Last night I went over to the Isle of Wight and met up with Paul at Pit-Stop training who invited me to attend the 2nd ever Isle of Wight bike night at Newport Football club. On Saturday the Island had a ride out for fallen freinds when over 350 bikes turned out, so last night only about 150 bikes turned up which for only the second event I thought was pretty impressive, but the Football club even opened up the snack bar so coffee, tea and burgers could be purchased. What really surprised me was the range of bikes from a 1930's AJS to an immaculate Honda 400/4 right the way through to the obligatory R1's Busa's and GSXR's. Real friendly crowd and I was made to feel very welcome, so if anyone is on the island on the first Monday of every month then pop along to Newport Football club for a great night out. Anyway, the surprising fact as per the title of this thread is, did you know that there are over 6,000 motocycles registered on the Isle of Wight? OK, a lot of people have more than one bike, but for an island that is no bigger than an average size county, that is still a lot of bikes, and the numbers are growing.
I was on Jersey a couple of years ago and we noticed that the highest legal speed limit was a 40mph section between St Aubyns and St Helier. Now we did see an awful lot of big bikes, most of them sportbikes, and of an evening, we could hear them from half the island away screaming down the roads. We couldn't help but wonder whether it was tantamount to putting a target on their backs re the feds...
Jersey has just had a ride out in aid of Holidays for Heroes ( a local charity that brings injured soldiers and families over for holidays ). The turn out was about a thousand bikes and they raised ten thousand pounds. All doing a max of 40 mph of course. Jersey has a population of about 100,000 people but there are 126,000 registered vehicles here. We like our internal combustion engines
