News
SERV Sussex receive grant from Morgan Stanley
SERV Sussex volunteer and Morgan Stanley employee Simon Clark was successful in his application for a Morgan Stanley grant and raised £1,250 for the charity. The Morgan Stanley International Foundation provides grants to organisations that benefit from the employee volunteering their time.
Pictured right is Sara Robinson from the Morgan Stanley community affairs department, Simon Clark and SERV Chairman Dean Wickham.
Blood On The Move
ITV Meridian's regional news programme featured an excellent article about SERV on Monday 1st February. It showed the work done by the Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire & Berkshire team and included interviews with staff at Reading Hospital.
The programme's introduction by reporter Penny Silvester states "They have become another emergency service and they are saving lives. A team of motorbike riders has been spreading its net across the South to answer the call when a hospital urgently needs medical supplies. The bikers are volunteers who are on standby during the night and at weekends to deliver urgent blood and baby milk to hospital. And they do it for free."
See the programme at the ITV Meridian website.
SERV - In the Press
SERV has recently appeared in some motoring press articles: Northhampton Chronical & Echo, EasierCars, Motoring.co.za and Motorcycletrader.net
To view the articles in full, please follow the links below.
Northampton Chronical & Echo
EasierCars
Motoring.co.za
MotorcycleTrader.net
SERV online has a new look
If you are a repeat visitor to SERV's website then you will notice that things have changed. We now have a spanky new website thanks to David Dawson at JoomlaFox. David has provided the website free-of-charge through Joomlafox's free websites for charity scheme. All that SERV needs to do in return is provide a link back to Promo Gifts UK Ltd - something that we are happy to do.
SERV would also like to thank Peter Holder at webholder.com for hosting the previous website for so long.
SERV - always on duty!
On Sunday 9th August 2009 at approx 16:30, Dean Wickham (SERV Chairman) was travelling on the M25 anti-clockwise between Jct 10-9 whilst representing the charity, riding one of our marked emergency blood bikes, when he came to the aid of stranded motorist. The following letter of commendation from the Highways Agency describes what happened.
North London Honda Owners Club - Iron Butt: End to End Gold Charity Run
It started with Russ (American member) who likes long distance trips and mentioned at one of our weekly meetings that he was going to do the Lands End to John O’Groats Iron Butt Run. This run has to be done within 24 hours and you have to do at least 1,000 miles collecting official stamps and receipts along the way. Then we had a talk by SERV (Peter Rolfe) on what they do.
Four of us decided to do the E2EG and also raise money for SERV, to go to the new branch being set up for Central London.
Roland, Steve and Myself made our way down to Penzance on the 28th May to meet up with Russ at Lands End on the 29th, we got our photos taken (as everyone dose) and paperwork stamped and signed at the hotel and started off (12:05pm). As you may remember the weather that weekend was very good and all went well until we hit the M4 & M6 where we met with lane restrictions due to vehicle recoveries and weekend roadwork’s. Most car drivers seeing high viz jackets in their rear view mirrors made space for us and we slowly progressed through traffic.
Unfortunately the restrictions and slow moving traffic put a pinch on our timetable and we started to worry if we could get to JOG within 24hrs, but we kept to our plan (mostly) and headed over the boarder as night fell.. The sun came up 3 hours later!
Scotland 30th May and another very warm day..onwards and upwards towards Inverness where we filled up and discovered that the time was still tight, we had 3hrs to get to JOG via Thurso according to our GPS (Tom Tom) systems.
Thurso and 1hr left with 30miles to go, narrow roads and slow moving traffic.
We entered JOG at 1150am and by the time we parked the bikes and ran over to the hotel for the official end stamp it was midday...but we still had to go over to the post office to get a time/date receipt . It was 12:04pm when all the paperwork was done; we had made it with one minute to spare! We walked into the hotel bar and sat down, congratulated each other and ordered up four pints and 4 full Scottish breakfasts.
Now all we had to do is head back home!
PS..At this time 13th May we have collected nearly £700 via the ‘Just Giving’ charity site and it continues to come in, our paperwork has been sent off to Iron Butt UK to get official recognition and certificates.
Bikes used..2x Deauville 700’s – 1x Deauville 650 & 1 x Cruiser.
Battle Biker Drop-In
SERV Sussex would like to say thank you to the Battle Biker Drop-In for their support and company at the Brighton Speed Trials 2008.The Battle Biker Drop-In is located at the Battle Community Fire Station, East Sussex.
Born following discussions around the mess-table at Battle Fire Station one sunny Sunday morning in April 2007, the BBDI gives a warm welcome to all riders.
For more information on The Battle Biker Drop-In vist www.battlebikerdropin.co.uk
Mums on Bikes
How a small idea over a coffee became a reality.....
