The chosen venue for this year’s event was held at the newly refurbished Bold Hotel,on the famous Lord Street boulevard. Almost 70 members and guests were in attendance to honour the prizes winners. The function room was decorated to a high standard with a black and gold theme through, the tables adorned with candles and holly to add to the ambience. Dinner was served with the gaiety of the Christmas spirit (that sentence was an extract from the club’s 3rd Christmas Dinner in 1935!!!).
The food was excellent and served by the efficient friendly staff from the hotel.
This year it was decided that the ‘Club Person of the Year’ would present the awards, this task went to the worthy winner Neil Langridge. The main prize winners were:-
Martin Bailey..Club Best All Rounder and Hill Climb champion.
Karl Addison and Ken Addison..Neil Smith and Norman Rimmer trophies
for 25 mile time trials.
Conor McKinnon… Junior Road Race champion and Hill Climb.
Issy McKinnon……..Youth Road Race and Hill Climb.
Maddy Scott………..Women’s Road Race and Hill Climb.
Eddie O’Brien……….Downhill/Free
David Unsworth. Junior time trial 10 mile champion.
Various other recipients received ‘jokey’ prizes.
The raffle followed the prize giving and with super prizes on offer the ticket sales amounted to £400. The star prize was a pair of race wheels donated by Dave Williams (Kuota) and won by Mark Baldwin (I hasten to add this outcome had nothing to do with me).
Onto the entertainment, a live band no less with our young event organiser Aaron on the drums who belted out songs old and new (but mainly old to cater no doubt for the age of the guests!) Lurking on the noisy heavy drinkers table was a budding rock star Simon Kirwan, who took little encouragement to take hold of the microphone and belt out in the best possible voice the words of “Mustang Sally!”, it would appear he has a background of music in his genes (by the way he’s not too bad on a bike either).
All in all a great evening was had by all with lots of positive feedback regarding the venue, food and entertainment and for that we must thank our Social Secretary Aaron Green for his time and effort and also James Holloway for the pictures of the evening, which can be found below.
Colin Baldwin
Club President.
