New Run What Ya Brung Policy at CVH

A New Direction

After much deliberation, the Clyde Valley HOG Committee have decided to implement a “Run What You Brung” Policy on Dealer and Chapter ride-outs. This decision is in response to demand from chapter members.

Denis and his Triumph
Denis was said to have been beside himself with delight at the news of Run What Ya Brung…

Basically, you can ride any bike you like on the day without any reason for not using a Harley. This should keep those members who prefer to keep their Harley’s clean, dry and unused satisfied, so that you can return them to the dealership after their 4 years PCP deal, basically unblemished with delivery miles on.

Shas on her 125
Shas on her 125

In fact with so many dealerships (of all makes) closing , we feel a need to support the wider biking community who might want to ride product of the HDMC but maybe can’t afford to, or who might still be striving for that full licence. Thus we will be opening up membership to learner riders and riders of other makes too. New Members will merely have to have expressed an interest in a Harley, or have at least been in the car park of the dealership.

Sportsbike rideout
Sportsbike rideout

We hope our more purist members understand this decision and we look forward to seeing lots of different makes and marques on our ride outs.

Adventure Bike Rider
ADV riders will especially enjoy our Stand Up, Feet Up, Dirty Dirty Mudflaps ride outs. Especially where the Road Captain leads on a HD Ultra Limited.

As we expect to see an influx of both Sportsbike riders and Adventure Bike riders as well, we will be introducing two new ride out variants on a monthly basis.

New Feature Ride Out’s

Feet up riding
Feet up riding
  1. Stand Up, Feet Up, Dirty Dirty Mudflaps: All bikes welcome but the riders will be expected to stand on the pegs for at least 80% of the ride out and 50% of the ride out while not being “off road” in the strictest sense, will take to gravel trails and forest tracks…..bring a shovel.
  2. Ride It Like You Stole It: Knee sliders at the ready, passing in the group permitted, ( in fact not overtaking will be frowned upon) and members passing while “on tail*” will attract points towards the “Chapter Hooligan” patch ( To be presented at Winterfest). Bonus points for passing the Road Captain, especially if he is riding a Buell. Again,all bike types may join these runs, though wearing the traditional Power Ranger Suit may be desireable, riders will still be expected to wear a Chapter Cut over the top of their Dainese or RST leathers.

We can’t wait to see what you turn up on for our ride to EHD next weekend!

*On Tail: Wheelie-ing for those members that have not been around bikes long

Training Weekend 2025

A season wouldn’t be a season without a training weekend. The Saturday lets new members of the road crew learn about roles and responsibilities, and existing Road Crew members get a chance to blow off the cobwebs and share their experience with the newcomers.

We have quite a big Road Crew this year so there are quite a few new faces. You can read about them on our Road crew page.

Saturday: Training Day

The ride started at WCHD heading across to the east side of the city for a briefing, before the bikes ( 19 in all!) headed into Newhouse and Wishaw to practice drop offs, sweeping and dealing with issues.

Everyone had a good time and the crew are ready and raring to go in 2025. Big Sean won the Coolest dude in sunglasses competition though Davie Fulton came close with his new “bins”.

While its fair to say it was a nicer day than it initially looked, there was a lot of salt mixed into the wet roads and everyone’s bikes needed a really good clean when they got to their respective homes.

114 mucky
114 mucky
DSC_6658
All the images from training day are on our Flickr Album

Sunday: Largs

Sunday was a ride out both to let the new road crew members try their new skills for real, and also to give our many new members exposure to how we ride on a short ride through the countryside.

The conditions were not the best with some wet and slippy roads in places but everyone reached large safely and no one got lost….so the Road Crew duties worked!

Nicole looked after the ladies of Harley on her first ride out in this capacity and…well, maybe take a flag next time….

DSC_6751-Edit
All the Images from Sundays ride out to Largs are on our Flickr Album
The Gathering 2025
Make sure you get your 2025 Tickets for The Gathering

Read more of what we have been up to in the items below

West Coast Harley Party March 2025

On Friday the 14th of March, West Coast HD hosted a Harley Party at the dealership. The dealership extended their appreciation to members of Clyde Valley HOG who helped out with marshalling the event and keeping the BBQ going. In attendance, aside from lots of Clyde Valley HOG members were the lads from Bobhead, Gordon Seith with the music and Gav Cupit from HD Europe presenting his VR1000.

The event raised over £1000 for the Prostate Cancer Charity!

The evening was a great success and Nicole Tanzabel took the images you see above, which she has kindly shared with us. You can see the full set of images if you pop over to our Flickr archive below.

DSC00417
Photos from 2025 Harley party at WCHD, taken by Nicole Tanzabel.