We all love riding our bikes and decided that we wanted to raise money for charity while doing something we enjoy. We will be riding the A-Z of pubs on Sunday 19th August. We will start at our "A" pub at about 7.30am and will visit each pub, in turn, in alphabetical order, throughout the day with our support crew taking a photo at each one. We will travel as far west as Hove and as far east as Rye, covering approximately 180 miles. Why not visit the Mums on Bikes website.
More New Safety Tabbards!
20 March 2007
ROK have very kindly donated 30 safety tabbards for use by SERV members whilst on duty Many thanks.
New Safety Tabbards!
20 March 2007
SERV Branches out
Back at the 2004 AGM, Steve Darnley raised his hand and muttered yes when the committee position of Membership Secretary raised its ugly head. As part of his new role, Steve was to collate names from out of our area, in the hope that enough volunteers would be found to start a new SERVice there. At Silverstone last May, the fruits of Steve’s labour finally paid him a visit!
Gareth Cregg, Richard Freeth, Mel Smith and Dave Sammons bought Oxford SERV for tea! Dave Sammons takes up the story...............
"Well, it was about two years ago I was in Tesco, bored, and bought a copy of MCN. They were running an article about some little known group called SERV who helped out during the London bombings. Thinking to myself "Yeah, I'll have some of that" I managed to get Dean Wickham's number and give him a bell. Unfortunately he was several hundred feet above Windsor at the time. A couple of weeks later and I got an e-mail from a chap called Steve Darnley, saying thanks for my interest, but Bicester was a bit far out of range for now.
If only I'd known what was coming - I would have run a mile there and then!
Two years on, and SERV (Oxon, Bucks & Northants) is good to go. We've got around 20 members, many of whom are advanced instructors or observers, spread across a huge geographical area from High Wycombe to Swindon - that's about the same as the SERV Sussex, Kent and Surrey boundaries but with one huge difference - we're covering it all as one group! We're hitting the high times at the moment, but there have been lows, and I know several people have been tempted to walk away - including myself. But support (and threats) from Steve, Dean and Beth has been superb, and even when I was about to move up north to try and escape it all Steve threatened to hunt me down and drag me back kicking and screaming! Once we're up and running properly, it will be massively down to these three guys! Thank you!
Currently we're on a high! We've just got our first banner and have numerous events lined up for the year, from shopping centre collections to The Bulldog Bash. We're also hoping to send a party down to the GEMS Garden of England show to meet up with a lot of you. We also have the support of Thames Valley Police and I am at present organising formal training with their motorcycle instructors. Only this morning I received an e-mail from a company offering to buy us a marquee! Couple that in with our own members offering donations to purchase t-shirts etc and we're well on our way! We've had radio news run an article on us as the main news headline for a day, and television news are keen to do a piece on us. We're coming together properly now, flip, we even have a committee!!!!!!!
All we need now is for the hospitals to start using us. We're new, and untried, and that's the biggest problem. Fortunately there are some local blood managers who are keen to use us, and they're doing everything in their power to get permission to do so (I think they're sick of our voices on the phone very few days now). Luckily some of them also know people who already use SERV, so you guys in the south are helping us without even knowing it!
It has been hard, but once all the hard work pays off and we get our first phone call it'll all be worth it. Nobody ever said getting a brand new group off the ground would be easy, but with the support of Dean, Steve, Beth, and Mel Smith (our fab treasurer! Who has given me a huge amount of help) we're very nearly there - SERV's first "satellite" group in 26 years!
Today Oxon, Bucks & Northants - tomorrow total UK coverage!"
New Hospital on-board
14 March 2007
Oxon, Bucks & Northants have 1st hospital on boardServ (Oxon, Bucks & Northants) have announced that they have their first client hospital, the High Wycombe General Hospital.
Dave Sammons, group co-ordinator said "This is hugely exciting for us. It's taken a lot of hard work by my very dedicated team but we've finally got their, our first client! I must take this opportunity to thank Steve Darnley, Dean Wickham, Beth Hilton, our local committee and all of our volunteer riders for their hard work and dedication in getting us to this point. Now the work really starts!"
The group are also talking to the Oxford Heamophilia Centre, Wexham Park Hospital (Slough), Stoke Mandeville Hospital (Alyesbury), Milton Keynes General and Northampton General with a view to them all becoming clients of the new SERV group.
Kent News Round-up
06 March 2007
Kent SERV has been very busy fundraising and recruiting over the past six months. Recruiting has been very successful after various newspaper articles and radio interviews with Alan Pasterfield. So far we have managed to recruit enough members to have two people on every shift, with four coordinators handling the calls - we are in good shape! The fundraising has gone very well, with the British Caravan Club donating and The Queen Public House has collected through a collection box and weekly bonus ball competitions. We have other collection boxes in-situ in various sites throughout Kent - thank you to the members who have helped with this. This year we had two new hospitals coming on board - the return of the Medway Maritime (Chatham) and a brand new hospital - the Benenden Hospital. Next year we are hoping to get another hospital (or more!) to keep our Kent members busy! In all 2006 has been a very successful year for SERV Kent.
