheelers for much of our nearly 20 years of existence. They have run rallies, held collections and staged bike shows for our benefit, raising much needed funds to help us provide our award-winning service.

This week, MAG released a publicity video, aimed at recruiting new members, which demonstrates the good work that MAG does on behalf of UK motorcyclists. Freewheelers are very happy to promote our long-time friends at MAG. We encourage you to watch the video below and consider joining.

Freewheelers loves The Mangled Wurzels. For those who don't know, they are a premier Scrumpy & Western band who perform a mixture of original material together with cover versions of songs by the late, great Adge Cutler.

Several Freewheelers members were lucky on July 25th to see The Mangled Wurzels perform at a garden party held at Immacolata House, a care home for elderly patients with dementia run by Notaro Care Homes. After the event, which was held to jointly raise funds for Freewheelers and the Alzheimers Society, we received a donation of £1,000 from Notaro Care Homes. We would like to thank Mr Notaro and his excellent staff for their hospitality and their very kind donation.

After seeking confirmation from the Health Protection Agency, Freewheelers EVS is happy to confirm that we are able to transport diagnostic samples which may be infected with, or are to be tested for infection with Swine Flu (H1N1). This includes specimens collected directly from humans or animals that are suspected or confirmed to be infected with the Swine Flu (H1N1) virus, including specimens from the respiratory tract (swabs) and blood specimens. All such specimens will be transported by us according to regulation UN3373 as Category B biological substances. See our UN3373 Policy for details of how this is done.

Freewheelers EVS is not licensed to transport Swine Flu (H1N1) virus cultures i.e. virus isolates. These must be transported by a specialist courier according to regulation UN2814 as Category A infectious substances affecting humans.

Any hospital wishing to use Freewheelers EVS free service to transport any Swine Flu samples should make sure that we are not being asked to carry virus cultures, only diagnostic specimens. Please contact us if you have any questions.

Melksham-based Avon Tyres has agreed to supply motorcycle tyres to the Freewheelers EVS. With both safety and performance so important for such a service, Avon will supply Storm-ST tyres, while JHS Racing at Keynsham will service Freewheelers’ duty bikes as well as fit them with the brand new rubber.

“We do around 80,000 miles a year in total as a charity and we’re doing that all year round, in all weathers,” said Freewheelers’ Mike Belch. “The chief protection we have is that little patch of rubber that keeps the bike in contact with the road and safety and predictability is everything for us. Having good quality tyres we can trust on the bikes is literally the difference between life and death not just for us, but for the people we’re helping. It’s great to have such a high profile supporter as Avon.”

Freewheelers only exists through charitable donations and the support from both Avon Tyres and JHS Racing means that Freewheelers’ donated funds go further in supporting the NHS.

Avon motorsport tyres are supplied to over 140 championships around the world, including the Avon Tyres British GT Championship and the British Formula Ford Championship, as well as series supported by Audi, Ford, Porsche and Honda. Cooper Tire also has a rich motorsport heritage, including the Cooper Tires British F3 International Series and Cooper Tires Atlantic Championship.

Cooper Tire & Rubber Company Europe Ltd, a subsidiary of the Cooper Tire & Rubber Company of Findlay, Ohio, USA, has more than a century’s experience at the leading edge of tyre technology. Cooper produces a full range of tyres for passenger car and 4x4 applications under the Cooper and Avon brand names, together with Avon motorcycle tyres.

Freewheelers EVS volunteer rider Alan Paice has just completed a sponsored ride from John O'Groats to Lands End on his BMW R1200GS motorcycle. Alan left his home in Wiltshire on Monday and was at John O'Groats ready to start his sponsored ride at 9:30am on Wednesday 22^nd April. After a ride of 887 miles over 2 days and 4 hours, Alan arrived at Lands End on Friday at 1:35pm. Following a quick photo shoot Alan rode home, arriving at 8:10pm.

In total Alan covered 1785 miles and raised over £2000 for Freehweelers. And it isn't too late to sponsor him - if you appreciate what Alan did for us then go ahead and make a debit or credit card donation on Alan's MyCharity sponsorship page.

See photos of Alan's trip in our Smugmug photo galleries.

Moose International Weston-super-Mare Lodge 55 and Ladies Circle have just made a donation of £546 to Freewheelers EVS. Lodge Governor Khalid Kattana is pictured presenting the cheque to volunteer riders Mike Belch and Dave Hobbs.

Moose International is a Fraternal Service Club, established in the UK in 1928, but dating back to the late 1800's in the United States. Famous mooses include Henry Ford and Rocky Marciano. Freewheelers is grateful to have been one of the Weston lodge's nominated charities for 2008/2009.

As a charity staffed entirely by volunteers, Freewheelers is keen to ensure that the absolute minimum is spent on administrative overheads, so that all the donations we receive can be directed to providing our motorcycle transport service. We like to boast that our most significant administrative costs are the postage stamps we use to send our annual return in to the Charity Commission. While slightly tongue in cheek, it is not far from the truth as we really do hate to spend a single penny unnecessarily.

The next stage in the development of Freewheelers' website required an upgrade to our web hosting package. The upgrade costs were significant so our webmaster, Mike Belch, did some research into alternatives. He was delighted to come across Memset Ltd, a British web-hosting company which offers free or discounted web services to registered charities. The sales staff at Memset were very helpful and within one hour their technical team had the new web space up and running. Thanks Memset, we are proud to display your logo on our website!

A press release from Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton has praised the work of Freewheelers. Our volunteer rider Dave Watson, who works as operations manager for Illchester Cheese, was recently asked to transport bone marrow samples from the children's ward at Musgrove Park to the Bristol Royal Children's Hospital. The samples were for leukaemia patient Jacob Hayes. Our riders rarely get to see the human side of our work. It is nice when we can see that our work is directly helping a patient and the thanks we received from Jacob's parents and the staff at Musgrove park are a very welcome morale boost to all our volunteers.

The photo shows from left to right Dr Georgina Selby, Staff Nurse Gemma Stanley, Jacob with his parents and Dave Watson.