Mark Thompson
Hi folks,
I’m 55yrs young, been married 30years, live in Thirsk, North Yorkshire and I currently own 3 bikes, a ’99 1200 Bandit, a ZX10R and a BMW S1000XR.
Where did it all start….
I grew up with motorcycles, with both my dad and siblings owning them, my sisters married motorcyclists and my son went on to race at BSB level.
I spent the vast majority of my Police Service riding bikes as part of ‘traffic’, now the Road Policing Group and we used to get tasked with initiatives by our Casualty Reduction Group… Ridewell, the event, was born out of that, as Cleveland’s annual open day to promote ‘Bikesafe’, the national motorcycle safety initiative, the 1st being held at Preston Park, Stockton in 2000.
My 30yrs police service was all served in North Yorkshire, who were a leading force in respect of Bikesafe, which I presented locally, it quickly grew as a recognised national road safety scheme and I became involved in events both locally and nationally. I also became a motorcycle coach for a Motorcycle Industry Scheme called ‘The Edge’ which was something of a spin off from Bikesafe.
I retired from North Yorkshire Police in 2018, having spent 24yrs as an advanced police motorcyclist and a further year as an advanced car driver all on what became the Roads Policing Group. I was VIP Escort trained (VIPEX) and over the years was called upon to escort many members of the royal family, including our late Queen, a number of times. Other escort duties included the Olympic Torch Relay in 2012, the Tour de France and G8 Summit in Newport, Wales both in 2014.
Throughout my motorcycling career I was very fortunate to have a fantastic team around me, all of who shared the same passion as me for reducing the amount of riders who were killed or seriously injured on our roads each year.
So, as I retired from the Police Service, I was offered a role as a motorcycle instructor with a local company delivering CBT. This was a level of training I had not previously delivered at and it presented challenges I hadn’t before considered. As an instructor I learned and developed new strategies from this.
My plan at that time was to further develop, to deliver DAS training, but COVID struck and lockdowns stopped progress.
I’d always enjoyed the level of focus that coaching riders post test brought to my riding, and found being able to develop other riders through Bikesafe rewarding, so I made contact with Ridewell Tees Valley, who I’d previously worked with in 2000 at Preston Park. From here I began coaching others for a year before I was asked to take the business forward for a number of factors affecting the team at the time.
Stockton Borough Council had initially asked the Cleveland Police bike sergeant to manage their motorcycle training programmes. At that time, there were two separate programmes; Cleveland Motorcycle Training Scheme & Handle it or Lose it, the post test element, which won a Prince Michael International Road Safety Award. The two programmes were brought under the same umbrella and Ridewell Tees Valley was born in 2011.
When Ridewell began, the expectation was we would turn up on bikes that were normally associated to training environments, but, over the years we used a ZX10, an R1, a Fireblade, and a ZZR1400. It’s fair to say we didn’t and don’t feel you need to ride a certain bike or look a certain type of rider to ride the best you can.
I will always appreciate the level of training I was lucky enough to undertake in my role as a traffic officer with North Yorkshire Police and to further develop it over the years has brought me a lot of safe enjoyable riding. Ridewell Tees Valley continues to bring me a lot of personal satisfaction through meeting and helping to develop more like minded riders.
I look forward to meeting new and returning customers.