TomTom RIDER Donated
21 December 2005
TomTom donate a TomTom RIDER navigation system to SERV
TomTom have just donated a TomTom RIDER navigation system to SERV for use on the dedicated response bike. SERV riders also receive a generous discount on TomTom RIDER purchases.
PeopleTalk Interview
13 November 2005
PeopleTalk.org record a broadcast with SERV, P&H Motorcycles, MCN and Maidstone Hospital
www.peopletalk.org is a audio documentary site about people, their lives, stories and anecdotal social history. It's about ordinary folk, not famous people. In November 2005 Dean Wickham, David Romaine and Stephen Darnley from SERV, along with Paul (Managing Director of P&H Motorcycles, Brighton), Dan (Products editor, motorcyclenews.com) and Jane Leftley (Hematology Manger, Maidstone) participated in a peopletalk online documentary, disussing the activities of SERV and how each person is involved with the charity. You can listen to the documentary here (Story No. 11).
New Gazebo
09 September 2006
Hurstwood Park League of Friends donate to SERV.
Hurstwood Park League of Friends chairman, Brian Gubbin, came down to visit SERV at the Brighton Speed Trials this month to view the recently donated gazebo and meet some of the volunteers. Hurstwood Park League of Friends have donated the full cost of the new gazebo to SERV. Many thanks.
British Turntable
02 August 2006
British Turntable have donated a second motorcycle turntable.
British Turntable have donated a second motorcycle turntable. This turn table is suitable for use with the dedicated Pan, and means that each bike now has it's own turntable.
TomTom
02 August 2006
TomTom have donated a second TomTom RIDER navigation system.
TomTom have donated a second TomTom RIDER navigation system. The new unit has been connected to the dedicated Pan for use by SERV's riders.
BCC
31 July 2006
BCC Support
The British Caravan Club (BCC) have supported SERV for three years, raising over £2000. Monies raised are from the pockets of each member of the club, raised through events like raffles, fun events, etc. Members from Kent SERV were honoured to be invited to their Christmas event to collect a HUGE cheque. The BCC have chosen SERV as their charity for 2006 as well. SERV is extremely grateful to the members of the BCC for their generosity and continued support. THANK YOU!
SET&FCG
31 July 2006
SET&FCG
The South East Trailer & Folding Caravan Group, who have members throughout Kent, Surrey and Sussex have supported SERV for seven years, raising over £3000. Monies raised are from the pockets of each member of the club, raised through events like raffles, auctions, Jackie's scones, fun events, etc. Members from Kent SERV have tried to visit the SET&FCG once a year just to say Thank You. The hospitality riders are given is great. Lovely tea! The SET&FCG have chosen SERV as their charity for yet another year! SERV is extremely grateful to the members of the SET&FCG for such generosity and continued support. THANK YOU!
Nick Burberry
25 July 2006
Nick Burberry
SERV is most grateful to Mr Nick Burberry of Sittingbourne, Kent who raised so much money for SERV on a two-day cycle event. Nick cycled round Rutland Water, a distance we think of approx. 15-20 miles. Half was done one day, the other half the next day. Riders from SERV would prefer a motor on a bike but Nick did this, purely to raise funds for SERV, on a pushbike! Nick, SERV thanks you very much.
CSiS
20 June 2006
The Civil Service Insurance Society have donated £1000
The Civil Service Insurance Society have donated £1000 to SERV. The money has been donated so that SERV can purchase safety equipment.
Classic Bike Show
17 April 2006
Collection at Classic Bike Show
A great day was had by all at The Classic Bike Show at Ashford. Not least the site of Chris Baker, Colin Hills, Claire Pasterfield, Paul Armstrong and me (Alan Pasterfield) trying to put the marquee up with no instructions with seasoned exibitors looking on. Still we managed it. We collected £161.48 from the day, which wasn't bad as most show-goers were looking for something very cheap in the parts department! Paul's wife Tracy and kids came along, Danielle 7 and Emma 5, who charmed money out of the passersby. In fact it was a bit embarrassing watching them as they were doing it very well. Paul's Mum, Brenda, and Martin Simmons were also on hand to collect. Nick Gerolemou made a fleeting visit to hand over a 25 year anniversary sign to hang over the marquee. Thank you to everyone who helped out, and a big thank you to Colin Hills for transporting the marquee down there with very little notice.
New Bike!
17 March 2006
New Bike!
