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·  How  the  members  who are  doing  road  racing  and  sportives  at
              present – and doing club rides too – could be letting the rest of the
              Club know what they are up to, in particular telling the DLN and the
              website, and our twitter and facebook pages too. If we were using
              social media a whole lot better, we could be reaching a lot more people.


      We  looked  at  the  age  profiles  and  geographic  profiles  of  our  current
       membership, which showed more strength in numbers among our longest-
       serving members aged in their 70s and 80s, a group which has also largely
       moved away from our South London stomping ground. All but two of our
       members under 50 were actively riding bikes, and were still South Londoners.
      We recognised the need to increase our appeal to riders in their 20s and 30s.
       SO adopting Herne Hill Velodrome as our base would be a key move for De
       Laune. This expands our focus to other cycling disciplines besides TT and
       gives us the visibility we need, to a large community of new cyclists.


       Our Club banners at the Velodrome are being redesigned by George Lewis as
       part of a new public push – this is partly aimed at reaching new people and
       partly to help existing ones to reconnect with each other, to do their cycling
       in a more co-ordinated way. This means ways of making it easier to let each
       other know about upcoming club rides, trips to sportives, road races and
       other events – when they are taking place, and how to get involved. It’s all
       key to making a modern cycling club work, and good communication is the
       principle reason why other new clubs are expanding rapidly while ours isn’t –
      Yet!

       Showing our support of our younger brother the Velodrome with a grand
       donation, (we are two years older, as the Velodrome opened in 1891) will help
       get this exciting new chapter in its history started. We’ve had really strong
       links throughout both our histories, with our own Ken Hill being the ‘Mr Herne
       Hill’ for decades – riding, promoting, officiating. A piece of the original wooden
       track, presented to Ken, will be on proud display in the clubroom.

      The large donation we are proposing at our AGM next month would show the
       strength of that relationship over all that time, and into the future too, with

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