Tag Archives: health

Paralympic boost to cycling – as seen in the Guardian!

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This great piece in the Guardian talks about all the things we’re finding at You Can Bike Too:

  • how incredibly flexible the bike is when it comes to catering for all kinds of abilities in fact, we have found that our bikes are great for people who just aren’t that confident about cycling
  • trikes work really well for those whose balance makes using a traditional bike difficult
  • riders with disabilities and able bodied cyclists can and often do ride together at club and coaching sessions

It’s great to see our supporter Ian Tierney quoted in the article too! Without Wheels for All Cycling Projects, we wouldn’t have come this far. Don’t forget you can come and try these bikes for yourselves! There are two options:

- Weekend family sessions for mums and dads to cycle with their kids – see here for full details

- Week-day adult sessions for any individuals who wants to give cycling a go – see here for full details

We look forward to seeing you there! And we’re pleased to report that so far, these sessions have been rain-free – though it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.

We think it’s great that the paralympics are having such a positive effect and getting more people interested in cycling. How have the paralympics influenced your view of the world? What did you learn?

New family fun days at Milton Country Park

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You Can Bike Too Family Fun Days

Be Inspired – Enjoy Cycling Together

Have all of these Olympics and now Paralympics given you the cycling fever? The catch phrase of these events were ‘Inspire a Generation’, so we want to do our part. From now until the end of December on the last Sunday of every month we will have instructors available to introduce you and your families to our adaptive bikes of all sizes and shapes. Then, you can have a go at cycling together. What better way to spend a Sunday morning together with your family?

How to ride a bike… and other adventures

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Gosh, it’s a very exciting time here at The You Can Hub. The You Can Bike Too project team supported by the unstoppable Ruth Brannan have had an amazing response to all of their hard work so far. The team have found that there are people out there who have never ridden a bike, don’t think they can ride a bike, or have ridden a bike in the past and think they’ve forgotten how to! And then there’s the people who just want to have a go at these interesting looking bikes! So how can I get involved, I hear you cry? I can sense your cycling legs itching to get started…

All you need to do is come along to the Bike Bike Day at Milton Country Park on Wednesday 4th April. There will be loads of different bikes to try, and all sorts of bike-related excitement to get involved with. Who knows what you’ll go home with? So come on, give it a try – fun for all the family!

Where have you seen our poster? Get involved with the poster-hunt over on our facebook page.

Thank you to… This event wouldn’t have been possible without our lovely partners, seen on our flyer above – not forgetting Cambridgeshire County Council!

 

Up a gear!

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This week looks to be one that gets us going in the right direction! So much to tell you….where do I start?

News on the block

Tokens that have been collected on behalf of ‘You Can Bike Too’ were given in to Cambridge Building Society offices (and Cambridge News offices) by supporters of our fantastic project…the aim being to benefit from ‘Cash For the Community,‘ an idea from the Cambridge News (in partnership with Cambridge Building Society) which was about cutting tokens that were printed daily and given in….however there were 25 projects nominated for a share of £10,000. In total 39,000 tokens were given in for all the projects! So we are going to be allocated £394 which I think is brilliant – but better than the cash is the publicity that this will bring to this project!

So today Aaran (Project Team Volunteer) and I are going to the presentation at the Cambridge News offices in Milton…woooh! A photo opportunity I feel! (Honestly I just can’t help using exclamation marks!)

Instructor Training to take place

Monday and Tuesday – Wheels for All (Cycling Projects) are going to deliver 2 days of instructor training to about 14 people – including myself, the manager of Milton Country Park, a parent, a carer or two, a couple of professionals and 3 or 4 young men with learning difficulties…how cool and inclusive is that?! Thanks to South Cambs Council for paying for this and thanks to Milton Country Park for hosting this training.

Wheels For All Training gives individuals, carers and support staff the confidence to work with adapted cycles for their clients or family member so that all can enjoy the benefits of cycling in a sociable environment.

Once we have these volunteers trained up we edge closer to the day when we see All Ability Cycling take place in Cambridge!

Funding

On Wednesday one of the project team and myself are going to Guildhall in Cambridge to make a presentation to Cycling and Pedestrian Members Steering group ….they are going to decide if the project can have some funding for the next year, with an emphasis of making sure that the project team of people with disabilities are kept in the picture as this project develops. This is an essential requirement…the idea for All Ability cycling project  came from a young man with disabilities and we need to make sure that in our effort to get this off the ground that these amazing volunteers are at the front of this project!

And on the other days I’m off to my ‘day’ job!….my other life! Till next time…

Editor: Update to this post – here’s a photo of Aaran and Ruth collecting their Cambridge Evening News cheque!

Token Excitement!

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Well nearly time to count them up! I had 400 given to me by the social work student Karen!!! Aaran bought his along to project meeting….there has been some real token collecting going on! I had to resist the challenge on Sunday night of rummaging around in people’s blue bins!! (The ones where there may have been Cambridge News with tokens still intact!) I’m also getting lots of messages ….people telling me from far and wide how they are collecting…I feel as though everyone deserves a big pat on the back…..or a chocolate!  So thanks guys!!! I’m sure we should get a little bit of the £10,000?

 

Wheels Turning Faster…

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Professionals from across Cambridgeshire helping to make You Can Bike Too happen!

I seem to have lost a blog in between this one and the last one but no matter! So wheels are turning….The Cambridge News have nominated You Can Bike Too as one of the projects (out of 25 in total) for Cash in the Community! Actually that means that we need people to cut out the tokens that are going to be printed in the paper every day for about one month, then label them “You Can Hub” and take them to the nearest Cambridge Building Society branch. They count up the tokens and we should get a share of £10,000. That would be a BIG help so if you know anybody that reads this paper ask them to cut out the tokens!

The ‘Professionals’ (I always hear that theme music when I say that!) had a meet up at Milton Country Park to talk about how they can support the You Can Bike Too project to move forwards. We had a great turn out – people from local organisations: Councils; Sports Development teams; Sustrans; Cambridge Cycling Campaign; Outspoken bike couriers and trainers; Milton Country Park (which provided the venue for us!); Ability Plus. We also had a representative from national organisation Wheels For All, which has cycling projects all over the country. It was great to get them in all same room talking All Ability Cycling! There were lots of creative ideas and everyone had suggestions of how they could help, from publicising upcoming events to printing flyers, providing lunches, and suggesting contacts. To borrow language from the Do Lectures, all the “little do” actions help the wheels keep turning! Now it’s time for a “big do” from us!

The meeting definitely highlighted the need to think about how we can roll the project out on a practical week to week basis. Do we have membership? I like that idea! Individual membership and possibly corporate membership! Get those Big Boys in!! The local business community could have such fun with these bikes…we’d have the trained up volunteers to support them to have a go.

The Project Team also visited London on Saturday – a benchmarking trip to Victoria Park to see and try All Ability Bikes at Bikeworks in London …and thankfully we weren’t snowed off! Cambridge News met us at the Railway Station to take photographs of the Project Team for a piece in the paper in a couple of weeks – stardom is coming I feel! More details of this visit and pictures to follow!