“We refer to ourselves as the best kept secret in Gloucestershire.”

Those are the words of Joe Logan who is one of the leading lights for Severn Freewheelers EVS.

When you discover that the ‘EVS’ stands for ‘emergency voluntary service’ you soon realise that this is no ordinary organisation.

In fact they are a 100-plus strong group who work in tandem with the NHS to help save the lives of people all over Gloucestershire and beyond.

Visit their website and it sums up succinctly the amazing work these ‘angels on two wheels’ do night after night, every weekend and on bank holidays.

Their mission statement reads: “Severn Freewheelers are a group of advanced motorcyclists providing a free out-of-hours courier service for hospitals in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, North Wiltshire and Herefordshire.

“We carry whole blood, pathology samples, patient scans/x-rays, human milk – in fact any medical essentials between hospitals in the area. Our hours are from 7pm in the evening to 7am the following day, and 24 hours at weekends and public holidays.

“All riders are volunteers and hold a current advanced riding qualification (RoSPA or IAM) with a yearly check-ride. In short, a professional team delivering a professional service, free to the NHS at the point of use.

“Each ‘shift’ consists of four people – a dispatcher and three riders – one in each area. The dispatcher fields calls from the hospitals and plans the route for the evening based on the calls received. Emergency calls are obviously dealt with first and for these we use blue lights. At weekends we increase the complement of riders to four to cope with extra demand.”

Joe Logan is one of those who combines a day job with his role as both a dispatcher and a rider.

Like all the volunteer riders he is a keen motorcyclist. “It’s the ideal ‘job’,” he said, “you get to ride around on the open roads and you’re working for a very good cause as well.”

Typically, Joe is not keen to take the limelight. “You’re better off talking to Derek Price,” he told The Local Answer. “He was one of the founding members of our organisation. I only joined once they were up and running.”

That may be true but Joe is now on Severn Freewheelers’ executive committee and is a key cog in an organisation that celebrated their 10th anniversary earlier this year.

There are 30-plus groups of these ‘angels on two wheels’ across the country and Severn Freewheelers are one of the newer kids on the street.

So how did they get started?

“It was through Rob Davies,” explained Derek Price, who used to sit on his dad’s bikes before he could walk and has ridden bikes competitively for much of his adult life. “He was one of the group’s five founding members. He had a motorbike but wanted to get out and about on his bike more so he contacted the Bristol Freewheelers.

“The trouble was that he lived in Tewkesbury which was too far away. So he sent an email to RoSPA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents) and the IAM (Institute of Advanced Motorcyclists) to see if he could set up a group of Freewheelers in Gloucestershire.

“I remember the email now. It read, ‘How do you fancy riding around with blue lights and sirens?’

“Well, I’m a red-blooded male so I thought, ‘I’ll have some of that!’.”

A meeting was set up at The Bell in Tewkesbury but that served to show only how much work needed to be done if they were to make their dream a reality.

“All we had was a helmet,” recalled Derek. “There were a few of us at the meeting and we decided to give ourselves six months – until March 2007 – to see if we could make a go of it.”

That involved getting a bike, recruiting riders, talking to hospitals and the like. It was no easy task of course but fortunately these guys are a committed bunch.

While Rob Davies, who was the initial chairman, is no longer involved the three other founding members – Gordon Downie, Geoff Brown and Tony Dix – along with Derek are still very much part of the set-up.

So how did the first shift go?

“Nothing happened,” laughed Derek, “I was the coordinator for that first shift and we didn’t get one call!”

That soon changed, of course, and Tony Dix, who took over for the second shift was soon called into action.

“In those days we’d take about 60 calls a month,” remembers Derek. “Now we do 350, run seven motorcycles, have over 100 riders and 20 to 30 coordinators some of whom are riders as well.”

As well as riding and coordinating, Derek is also the group’s bike manager charged with ensuring that the magnificent seven bikes are all fit for purpose.

He reckons he spends three days a week on the day job – he’s a dog groomer in Twigworth – and two days a week on the bikes. The bike work is voluntary, of course and that’s in addition to his role as a coordinator and rider.

Fortunately 53-year-old Derek, who was born and bred in Brockworth, has always liked bikes.

