47! Bloody youngsters!

I ride with a couple of meetup groups and like the informality of them, like a club but not and the rest of the time with a small group of friends.

I used to be in various motorbike clubs but the endless back stabbing got me down so I never joined any sort of cycle club. My wife is in various arty clubs and she says the old biddies there are just as vicious as any Anglels Chapter. I just ride with a bunch of people I have known for years. However it does mean I don’t step outside my comfort zone. I have thought about joining an mtb club but the thought of being humiliated by steely thighed youngsters doesn’t appeal either. Perhaps I’ll just carry on riding mainly on my own!

Our club is MTB only, and is really only a formalised bunch of mates riding. We pay a minimal annual fee to cover CTC affiliation for insurance purposes. We have a regular weekly evening ride on local trails, and around one bigger trip ‘away’ each month. Loads of other ad hoc rides organised through Facebook or whatever too. Guess the rides would happen anyway, but think the club gives us a group identity that helps things move on – also cool for events like Ard Rock where we will have our own little tented village of 20-odd riders for mutual support/pisstaking.

Not sure I’d personally want anything more formal/serious.

Club all the way, hundreds of members means hundreds of possible new ideas.
We’re a road club that does everything including mountain biking. We even purchased local permits as a club, which saves the off roaders £50 a year if they had to buy them. Free from us.
Our road rides are in three groups every Sunday. These are led by a ride leader and put on Facebook in advance so people can select an appropriate group. Then download it.
The club ride is very disciplined an people like that. Egos are given no quarter. If they want to show off they can, but the ride won’t respond. And repeat offenders will have to be told. The rides will often include some of our top racers, newcomers like this inclusiveness and it puts the egos in place. Racers never give it the big I am on social rides.
When we train we either do it as individuals or with like minded members. Training/stravaing is frowned upon on club runs, or rather using the club run to achieve your personal goals is if you know what I mean.
We race just about everything. Audax is popular. Off road of course. We’ll ride mainland Europe quite a lot, hitting the hotspots like the Alps, Pyrenees, Flanders and Spanish suncamps.
But being in a club doesn’t mean you have to ride with them all the time. Just bugger off alone or pm a mate.
Never seen the problem.

In the UK in some places you would think clubs didn’t exist. Never thought of joining one. Bunch of mates and a facebook page seems enough off road.

Here in Oz if you want to do a race or anything really you need to join MTBA, when you do you have to nominate a club. Been on a few social rides as a way to explore an area but ended up riding as sweep as it was easier to ride back there than with a bunch. They do a bunch of stuff to organise events and stuff but it just seems like an automatic thing here.

Some odd views on here. When I ride in a group racing up or downhill is part of the fun. On road club runs the social rides would stick together but the unwritten rul for the fast run was that it was a race back from the cafe stop. If you were feeling strong you could give it some, if not sit up and take it steady as it was a group you would have company either way.

Anagallis should say that our off road rides are fun, fast bits as well as all the offs.

I’m a ‘member’ of the Peterborough Mountain bike riders, its a really inclusive club with no formal membership, we have a regular ride on Thursday nights with social, intermediate and fast groups meeting at the Boltoph arms pub. Rides are take in a mixture of cycle paths, bridleways, trails and quiet roads and are between 14-20ish miles then back to the pub. The Facebook group has over 400 members and the regular rides attract 40+ members but we have events so people will arrange a day at a trail centre or race teams for events like MM, but members will also use the group to arrange last minute local rides of a handful of riders.