Freewheelers EVS

As part of Sainsbury's 140th Birthday Celebrations

each store will adopt a local charity of the year, which will benefit from money raised by the store. The chosen charity will be picked from a shortlist nominated by its customers, who will be asked to submit a nomination form. We would love it if you could use the form to nominate Freewheelers EVS when you shop at your local Sainsbury's store.

The nomination form asks three questions. The deadline for submission is May 26th.

1. I would like this store's local Charity of the Year to be ........................
2. At Sainburys we want to make a positive difference to the lives of people in our local community.  I think this charity makes a difference by .......................
3. Contact details for nominated charity (if known) .........................

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 right 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.

This month Weston-super-Mare Homemakers made a donation of £1595 to Freewheelers EVS. Homemakers is an independent club run by a friendly group of ladies, young and not so young, from all walks of life. It prides itself in being a club for ladies who like to meet up, have fun and do their own thing! The club aims:

• To provide an opportunity for women to meet on a regular basis; to get to know new people and establish friendships.
• To develop as a lively responsible Club whose programmes cover wide aspect of topics.

Each year at the club's January AGM its members nominate the charities they would like to support for the coming year. Freewheelers was Homemakers' adopted charity for 2008 and this incredibly generous donation is the result of their efforts.