Good points all round. Something that makes things difficult on a day like yesterday is simply the sheer number of bikes involved - do the Police need to be informed if a certain number of vehicles are proceeding together? I marked the first roundabout after the services and although we'd only been en route for a couple of minutes I must have been there for a full five minutes before Graeme finally came along - lord knows what it was like later on in the ride... :-?
As a possible alternative to Gerry's suggestion... if anticipated numbers are high, why not have several start points with a common destination? That way there's the social aspect at the end of the ride, but people from far and wide don't need to converge on a single departure point (normally in the Trowbridge area! :)
