News items about the Branch, TOMCC or Triumph Motorcycles
The Branch Annual General Meeting was held on 12 February 2026 at the BCSA. There were 32 members in attendance. The existing committee members were re-elected, with Steve Yarwood continuing in his role as scribe, but standing down as Vice Chairman. Graham King was elected to the committee as Vice Chairman and Graham Steele was elected to the committee as Runs Coordinator. All other members of the previous committee continued in their existing roles. See here for more details of the committee.
As 2025 comes to a close, lets look back at some of the great times Berkshire TOMCC members had together this year.
We’re looking forward to more fun on our Triumphs in 2026 with more rides, lots of events at the BCSA and trips to others shows and events during the year.
Click on the video below for our wishes for the New Year.
We’re planning lots of fun things for next year and they’ll be added to the events page on this site once they are confirmed. See 2026 events for the latest confirmed events.
For the second time this year, the TOMCC magazine Nacelle has featured one or more of our members on the front cover. This time it was Branch Chairman Nick Swain on his 1969 Triumph Bonneville together with Regalia Officer Chris Williams on his Triumph America with Branch member Derick Nobbs as a spectator in the background. The photo was taken during the Branch’s appearance at the Swallowfield show in August when around a dozen members rode a parade lap around the arena and then talked about their bikes and the TOMCC. The photo illustrates a key part of what the TOMCC is all about: Club members having fun together on their bikes. We get to do a lot of that with Club nights every week, ride-outs often twice a week and around a dozen other events a year.
Thames Valley MAG is organising a Bike Protest Demo Ride on 5 July 2025 as part of the Motorcycle Action Group’s (MAG) Riders Resistance weekend. The ride will leave at 1pm from Superbikestore, Reading Link Park, Rose Kiln Lane, Reading, RG2 05N.
You can read an article by MAG on the background to this protest here.
For up to date information about the ride and local MAG activities, look on the Thames Valley MAG group on Facebook.
For more information from MAG nationally, see their website here.
The Branch AGM was held on the 13 February 2025 at the BCSA. There were 32 members in attendance. Here are some photos from the meeting.
The existing committee were re-elected to their existing roles with the exception of the Runs Coordinator role, which became vacant. Therefore runs will be organised by a number of different people going forward See here for more details of the current committee.
Motor Cycle Action Group (MAG) has announced that 5-6 July 2025 will be marked as a Riders’s Resistance weekend to get across five key messages as shown above. There will be events all over the UK and these may also additionally focus on local issues, such as access to parking. See here for details from the MAG national organisation.
There will be protest ride on 5 July 2025 in Reading organised by Thames Valley MAG in as part of this weekends event. See here for more details.
The front cover of the February 2025 issue of Nacelle, the Triumph Owners’ Motorcycle Club Magazine, featured a picture of Berkshire Branch Vice Chairman, aka Bibendum, with his well used 2007 Triumph Scrambler taken on a ride-out between Christmas and New Year. The picture was was in stark contrast to typical magazine covers showing shiny bikes. The bike was pretty filthy and Bibendum was dressed like he was going on an arctic expedition. But it did illustrate a point. The Berkshire Branch go on ride-outs throughout the year, even on very cold winter days. There is no pressure to do so. Many of our members only go on rides in warm dry weather and we all probably prefer riding in the summer. But some of us get withdrawal symptoms if we go more than a week or two without going on a ride, so we brave the freezing conditions throughout the winter. In fact, with the right kit on, riding in the cold when its dry is a lot of fun. So if you’re the sort of biker who can’t bear to give up riding just because it’s winter, you’ll feel at home at the Berkshire Branch. Our Club nights continue all year, every Thursday evening as well, whatever the weather, but in the winter most people do come to those in cars. We’re not completely mad !! See the full magazine cover below.
Looking back at 2024 we’ve seen lots of new faces at both our ride-outs and club nights. Its been a busy year for the Branch. We’ve met every Thursday with turnouts of 20 plus in the winter months, and 40 or more on dry summer nights. During the winter months we had presentations on touring in India and record breaking at Bonneville salt flats, a quiz night and bring and buy sale. We also adopted a new badge for the Branch and produced a new line of clothing and regalia with it on. We’ve had more 40 than rides organised this year and gone on visits to Cassington Bike Night, Triumph Day at the Ace Cafe, Triumph Day at Sammy Miller’s Museum and to the National Motorcycle Museum. We’ve also gone on the Easter Egg Run and Christmas Toy Run.
The highlight of the year was attending the TOMCC 75th Anniversary weekend at Shelsley Walsh. Another great weekend was spent with our Branch stand at the British Superbike Championship at Thruxton. At our home base at the BCSA we have hosted two lunchtime bike meets, our Old Motorcycle Gathering and a barbecue evening. We’ve also taken our Branch stand to several other shows including MAG’s Easter Show, Dr B’s, Popham Megameet and the Swallowfield Show.
We had more than 60 people at our Christmas buffet on our last Club Night of the year.
See the video below to look back photos of the rides we have gone on this year.
Looking back at 2023 we’ve seen lots of new faces at both our ride-outs and club nights. Its been a busy year for the Branch. We’ve met every Thursday with turnouts of 20 plus in the winter months, around 40 on dry summer nights and more than 50 turned out to hear Norman Hyde speak in March. We’ve had 44 rides organised this year. We’ve also had two lunchtime bike meets, our own Old Motorcycle Gathering and we’ve taken our Branch stand to several other shows including the Swallowfield Show and Dr B’s. We joined in the annual Toy Run and Easter Egg runs, went to Sammy Miller’s Triumph day and Bulldog Triumphs Launch day. We had a quiz night, a BBQ and a bring and buy sale. Altogether, we’ve had around 100 events for Branch members to meet together. See below for some photos of the year.
We’re planning another year full of activities in 2024, so we can all look forward to having more fun on our Triumph’s next year.
Triumph has announced they will discontinue the Thruxton and is producing an exclusive limited Thruxton Final Edition to mark the final production run of a British legend in exquisite style. For information follow this link .
The first Thruxton was produced by Triumph in 1965. This was a production racer and only 52 were made with nearly all of them bought for racing. The Thruxton pictured is the very first of those 52 and is currently owned by Berkshire Branch member Richard and was restored by his brother Greg. See here for more information about this special bike.
The Thruxton name was not used again by Triumph until 2003, when the Hinckley based company launched one based on the new Bonneville which had come out two years earlier. It had an 865cc engine, as compared 790cc for the standard Bonneville, swept back exhausts, rear set foot rests and low clip-on bars. As with the standard Bonneville, this bike was air cooled and had twin carburettors. In 2008 it was upgraded to electronic fuel injection along with the rest of the Bonneville range.
In 2016, Triumph completely redeveloped their Modern Classic range with new water cooled models and as part of that they launched the Thruxton 1200 along with a variant with higher specification suspension called the Thruxton R. Since then Triumph have produced a number of updates including an even higher specification model, the Thruxton RS, the Thruxton Factory Custom and a Chrome Edition with an all chrome tank.
The modern Thruxton’s have frequently been used as a starting point for building custom cafe racers. Numerous custom examples can been seen at bike shows.
So is this really the end of the Thruxton? Well, its been discontinued before and then come back, so maybe it will make a reappearance in the Triumph line up in the future.
