'It's all about looking forwards': Bikers celebrate one year of Mental Health Motorbike meetings

A biker group has celebrated its one year anniversary of bringing people in the motorbike community together to combat mental health issues.

Mental Health Motorbike started holding monthly meetings in The Churchillian on Portsdown Hill to ensure that bikers had a community to socialise with during the winter months.

“The trouble in the winter is bikers tend to put their bikes away and don’t tend to meet with like minded people,” said organiser Justin Burns.

“It gives people something to look forward to, so they get charged up from a meeting like this by talking ot people, and then once that has started to wear off, they’ve got the next one to look forward to. It’s about always having that ‘looking forward’ approach and not looking back.”

Sign up for our free emails for all of the local news and sport headlines

The group meet monthly at The Churchillian to socialise, but members of the charity are also trained as mental health first aiders, to provide help to anyone who is struggling.

To celebrate the one year anniversary of the meetings, bikers from across Hampshire rode to the Portsdown Hill pub to socialise and raise awareness of mental health issues.

Mr Burns said: “It was a fantastic day. The Lord Mayor Abdul Kadir, MP Amanda Martin and Mental Health Motorbike’s founder and CEO Paul Oxborough OBE came along to the anniversary event.

“We had lots of people which made it one of our busiest events ever up at The Churchillian.”

Mental Health Motorbike will continue to hold events over the winter and into 2027.