BikeSafe Workshop - South Yorkshire

Hi,

It's been a busy few weekends for me recently, including being able to go on a BikeSafe workshop in South Yorkshire after being too ill to attend the one I was originally booked on at the start of July.

As the workshop was ran by the South Yorkshire Police Department and I'm from Derbyshire, it did mean I had a very early start on the Sunday morning to get to the police station for 8:30 but luckily the M1 isn't that busy on a Sunday morning so the 50 odd miles there went quite quickly.

There were 5 other riders on the workshop with me, all male. Bizarrely though, despite being the youngest one there by probably at least 15 years, I was one of the most experienced of the group as I've been riding since age 16! Some of the others there had only recently passed their tests in what they said was the midlife crisis stage of their life.

I was the first to arrive...

After the morning classroom session, we had some lunch and then headed out in pairs with one of the coppers for a ride around for them to assess our riding and give us any pointers they might have. I actually went out with someone who also owned an SV650 but theirs wasn't restricted of course.

The copper we were with was PC Dave Fields who was really lovely and we headed out on a loop around South Yorkshire (not being from around there, the roads and places were unfamiliar) with one bike in front of the copper and one bike behind. I must say though, it's really weird to have a bike copper sat behind you when you're riding - I was on my best behaviour! Especially with not speeding up before the national speed limit sign on the way out of villages..

We stopped every so often and switched around and got some feedback for us to work on for the next bit. Plus having some water of course. We got back to the police station around 3:30-4:00 and we'd done about 100 miles around Sheffield and South Yorks.

After a talk from an IAM rider about further opportunities to improve our riding skills, the day was finished and it was then time to head back home again. My feedback from PC Dave Fields was really positive so I was chuffed with that! Of course, there's things I can improve on but it's nice to know that I'm riding pretty okay generally.

My parents actually came to meet me after the day so we rode home altogether which was nice. So by the end of the day, I'd done just over 200 miles and although it was a long day, I did think it was really useful and a good one at the same time. I'd definitely recommend trying to go on one if you haven't been before - I'll leave a link here for you to look at if you want to.

I'm off to France on the 27th so the next posts you'll be getting from me will be the tour diary posts!

Until then, ride safe
TFB