The BMW Club East Anglia Section

On Sunday 23rd May 2010, the East Anglia Section met for breakfast at Mistley Animal Park Farm café. This has become an annual breakfast meeting and is usually followed by a ride-out out to Shotley for lunch.

This time however, we learnt a week or two before the event that Cannon BMW, our local dealer in Braintree was staging a Dealer Day at the Three Tunns Pub, Finchingfield, Essex.

It was therefore decided to re-route the ride-out to Finchingfield to attend this function and Mike Davies led some ten riders with Mark Dutton as tail-ender on a 38 mile ride to Finchingfield, arriving just after 12 noon.

We parked our bikes in the local surgery car park opposite the Three Tunns Pub and made our way back across the road to the event.

Visitors to the meet

Cannons sign

Cannons sign

Cannons had most of the current range of bikes ready for test rides by appointment.

Bikes supplied by Cannons to the Fire Service – K1300S &  S1000RR

Several other businesses were in attendance.

Essex Advanced Motorcyclist Group

Earlier in the month, Mike Davies had taken his R1200RT to Cannon for a major service and taken the opportunity to talk to Bill Cannon about more BMW Club/ Dealer liaison. He left some calendars and Membership Forms which Bill Cannon agreed to include in all new bike packs in the future. This had been discussed by some committee members over a few weeks before and it was agreed to try and maintain this Dealer/Club relationship and build on it as over the years there has not been much effort from the BMW Club to do this.

Every new BMW bike owner is a potential Club member and the now large variety of models BMW build is opening the doors to many new buyers who may not have previously thought about a BMW Motorcycle.

If all our regional areas take a little time to liaise with their local dealers then we may all see our membership increasing.

A day or two after the event Mike Davies spoke to Bill Cannon who said he was very pleased with the event, with some 30-40 test rides being conducted on a variety of BMWs. A number of positive leads have been generated by these test rides.

Bill Cannon also mentioned that Cannons have loaned three BMW bikes to local organisations.

The Fire Service have a K1300S and an S1000RR and the Police use an S1000RR.

Following the success of this day, Cannons will be repeating it in the future and has invited the Section to attend the next event. I suggest we should be proactive and ask some section volunteers to represent the club with a definite push to recruit some more new members.