Bike Nights are on the move

By popular demand….OK…Colin keeps asking….. Bike nights are moving back to Braehead from the 19th March. We would like to offer big thanks to The Harvester at Hillington for their hospitality over the last 6 months or so and we promise we will be back for more Big breakfasts and winter meet ups. But with longer days on the way the Braehead park up by the Lord of the Isles offers more exposure to the Chapter.

Colin is happy
“The sense of relief is overwhelming” said Colin.

Bike nights are every Wednesday through the year but be aware in summer we also have Monthly MEET THE CHAPTER nights at WCHD- usually every second Wednesday of the month from April to September. The dealership will be open from 18:00 to 20:00 on those occasions.

AGM 2025 Overview

As we have now meteorologically speaking, crossed into Springtime and with the AGM it feels like the season is upon us. It will take a few more weeks before the Chapter is firing on all cylinders ready to get us on the road: Road Crew Training is the next stage…but the CVH 2025 riding year is all but upon us.

AGM turn out
AGM turn out
bikes at Riverside museum
bikes at Riverside museum

So a great start today with a very well attended AGM…it was standing room only and in fact I think a few members couldn’t even get in the room!

Stevie Trainor
Stevie Trainor

First off we had a review of the 2024 year and the moneys raised for our two main charities, the Glasgow Sick Kids and Breast Cancer Support charities. For 2025 these will continue to be supported but we will be looking for some further suggestions on this front. One is likely to be a Prostate Cancer charity.

We also got two certificates from HOG UK for our Ride 365 numbers….they were not great but it isn’t something the chapter pushes so hard even though we do put a lot of miles under the tyres of a season.! 🙂

We had a report from Don Rutherford and Dave Hackshall from WCHD our sponsoring Dealership, with a review of activities they have lined up ( check out our Events Calander for dates of Meet the Chapter Nights and WCHD Bike Nights) and there are a few BBQ events to come along as well, the first will be the Easter weekend after the Easter Egg run. The dealership is hoping chapter members might be able to assist in 2025 with some of the dealership events as stewards or representing the Chapter to attract members.

Then we had the presentation of Chapter Officer patches for the new committee members.

Janice Graham moves to Assistant Director.
Willie Galloway becomes Treasurer.
Sean Ferguson is Secretary.
Chris Kelly moves to Head Road Captain.
Nicole Tanzabel becomes Ladies of Harley Officer.
Frazer Auld joins the committee as Photographer.
Paula Taylor and Ben Vale are our new Activities Officers.
Some photos below more will be added once I get them from Fraz!

Then we had awards of appreciation for Tina Taylor and Davy Henderson standing down as Activities Officers and Scott Grove standing down as Assistant Director. Scott gave a final demonstration to the Chapter of how the delete Button works.

Finally a short introduction or review of activities was given by each Officer.

2024 Yearbooks.

2024 Yearbook

The Chapter 2024 Photo Yearbook is available to order. To keep things simple and to raise a few more pennies for charity, the books can be purchased by members for £40. The profit’s arising will go to the chapter charity funds. Members should contact Kenny ASAP where you will be added to a temporary WhatsApp group so the funds can be collected in and you can be notified when the books come available to collect.

The Gathering 2025 Promo

The Gathering 2025 is approaching rapidly, make sure you have your tickets and accommodation booked soon, we don’t want anyone to be disappointed. It’s going to be epic!

For a wee preview of how we like to have a good time at Clyde Valley Hog see the wee taster video below!

Get tickets and all the info on our Gathering 2025 page

All Change at Clyde Valley HOG

Following a pre-season meeting on Tuesday, a new committee has been announced to the chapter.

Tina Taylor
Tina stands down as Activities Officer

Standing down are Assistant Director Scott Grove and Activities Officer Tina Taylor. Their support to the club has been greatly appreciated.

Stevie Trainor remains at Director. Long-time Ladies of Harley Officer Janice Graham, one of the longest (if not the longest) members of Clyde Valley, is stepping up to Assistant Director.

Willie G was unavailable for comment
Willie G was unavailable for comment from the press following Tuesday’s Meeting…”I have far more importanter things to do than speak to you lot was all he would say”. Any suggestion that he will be giving Rangers a loan from club funds during transfer season are entirely fictitious. Allegedly.

We now have a Treasurer; Willie G (Willie Galloway) has his fingers in the till..purely keeping his eye on the pennies.

Sean
Sean is “plugging in” to the role of Secretary, it will take a few weeks before he gets fully “wired in”…did you see what we did there? If you know you know.

The job of Secretary is now held by the Big man himself, Sean Ferguson. He takes over from Chris Kelly. Chris is dealing with memberships for now up to the AGM; then Sean will gradually edge into that task.