“All the family photos of me as a baby and growing up had me sitting on motorbikes,” he laughed. “My dad was really into them.”

Derek’s dad is Mike Price and he is certainly a big cheese in the motorcycling world and beyond.

He still lives in Brockworth and Derek added: “He ran the Gloucester and Cotswold Motorcycle Club and in 1954 he won the first real cheese to be rolled after the Second World War.

“It was a 28lb Chester Cheese and it broke into pieces on the way down. It was the only real cheese rolled that day, all the others were wooden.

“He still lives in the same house that I grew up in and you can see Cooper’s Hill from his landing.”

So was Derek ever tempted to throw himself off the top of the hill in the annual extravaganza in May?

“No,” he laughed, “I did lots of silly things on motorbikes instead. I thought it was much safer!”

As soon as he was old enough Derek got himself a moped and a year later, at the age of 17, he took up motocross.

That was to keep the one-time Brockworth School pupil pretty occupied right up until his mid-30s and he was good at it too.

“I made expert grade,” he said, “and won an expert race at Bromsberrow. I lived and breathed bikes and I’d go racing every weekend. I went to Weston Beach and the Isle of Man. Looking back I wondered why I did it but I must have enjoyed it.”

And once he’d stopped competing at motocross he found plenty of other things to do on two wheels.

“I rode 7,500 miles round the Nürburgring,” he laughed, “although not in all one go!”

In fact he made many visits on various Honda Fireblades to the track built by Hitler in the 1930s and designed to show Germany’s might at that time.

“When I went for the first time the plan was to do just one lap of the 13-mile course,” Derek said. “But once I’d done one I just wanted to keep going and I ended up doing about 70!

“It’s notoriously dangerous and full of petrolheads. There are no speed limits and there’s a two-mile straight flat stretch where you can get up to 180mph.

“Each time I went I did about 500 miles so I must have gone there 15 times.”

The last time was in 2011 and since those days of speed, speed and more speed Derek has taken up the slightly ‘gentler’ sport of moto gymkhana.

“It was invented by the Japanese,” explained Derek, “you ride around a series of cones as fast as you can. It’s full lock and full lean.

“I only started this year and it’s just another bike skill.”

Typically, Derek is pretty good at it and has just competed in a round of the British Championship at Donington Park.

“I’m gearing up for next year when I can have a proper go at it,” he said.

There’s no chance of it stopping him volunteering for the Severn Freewheelers of course.

“While learning and developing my motorcycle skills, whether on track, road or off road, when it all goes wrong it costs money to put your bike back together, but we used to joke we got fixed by the NHS for free,” he chuckled.

“As you get older, especially if you’ve ever had the misfortune to be ill abroad, you really can see and appreciate how lucky we are to have the NHS.

“So I guess for me it’s payback time! The skills I’ve developed over the last three decades I can hopefully put to good use helping others. My own visits to A&E are now a lot less painful than they use to be and the best things in life really are free!”

He admits that he and his team feel pretty good about themselves when they hear stories of how they have helped to save lives.

“A lot of the time we don’t know what we’re carrying on our bikes,” Derek said. “We just make the collection and take it to where it needs to go.

“I remember carrying some blood for a 27-year-old in maternity and being told that she would have died if I hadn’t got there in 20 minutes. Fortunately I did.

“There was another one where we had to take some eye drops to Hereford and we were later told that we’d saved the eyesight of a nine-year-old. And there was the time we took scans to Birmingham and a lady at a later fundraising event came up to us and said we’d saved her grandson.”

And while the saying goes that ‘charity begins at home’ that is certainly the case with Derek.

“I’d never be able to do everything I do with Severn Freewheelers without my wife Nicola,” said Derek. “She is very supportive.”

And the aim for the Severn Freewheelers is to be self-supportive themselves.

“We need about £45,000 to £50,000 a year to function,” said Derek. “All the expenditure goes on the bikes. Everyone is a volunteer, there’s no headquarters.

“We raise about two-thirds of the money ourselves with a bike festival at Prescott every April and the aim is to be self-financing in the future.”

This is an organisation that does so much good. They may be “the best kept secret in Gloucestershire” but they are certainly a big noise!

If anyone wishes to support Seven Freewheelers in any way, visit www.severnfreewheelers.org.uk