Author: Aynsley Brown

The Hall/ Moulton Bicycle Company, Holt Road, Bradford on Avon, BA15 1AH

The Hall

The Courtyard where the Saturday afternoon Talk will be held

All adults through the gate need to pay either £10 for the Saturday meet or £25 for weekend camping. For those aged 17 and under it's all free (when accompanied by an adult Club member). Despite our increasing costs, we have held the event cost to you at the same level for the past two years!

As ever it’s members & immediate family only, if you are not a member then you can join the club for £22.50 (UK membership) on line beforehand or at the gate to maintain our status with HMRC. Toilets & showers are available to all.

Provisional schedule for the weekend

Friday– from 4pm campers/motorhomes can arrive to set up their units. Ample parking on site but maybe not in your first choice of location. We then usually head down to the Swan Hotel in the centre of Bradford on Avon to meet up and have something to eat. As an alternative there is the The Dandy Lion across the road from the Swan and numerous other pubs and restaurants in Bradford on Avon for good food & drink.

The Bridge across the Avon in the Town Centre

Saturday

8am gates open, campers awake……..

9amto11am Table Top Sale of all things Moulton, everything from a rideable bike to a set of frame transfers, those special replacement parts for F frame refurbishments from Moulton Preservation, interesting components & spares from the Moulton factory. NO fees for selling your stuff whether thats a van full of Moultons or a few tyres, its all free.

Table Top Sale of all things Moulton

11am – 12 noon Open forum, for you to share your thoughts with the committee and the committee to ask for your help, guidance & ideas.

1pm – 3pm Courtyard talk, this year from F-frame to Space-frame as it’s the 40^th anniversary of the launch of the Space-frame bicycle. Presented by Dan Farrell and Tony Hadland with numerous bicycle examples. The raffle draw.

Court Yard Talk

3pm – 5pm A short ride (1.2 miles each way) to the Kettlesmith Brewing Company to sample some of their fine ales.

7pm – 11pm The club meal at St Margarets Hall. Main’s (see booking form) served with mixed rice, new potatoes, mixed salad, coleslaw. Desserts (see booking form) served with pouring cream. Tea or coffee after the meal & a bar is available.

OR

The BBQ will be a bring your own food & drink, there will be separate “meat” and “vegetarian” BBQ grills. (Provided by the Moulton Bicycle Company)

OR

If you want to go into BoA for a meal I suggest you plan ahead.

Sunday– All rides set off from the upper car park by the entrance gate.

There will be 3 rides:

Long ride about 35 miles, Middle ride around 25 miles, Short 10mile family ride.

Usually the first ride leaves at about 9am and the last ride sets off at about 10am, but the actual departure times will be displayed during the event & on Facebook.

Every thing may change due to the weather or events outside our control.

Clear up all debris, your tents packed away etc. and we all leave before 5pm on Sunday.

As per previous years, we will have security on the gate fron Friday through to Sunday morning.

Please keep checking our web page and Facebook for the latest event news and updates.

I hope you can join us at BoA, it will be good to see you in September, catch up with old friends, make new friends AND ride in a group of Moultons.

Mark Taylor

When: Saturday 22nd April from 09:30 to 12:30 & Sunday 23rd morning.

Where: The Moulton Bicycle Company,
Holt Road, Bradford–on-Avon, BA15 1AH

Why is it so late in the month? We normally try to arrange this event on the weekend closest to Alex Moulton’s birthday, 9th April but this year, that’s Easter Sunday.

Local accommodation & traffic would be more difficult over Easter. Similarly for the following weekend, due to the school holidays.

The Club Committee agreed that it would be held on the weekend of 22nd & 23rd. The following weekend is another bank holiday in England.

A footnote – This is a ‘Club Members Only’ event.

In previous years we have offered a weekend membership to newcomers to sample our event. We have been strongly advised to stop this.

His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs sees this practice as an abuse of our Mutual Association status.
They are clamping down on organisations offering this temporary membership. Entrants will have to have full annual membership only from now on.

We remember the passing of Michael Woolf, a year ago today. He was a leading light with Moulton enthusiasts and many of us will remember the help he gave us in keeping our Moultons on the road.

He learnt to cycle on a Moulton Deluxe in the mid 60s and managed to acquire a rather second-hand one with wobbly steering bearings in the mid 70s.  His quest for replacement bearings led him to Alex Moulton and new bearings were forthcoming.

His invitation to The Hall to show his ‘preserved’ F-frame led to his creation of Moulton Preservation, when he was told that there was no (then) existing preservation group.

A chance meeting with Mark Ottaway, Sunday Times Travel Writer and a Moulton rider himself, led to an article in that paper in 1980.

Many letters poured in from Moulton owners who wanted help for their much-loved machines off-the-road for want of unavailable Moulton-unique parts. Michael sent a list of “problem spares” to The Hall and remaining stocks were made available to him.

One of those letters came from Tony Hadland. This led to Tony’s writing of ‘The Moulton Bicycle’, a book about the original F-Frame design launched in November 1962 at the Cycle Show at Earls Court in London. 

Alex Moulton requested Michael to re-shape the ailing Moulton Bicycle Club and with Tony Hadland as magazine editor, the Club began its resurgence.

Michael was the guiding heartbeat of the Moulton Bicycle Club for many years. We miss his enthusiasm and dedication to the world of Moultoneering.