Membership matters

FIRSTLY, WELCOME to all the new members who have joined us and thanks for your confidence that 2021 will turn out to be a better year than 2020 for Audax riding. And secondly, welcome back to all our renewers.

Not unexpectedly, our membership numbers at the end of 2020 were lower than at the corresponding point in 2019, by around 300 members, but the good news is that in general the number who have chosen not to renew is no higher than last year.

This was our first renewal period using our new membership system and I am really pleased with how it went from my perspective. I particularly appreciated that members could update household memberships (add and remove) directly online instead of asking me. One aspect that wasn’t so good was payment with credit/debit card using the PayPal service – several of you got in touch to say you were experiencing problems. We did contact PayPal support and it seems that they no longer guarantee that card payments will be possible and they often push setting up a PayPal account which I know some of you don’t want to do. The good news (but too late for this renewal round) is that we now have another payment provider – Stripe – for card payments. We hope this will be more reliable, and usefully the fees are lower than PayPal.

If you do have any comments on the renewal process or the new membership system more generally, please do get in touch by email to membership@audax.uk or by post to the address inside the back cover of this magazine.

With lockdown restrictions still in place as I write this, new member enrolments (normally strong in the period between January and April) are somewhat down again. As I had to estimate the required number of December Arrivées back in November, I requested too many and we will have some copies left over. So we will run our “send to a friend” offer again – let me know if you have a cycling friend, colleague or relative who might be interested in joining AUK and we will (stocks permitting) send a complimentary copy to whet their appetite.

Finally, if you joined recently and would like some extra reading whilst other activities are limited then I still have reasonable stock of most issues from 2019 and 2020. Drop me a line to enquire about availability and postage rates.

2021 KW Audax Rides Schedule, lockdown conditions permitting…

The KW Audax Chapter is planning monthly rides from March through to October, building up to an epic flagship new 1,000 km event in July down to Land’s End and back, please click the ride links for further details and how to enter: • Sun 14 Mar – Gently Bentley 200km • Sat 17 Apr – Amesbury Amble 300km • Sat 15 May – Dauntsey Dawdle 400km • Sat 12 Jun – Wander Wye 600km • Wed 7 Jul – London – Land’s End – London 1,000km • Sun 15 Aug – Rowlands Ramble 200km • Sat 11 Sep – Fifth Continent 300 km to celebrate 100 years of audax! • Sun 3 Oct – Brace of Bramleys 200 km