I like the idea of an Annual ****up myself. Stick it at the other end of the calendar at the end of January or something, bikes optional
At the end of the day for me it's not much about the ride and all about the, eh, staying up till 4.30 with Ben and his little metal glasses, and getting stabbed in the head with a spear, and Grinch's pants, and tugs of wars with cars... So see you all at AP07?
It's really easy to scale up a local event into a bigger one, we've done it a couple of times- wasn't really organised so much, just that we had a big gang of irish and essex boys up to visit one weekend and had a great run and a barbie. It doesn't have to be a big official weekender to be worth travelling for, after all. And if we do a few of these regional rides every year it's not the end of the world for people who can't make it on the big day, since there'll be plenty of other weekends... But it wouldn't take anything away from the big day, in fact, could definately help to make it better from the social side.