WRWR - Motorcycle Maids Making Waves

In August 2018 we were involved in a discussion about women's clothing on Facebook, Hayley Bell mooted the idea of doing something about the lack of options and access to motorcycles and clothing suitable for women. Some of you might not consider this an issue if you live near a showroom or store that supplies your needs, or if you have the time to send off repeatedly for items from online shops to try on and return until you find the right fit.

Well, Hayley hit the point pretty swiftly in her WRWR Facebook group as within a month of starting it had attracted in excess of 10,000 female riders. (For further information about WRWR and its origins please follow the link at the right hand side of the blog)

Us Maids in Cornwall were majorly excited at getting involved with WRWR, envisioning a southwesterly circuit of our home county before heading overseas. Bristol is often pictured as the 'lands end' of the West of England, unless the English have a caravan attached to their car.

My attitude is generally you have to be in it to win it - so I volunteered to help with moderation on the ever increasing Facebook group, and as Debbie doesn't sleep, she was able to monitor daily WRWR Facebook activity. We enthusiastically tagged each other on any new information arising as the plans for the relay were put together by the voluntary admin team.  I have to thank Debbie's for her high levels of enthusiasm which have to be applauded - she had the hotels booked as soon as the UK routes were announced. Annual leave was booked and plans afoot to make this happen for us. By hook or by crook this was something that we would be involved in. I had a massive clear out in my loft and put it up for sale on eBay, the timely sales enabled the booking of the guardian pack and the euro tunnel tickets to be purchased.

I had this crazy idea that I would write to some local motorcycle stores and ask them if they would like to sponsor the Motorcycle Maids in any form whatsoever including the loan of any winter kit that might make our journey a little easier.  We did receive some stickers and a keyring with a lovely letter wishing us luck in our endeavours from a large Plymouth based store.

In an effort to raise the WRWR profile the admin team had appealed to all to help with some of the tasks - alongside Shana I learnt about the practical benefits of buffer and how to overload it with too many photos so it jammed. The Litas Cornwall Instagram account proved to be very useful to push some great photos and share event details across social media platforms.

I sent what felt like hundreds of emails to radio stations contact addresses - outlook read receipts confirmed that they read all about WRWR. The lack of feedback did leave me stumped. As luck would have it one of my patients in clinic mentioned his long standing career as a newspaper editor - talk about gift horse, I made copious notes based on his advice.

I forwarded one of my early emails to my workplace director's PA in case they could make use of the news story for company PR. The PR agency was swift in its response and I have to say delivered an excellent response in the Plymouth Newspapers - Plymouth Herald. WRWR was being talked about in this Oceanic City.  My personal messages across Facebook messenger resulted in an interview and Podcast with Plymouth Radio Sunday Supplement Episode 22 Women in Motorcycling- I noted a slight raise in my voice pitch after being asked by Sam how I managed 'helmet hair'.

Friday morning opened with a chirpy message from Debbie accompanied by the full size page article and shot of me in a most flattering (not) photo in the Cornish Times.