SERV is pleased to announce that it has just purchased a second dedicated motorcycle.
The new bike (pictured, foreground) is a fully liveried Honda Pan European ST1300.
Any members who attended the RSPCA pet food run in February may recognise the bike, those who couldn't make it will be able to see it at future SERV events. Images of the new bike can be seen in the Gallery.
County Mall Collection Day
5 February 2006
County Mall, Crawley. Collection Day
The day started well. Dave R and Dave T headed towards Beth's for early morning tea and to collect our new 4 metre high flag Dave R's Citroen wobbled along in the cross winds up the A23 and Dave T on the Deauville carried out his switching to reserve with one hand while overtaking a white van trick on the A24. So far so good! Then it was on to County Mall to meet up with Steve D on a Demonstration Honda Pan European. After contacting the very helpful Mall security staff we had to ensure that the bike's fuel tanks were empty and batteries disconnected. We set up the display stand with bikes rampant at each end on the main ground floor and then it was time to wait for the nice folks who were going to give us their hard-earned cash.
The day proceeded very well. Our highly experienced team of skilled operatives (Beth, Steve D, Arthur, Dave T, Dave B and old dangerous Dave himself) got to work exchanging SERV bugs, keyrings, brochures, interesting chat up lines (and by rumour about Dave T – body fluids) for the shoppers' cash. We had interest from a number of potential riders and the Crawley folks gave generously. Things were going well when at lunch time Mother Dean arrived so it was "the bikes are the wrong way round, put the flag in the middle" and finally "I'm off to take the photos".
The day worn on, our feet got sore, lots of coffee was consumed, the money rolled in (well clinked anyway) and then it was time to pack up, get the bikes fit for the road and join the happy throng of traffic back to the south coast.
Didn’t we do well?
Kent at Sittingbourne
22 October 2005
Kent visit ASDA in Sittingbourne
We [Kent] had a successful day at ASDA Sittingbourne raising funds. I would like to thank Graham Robinson, Chris Baker, and Graham Wright for their support, and look forward to seeing them at the Camping Club’s presentation day.
I will start organising Kent’s collection dates for next year in January and as usual will let you know what is arranged as soon as I know.
Wishing you all the Christmas that you want and a good New Year.
Ace Café, Brighton Burnup
11 September 2005
Ace Café, Brighton
We arrived at Madeira Drive, dark and early to a rather disorganised set up regime. Eventually we sorted out our location (about a mile down the Drive) and set up the display tent, in between bump starting Ian Stroud’s bike and trying to find some breakfast tea (as Dean’s thermos broke journeying down on the SERV bike).
Well the day worn on and the biker crowd thronged in. We were flanked by Sussex Police and American Motorcycles so we had a lot of passers-by with their families. So it was "Would you like a SERV bug son? OK Mum/Dad that will be a £1, Ta very much!"
It was very, very busy with bikes arriving by the thousand (no kidding). There were bikes everywhere and just to be helpful we stored peoples' helmets for a contribution of course. Highlights of the day were letting parents photograph their kids on the SERV bike, closely examining the Sussex Police Yamaha R1 (strictly for training courses of course!), spotting which biker (male or female) had the most tattoos (first on their bodies and then on their heads) and then the arrival of the Tuttles of the Orange County Choppers complete with police escort and filming by Discovery Channel and thousands (yes really) of fans.
The weather stayed fair and consequently we had a very good day collecting as many people were very generous but the downside was our sore feet and the long queues for cups of tea.
Very well done and many thanks everybody who grafted away over two long days to collect this terrific amount. This was a fantastic effort by everyone concerned.
Attendees roll of honour:
Brighton Speed Trials
10 September 2005
SERV attend the national speed trials at Brighton, Madeira Drive
We set up our display tent just outside the entrance to the paddock in Madeira Drive at 7am accompanied by the noisy arrival of many types of competition cars and bikes.
The weather held fair and we set out our wares and got ready to relieve passers-by of their cash. The petrol heads and photographers among us benefited from the SERV reflective jacket as it gained free entry into the pits for a good look at the cars and bikes and the start line activity.
As the day went on we were kept busy telling various car owners not to park next to the SERV stand. Again the SERV jacket gave us authority as they thought we were marshals!
We had a reasonable day collecting cash with the highlights being the competition between Don Waller and Dave Godden as to who could get the best looking female to sit on their bikes and Don’s ‘see if you can put enough money in the bucket on my bike’s wing mirror to tip the bike over’ offer – very popular with the females and young people.
However while it didn’t rain the seagulls had it in for us, as they scored direct hits on the SERV bike, Dave Godden and his Goldwing. We finished the day at 5pm and got the SERV kit ready for next day in Madeira drive.
Article by Dave Romaine
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