Page 1 - Shining On Winter 2022

Shining On

The newsletter of Ulysses Club GB (UCGB)
Issue 83: Winter 2022

"How dull it is to pause, to make an end. To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!" From Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Editorial
I’m sitting at my desk looking out at the garden and wondering what’s going on with the weather, which
has been unseasonably mild, even for the SW. We’ve just had our first frost though. In the last few days
we’ve had everything from warm sunny tee-shirt weather through clear and frosty to fog, rain, wind and
more rain. I’m not complaining though, for a couple of years I lived and worked in Nepal, and the weather
there was boringly predictable. As the Rising Nepal daily rag put it, nearly every day, “mainly fair
throughout the Kingdom”. I’d much rather have the full English!
For boring medical reasons I’ve not done much biking this autumn, and not myself attended any local
meetings - so, far from being our roving reporter, I depend on you. Can I remind you all to send in your
meeting reports please? Very few people do so at the moment, which means I can’t report them here.
Just one paragraph of text and a photo or two for posterity will do fine.

You will find here though some interesting international meeting reports - Keith has submitted a report on
the BMW Owners Club meeting he attended in Berlin in July, and I have a couple of different takes on
the German Ulysses meeting in August - Alex has produced an excellent report on the meeting itself,
and Rudy has written a great piece on his scenic ride home. Meanwhile old friend Colin Hawkins who
lives near Aberdeen has written an interesting piece about motorcycling in the often-overlooked NE of
Scotland, and Brian Eccles has sent me info on the Round Britain Rally 2022, plus info on the
forthcoming 2023 event. You may recall he wrote a great report on it (and his Gold medal) last year. This
sounds like a brilliant thing to get involved in and I encourage you to consider getting involved.
The biggest meeting I haven’t had any copy for is the latest club run to Northern Spain in September - is
anyone who went on it willing to write a few words and submit some pics to me? Pretty please? That’ll be
for my next issue in March and would be a great appetite-whetter for spring and the new season. Also if
anyone attending the currently ongoing Shap weekend cares to write a few words…

Can I ask any of you willing to put pen to paper for ANY reason to submit your writings? Articles can be
any length (I’ll serialise long ones) and on anything at all likely to be of interest to our members – new
and old motorcycles and meeting/test ride reports of course, but also learned articles (dare I mention
topics such as oil, tyres, suspension, chains!), hot motorcycle news, technical discussions, close
encounters of the medical kind, old fogey stories, pensions news, forthcoming or mooted bike legislation,
newly discovered meeting points, cafes, pubs, ideas for future meetings, jokes, puzzles etc. If you’ve
ridden or bought a new bike or kit recently, tell people about it. If you have any disgraceful Christmas
party stories I definitely want to hear them!

Merry Christmas! Keep the shiny side up!
(Send all questions and submissions to me at barrycroft@yahoo.co.uk please. The deadline for the
Spring issue is 28th February for publication in March. I’d also appreciate feedback, good or bad, on the
current and indeed previous issues please. I’ll take your text in most formats, but even if you have
embedded photos please also send me those separately so I can edit and resize them. Many thanks.
Ba)

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