As a rule of thumb, if a ride makes it to the Calendar (by which I mean the page that has all the rectangles with a day of the month in them, not the Rides Calendar Discussion Board and it's children, which is a different breed of goldfish), it will probably be offishull, because only members of the Area Reps Group can post to it. (Plus me as web-thingy, and I do bollox the system sometimes by posting members' open-to-all-comers rides if I think they have some special merit. For instance I used to post Sue Denham's Northern Gravel Riders ones, but she has now morphed into a de-facto paid provider with her own website, so I haven't been  doing that lately.) (Plus some members of the Executive who have had stray thoughts about organising REGISTER rides, as in Grand Tours for members from multiple areas.)The number of characters available on the actual Calendar page is quite limited, so posters need to get the best bang outta their title that they can, so punters will trouble to click the link to take them through to the post in the Rides Calendar board where greater detail will usually be available. (Which explains why we sometimes don't put the area there.)The Rides Calendar Discussion Board used to be a single board, but I had a request to add local boards, which I did. And, to be sure, every member can post to them, which may be confusing. I don't see the problem, to be honest. Either I want to go on the ride as published or I don't, whether it be an offishull Register ride, or a BMWOR Forum member's privateer event, or any other function that finds it's way into the Board(s). Like, I suspect, the vast majority of members, I first check the "Latest Posts" page every day, so I get a glimpse of everything that is posted anyhoo. (There are other options which you can set in your profile, daily/weekly journal emails etc, I'm too lazy to set them up myself: I already have enough rubbish in my email also.)If you know who your Area Rep and his/her Deputy or other Riders-in-Charge are, that is also another giveaway as to which rides are Register sanctioned rides - not always simple, if you don't know which user name is which real person. And there are people like me, who during my brief and unglorious career as an Area Rep just put a ride in the Calendar every time I rolled my bike out of the garage. I never made an effort to hold a Register ride, I just rode my bike, and if people from the Register wanted to follow, that was fine: if they didn't, then I had a ride without the hassles of other people for whom I had to feel responsible.What the users of the Forum want, after the dust settles on this discussion, is what I will attempt to deliver, so bring it on....

All my bike pics are on my external drive, which I'm too lazy to plug in. Here's something completely random instead