">

Annual Review

Thanks to everyone for their continued support of LPMCC.net through a long, hard year. The website spent the year on a virtual plateau of visitor numbers and page views.

New Content

What you came for

Through the year we added over a hundred new pages, mainly historical rally reports with superb old photos from Phil the Spill. Special mention needs to be made of the Chrome series of motorcycling in the sixties by Tony Sheppard that arrived back in February.

The page that attracts the largest audience remains the European Rally List compiled by Hans Veenendaal. We have tried to embrace the various alphabets and words used for rallies in the languages of the riders that use this page. The chart on the right shows where our non-English speaking users come.

Contributors

The Heroes

This website consists of material contributed by many riders who find the time to send stories, photos, and short paragraphs about friends and happy days long ago. Contributors include old and well known names and some new friends this year.

We hope you will continue to jot down some notes in our Contact Centre whenever your memory is jogged about some rally, motorcycle or friend from long ago. Sometimes they form remarkable links to other events and people that illuminate whole chapters of our humble lives.

We continue to accumulate a backlog of badges to be added to the collection. More will be added I promise.

The Rally Collective: Al Walker, Dave Cooper, Hayley Easthope, Jean-Francois Helias, Phil Drackley, Rachel Crossley, Stuart Tod, Ted Trett and Tony Smith.

This website is a grass-roots archive of a way of life only understood by a dedicated few souls. It is written by them and read by them. Please spread the word to friends that you know will appreciate our content.

Motorcycling

Still getting their legs over.

Motorcycle rides take place quite spontaneously. We use texts and telephone to pass the word so if you want to join us on a ride, let us know your contact details in advance and we'll keep you in the loop.

Most of our motorcycling photos are on our Facebook page.

Past members and friends who joined rides and holidays in 2016 include John Muschialli, Bob Nash, Dave Parry, Ian Bower, Peter Wright, Tony Bradley, John Ashworth, Derek Jordan, Helen and Mick Ayriss.

Cycling

Delaying decaying.

Our Embers Cycle Group is dedicated to getting to a pub before we pass out with exhaustion. It is our unofficial way of keeping fit enough to kick start a Velocette and lift a tankard. It works so long as we don't break a foot or an elbow.

Photo from November. Roll your mousewheel to zoom into this photo.

This year we had 52 rides that covered 1363 (official) miles endured by 21 riders.

Service

Oil changes

The year started with a lot more work under the hood. Some of it is not visible to you when you visit the website but is there to help search engines index LPMCC.net or for appropriate photos to be attached to page links. (Yes, a bit tekky)

Things you may have noticed include...

Most changes were either to make my life easier or to correct another newly discovered (or created) fault. Luckily our cats kept out of kicking range.

Farewells

Sad losses

Once again we have lost good friends and can take little consolation in happy memories of the good times that we shared with them. Clive Hodgkin departed in October leaving wife Christine (Mansell) and family to face his loss and many friends to recall past adventures. More recently we are sad to have lost Alison Clark who attended our Ember Cycling Tours with Richard where she quickly made new friends with her wonderful sense of humour. Both too quickly gone.

The Foz Spot was started by founder member Keith Fosberry who constantly bubbled over with ripe jokes. When Keith passed away his memorial was the continuation of the Foz Spot, mainly by his son Adam (Foz Jr). It is now time to call it a day to that tradition as jokes become ever more prone to falling foul of political correctness. We may still crack a few when we meet, but avoid putting them into print.

This year has also probably seen the last of our National Road Rally controls for awhile. In 2016 past members operated controls at Syston (pronounced Sigh-ston) and Kegworth (pronounced Keg'uth). We cannot run them in 2017 because too many of our volunteer marshals are gadding about on their blimming motorbikes!

2017

Here it comes.

We already have plenty of new content to throw at you this year. Lots of Rally reports from Phil the Spill and Dave Ranger waiting to be piped onto the servers. Then there's that big backlog of badges to bung aboard.

If you think our Statistics Page is all about LPMCC.net you'd be right but from the start of this year it will also hang a mirror up to your own use of the site. Don't worry, your data does not leave your computer; if you use a PC and a tablet, each one is reported separately. However GCHQ and 48 other institutions may know more about your devious haunting of LPMCC.net than any of us do!