Chris steps into the role of Head Road Captain after filling in for the latter half of 2024.

The Ladies are now represented by our new Ladies of Harley Officer, Nicole Tanzabel.

Davy Henderson is “on the bench” for now as Activities Officer. He is still recuperating from his injuries sustained in that awful hit-and-run incident last year. Everyone at CVH wishes Davy well and we hope to see him back with us later in the year. We have two new Activities Officers in Ben Vale and Paula Taylor.

Joining the committee is Frazer Auld, as long-standing Chapter Photographer. Kenny and Fitzy continue in their roles as Webmaster/Photographer and Merchandise Officer, respectively.

You can see all the new faces on our committee page. We hope all members will join us in welcoming everyone to their new positions. Please give everyone some time to get accustomed to their new roles before hassling them all mercilessly about something they probably forgot to do!
Address any queries to the committee via their emails* or WhatsApp.

*email addresses are being updated so please allow a few days for this to complete.

All the new committee members should be receiving their patches at the AGM.

Read more of what we have been up to in the items below

A wee thank-you

The Chapter received a letter from the Glasgow Childrens Hospital Charity. They thanked us for a recent donation. We gave them £4000 from fundraising activities over 2024. Well done everyone.

letter from Glasgow Childrens Hospital Charity

Stevie plans for us to visit the hospital sometime in the New Year. Keep an eye out on the website or Socials for more info on that.

WCHD Christmas event

This weekend there is the Christmas Cracker Event at WCHD. Santa Claus will be at the dealership in search of a new ride, meeting with the kids, collecting their letters and showing off his sleigh!

You can also expect a rocking Christmas jingle upstairs – with LIVE music from Gordon Seith and a sprinkle of Christmas magic to our menu. Mince pies, cookies and much more await to fill your belly, plus complimentary mulled wine served throughout the day.

We look forward to seeing you there if you have the time in what can be a busy weekend before the big day. If not, everyone at Clyde Valley HOG hopes to see you in the New Year and hopes you have a great Christmas and New Year.

Seeing the Season Out….Harleyween

Last Saturday was the last (official) ride out of the season …though judging by the weather currently there still seems to be a week or two left with great bike conditions. It was our sponsoring dealer’s event, West Coast Harley Davidson’s Harleyween weekend. Additionally, the Clyde Valley Ladies of Harley organized their Strawberry Tea event in support of Breast Cancer Care in Glasgow.

With the End of Season Mystery Ride needing to be canned the previous weekend due to the storm front that swept through Scotland, it was decided to have a wee compensatory ride out to end the season on tarmac before everyone headed in to eat cake.

For the ride out we went a nice wee loop down to Stewarton then across by Newton Mearns and back up through Barrhead to WCHD. A ride of about 80 minutes or so and one in which we encountered what seemed like 4 seasons on one run. It was warm, it was cold, it was wet and it was dry, but we had some great ( new to us) roads on the route and its one to bear in mind for drier warmer days.

Back at WCHD it was Spooky goings on and much cakery with a Tarot Card reader, and face painting on the go as well. Lots of people made an effort with the fancy dress and the Ladies made a fantastic £660 pounds for Breast Cancer Care.

Harleyween and LOH Strawberry Tea 2024

Read more of what we have been up to in the items below

Linlithgow Shop Ride Out

We had about a dozen bikes and riders away to Ride to the Wall at the weekend, so it is fair to say a big turn out wasn’t expected for a wee shop ride out on Saturday. In the event, we had 11 bikes and a dozen members at WCHD. The destination was to be Linlithgow which by coincidence was hosting a market day. We were a little concerned about our planned parking up area but in the event it turned out OK. We had a plan A+ and a Plan B to deal with any eventualities arising! ( Apart from Chris going to the totally wrong town… all we could do was try to stop him turning off the route ).

Once Nicole had turned up ( she was sweeper for the run, along with Frazer taking up the tail position) we headed off along the M8 picking up the A89 and skirting around Coatbridge and Airdrie before heading out across quiet country roads up through Caldercruix, Avon Bridge and in to Linlithgow on the Linlithgow Bridge road.

A really nice set of roads, in reasonably good condition ( there is a shocker) and some nice twists and turns, on what turned out to be a very pleasant Saturday morning.

Once parked up at the cross and after a few chapter photo’s most of the riders dispersed to the various coffee shops and the farmers market. Who knew what a Lamington was…..?…Nicole evidently!

It was such a nice day I think everyone was quite content just to sit around and blether but eventually everyone departed with a group taking a run in to EHD as its not too far away.

Linlithgow Shop Ride Out

Read more of what we have been up to in the items below