The North Bucks Blog
The NBRC blog is where we publish articles of general interest to the club. We have enabled commenting here (as well as on selected articles).
We welcome member submissions to this blog - contact Robert for more information.
- Details
- Hits: 16
As many of our longer term members will have noticed, the fortunes of the North Bucks Road Club have waned over the last few years. We had to move out of our long used club room, Harley Hall, when the Parks Trust greatly increased the rent on the premises. We started having our club meetings at The Wheatsheaf in Bow Brickhill (actually the location of the first ever, and founding, meeting of the club), but had to move when the pub changed hands and closed for a period of renovation. We then moved to The Inn on the Lake for our meetings. However, it's moot whether a pub is the best location for club meetings.
The decline was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, the various lockdowns that ensued and the impact of restrictions on social gatherings. We tried using Zoom for club meetings, but my impression was that this was rather unsuccessful. Certainly members were reluctant to join remote meetings. During 2020 we couldn't even run our club time trials (the CTT suspended competition), or club runs (advice was to cycle solo).
Earlier this month I decided to have a go at changing the way the club is operating. For the last couple of years we have used ResultsBase to handle membership applications and payments. As it turns out, it's not best suited to that function for a number of reasons (though it remains the website we use to handle our club event entries), and I was casting around for a better way to administer the club. I noticed that my former club, the Dundee Wheelers were using a web app called Spond, and after a spot of investigation decided it was worth setting us up with Spond. Currently, membership applications are open via Spond.
I also looked into finding a new venue for fate to face club meetings, and booked a room at Aspley Guise Village Hall for the first two meetings in 2025. Initially I'm envisaging meeting monthly, but if the demand is there, we can increase the frequency. The February meeting is a Special General Meeting to discuss changes to how the club operates - a new version of the club rules will be on the agenda.
To grow the club it's important to connect with members and find out what the club should provide - for example, we mustn't neglect the social aspects of the club and focus solely on competition. I think most cyclists have a broad interest in cycling; for example, I have little interest in mountain biking, preferring road cycling - I enjoy recreational and social rides, time trialling and cycle touring. But I do enjoy the social aspects of club meetings and I've always thought these were powerful ways of sharing information, experiences and expertise. We are planning to circulate a questionnaire to find out more about what members (and prospective members) want from a bike club so that we can better serve them.
Discuss this article
- Details
- Hits: 666
Welcome to the new NBRC website
Welcome to the new and refurbished North Bucks Road Club website. It has been rebuilt to streamline the content and to take advantage of changes to the underlying Content Management Software that we use for the website. Robert is still managing the website, but any offers of assistance (mainly direct contribution of content) would be welcome.
If you encounter any problems, let us know via the comments or by email - remember to tell me what device and operating system and which browser you're using.
I've made a some substantial changes to the organisation of material on the website. Much of this is behind the scenes, and will no doubt be ongoing for a while to come. Some time towards the end of 2024 should see a further major update to the CMS.
On the front end of the website, I've moved back to a clearer layout, and I've used a template that should work equally well the mobile devices such as phones and tablets. I've stripped the website back to a single menu at the top of the screen (on a phone this is a dropdown from the 'hamburger' icon). While the default appearance has dark writing on a white background, you can switch this to a dark scheme using the switch at the top right (desktop view) or top left (mobile view).
An overview of the changes:
- A new template
- There is now a Blog section on the website with commenting available - you're currently reading it. I've deployed a comment function, though how well it works remains to be seen when the site is deplyed to the server. I'm hopeful that commenting won't require an account on the website, but we'll have to see how much spam we attract.
- In the left side of the home screen there's a module that shows the five most recent additions to the website.
- The general layout has been changed to increase accessibility. Notably, the menu is pretty self explanatory - most of the items on the menu have drop down submenus with more options. Some areas of the website, such as club event records, have become rather numerous and hard to marshal. I therefore decided to make a single menu link for all the complete club event seasons (2007 to 2023).
- I've tidied up many of the articles with photo galleries. Where Graeme Church has posted galleries of our events on his Flickr website, I've added a link in the relevant event report so you can view all the images.
- The current course descriptions have been updated to offer more consistency and clarity. We have reviewed nearly all of the courses in October/November 2023 in response to a request for information related to 20mph speed limits. So far only the Bow Brickhill hill climb course has a 20mph limit, and I doubt many riders would exceed 20mph!
- I've grouped past reports of Cyclocross events and the beginnings of reporting of open time trials together under the 'Open Events' menu item. In the past it has been difficult to pry reports of racing, club runs etc from club members, hopefully this can change as we move forward.
- The 'Our Cycling' menu item has a drop down list of various cycling activities - I think we need an Off-Road addition to cover mountain and gravel biking...offers of assistance welcome.
- I'm keen to include more images in the website, if you've any you'd like to contribute, please contact Robert.
As ever, you can follow us on Facebook and on X (Twitter) for our latest updates. I'm not a heavy Facebook user, and I use X(Twitter) less since it became X, so contacting Robert is best by email.
Discuss this article
Robert