PMBA

P.M.B.A. needs more members to strengthen our voice and make sure the needs of the ever growing number of riders locally are taken into account. We have more than 1300 unique visitors to the website each month and nearly 700 members on the Facebook page but only a fraction of you have signed up.

Why should you? Well the more pukka members we have the more seriously we get taken by the powers that be, this is the main reason behind the membership fee of £ 5 per year. If someone's prepared to put their hand in their pocket (for this rather modest membership cost) it shows some commitment to what we're doing and requires a little more effort than just clicking a 'Like' button.

The membership fees also help keep the wheels turning, our outgoings are relatively small but we do have costs, hosting this website being one of them and the memberships all go to help. We've recently also registered with Entrust, a body that oversees the allocation of the Landfill Communities Fund. A pot of money not open to organisations like the councils or Forestry Commission but something we can access to support the developments that are being worked on. This cost us £ 100 but could open up funding for mountain bike projects in the thousands. We're also very grateful to our corporate sponsors who've chucked a lot more than a fiver into the pot, you can see their logos down the right hand side of the page, click on them to go through to their websites.

Going forward members will also have access to more information through a members area of this site (accessed from the top right of the main page by clicking on the 'members' link). We'll be providing more detailed documents and sharing information that we can't yet release to the wider web. Members will also have access to our meeting minutes and agendas so they can see (and hopefully get involved with) the things we're working on.

Signing up is easy and secure via PayPal (you don't need to have a PayPal account), it can all be done online in a couple of minutes via our online membership form.

As mountain bikers we're not good at acting as a group, the ramblers and equestrians have had far more success at getting their messages across by coming together, in our own small way, P.M.B.A. is trying to do this for mountain bikers in the Pennines. For the price of an inner tube or two you can help, not a lot to ask really.