A message from our founder, Toby
A message from our founder, Toby
April has been amazing as well as being the month Cycling Minds began its work in earnest as the newest social enterprise in Hexham. It’s been a hard few weeks getting ready to open our community cycle hub but the dedication and enthusiasm of our 25-strong team of volunteers has been an enormous help.
After the initial setback of not being given access to the meanwhile space we had told we could occupy by Northumberland County Council and having to quickly find an alternative home, seeing The Link open its doors to paying customers and already acting as a honeypot for all things cycling in the area has made all the personal sacrifices I have had to make getting the project off the ground over the last year all worthwhile. I can’t wait to see the project go from strength to strength.
We have already been approached by other charitable organisations to establish partnerships to help the local community such as Hexham Together for Ukraine, and several companies have also come forward with some fantastic opportunities for Cycling Minds to find work for beneficiaries as they come through our Persevere to Succeed employability programme.
I can only see the project snowballing as more people find out about it and perhaps the biggest challenge we now face is having enough hours in the day to get everything done! That said, we’ll continue to focus on our top priority right now which is to get our Step On(e) guided ride programme started as soon as possible.
First volunteer rides
One milestone reached at the beginning April was when Cycling Minds went on its first group ride. Really good to see our volunteers enjoying themselves as we test rode one of the routes we will soon be using on our rides for beneficiaries.
It was an excellent opportunity for the volunteers to get to know each other and test the capability of our e-bikes; everyone agreed that the decision to use e-bikes for the Step On(e) programme has been vindicated by how they level the playing field when it comes to the fitness of each ride participant as well as being a lot of fun!
Our e-bikes
And so here are our e-bikes!
After extensive market research by one of our volunteers, Luke, we opted for Decathlon’s Riverside 540e model. This hybrid bike is perfect for us as it is equally at home on the road as it is on dirt cycle paths. With a range of up to 140 km in eco mode, front suspension and wider tyres, the bikes will last a long time and justify the initial outlay, given how much more an e-bike costs compared to a conventional bike.
At present, our fleet will be solely for our free Step On(e) guided rides, but we hope we can expand our fleet and begin hiring them out to the paying public in the coming months. Indeed, we’ve already had several enquiries about bike hire, especially from people wanting to try them out with a view to buying their own. e-bikes are clearly enabling as people can immediately jump on them to get the mental and physical health benefits of cycling, irrespective of their level of fitness. As one volunteer commented after their first time on one: “I can’t believe I could keep up with the rest of the group who are way fitter than me!”.
Sharing the love
We’re still being bowled over by the level of support Cycling Minds is garnering from funders and April was no exception with Waitrose once again showing their commitment to our project and a happier and healthier Hexham, unexpectedly awarding us a grant of £1,000 towards our start-up costs.
We firmly believe the community needs to take charge of its own future and all it needs is a helping hand from local businesses to achieve this. Thanks Waitrose for showing how this can be done.
Open for business!
The big day arrived on 14 April when The Link opened for business. Bookings for bike repairs immediately flooded in and our opening hours are 10 am to 4 pm every Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
The response from local people to our call for donated bikes, clothing and accessories has been fantastic and we already have numerous bikes ready to refurbish. In fact, we sold our first refurbished bike to the town’s mayor the same week we opened! The Link will not only generate the money we need to fund our core social purpose but is also the bedrock on which the whole project is built. All guided rides will start and finish there, we will run training for our beneficiaries out of our workshop, and the hub will act as a space where local cycling groups and businesses can come together to share ideas and forge partnerships. That’s why we need to give a big thank you to Matthew Kirkby from Ecocabs for vacating his company’s building previously used as an operations base for the taxi firm more quickly than he had planned and leasing it to Cycling Minds at a subsidised rate. Matthew was very impressed by the project from the beginning and was keen to get involved personally and as a business. Undoubtedly, without his backing, Cycling Minds would not yet be up and riding.
The response from local people to our call for donated bikes, clothing and accessories has been fantastic and we already have numerous bikes ready to refurbish. In fact, we sold our first refurbished bike to the town’s mayor the same week we opened! The Link will not only generate the money we need to fund our core social purpose but is also the bedrock on which the whole project is built. All guided rides will start and finish there, we will run training for our beneficiaries out of our workshop, and the hub will act as a space where local cycling groups and businesses can come together to share ideas and forge partnerships. That’s why we need to give a big thank you to Matthew Kirkby from Ecocabs for vacating his company’s building previously used as an operations base for the taxi firm more quickly than he had planned and leasing it to Cycling Minds at a subsidised rate. Matthew was very impressed by the project from the beginning and was keen to get involved personally and as a business. Undoubtedly, without his backing, Cycling Minds would not yet be up and riding.
Spotlight on Our Minds
Next up in our series of interviews with our volunteers, who we like to call Our Minds, is Matthew who has already played a big role in getting Cycling Minds on the move by helping at all four bike check pop-ups and being involved in drawing up all our important policies and procedures. Thanks Matthew.
Here’s what he has to say:
1. Why Cycling Minds? Hexham is crying out for a cycling hub and anything which encourages people, especially young people, to discover the many benefits of cycling is something to celebrate and support.
2. What’s your funniest, most amazing or hardest experience on a bike (or all three)? Cycling round Isle of Mull when the roads were closed to motorised traffic due to bridge repairs and the weather was dawn to dusk spring sunshine
3. Group or solo rides? Why? I’ve never been a club member or tried group rides. I have always cycled solo or with 1 or 2 good friends.
4. When and why did you start cycling? I never had a kid’s bike. I was taught to ride on playing fields on an adult Hercules Balmoral. To stop meant jumping off! I can still remember the brilliant feeling of realising my mum had let go of the saddle and I was away.
5. What do you want to get out of Cycling Minds and how do you hope to contribute to our project? Satisfaction of putting something back into cycling and providing an opportunity for others to discover the joy of cycling. In terms of my contribution I hope I can encourage and support others to discover cycling, learn how to lead rides, improve my basic bike maintenance knowledge and skills. Have fun and enjoy some cycling camaraderie.
6. Flapjack or energy gels? Flapjack every time. No packaging, much cheaper, natural ingredients, always different, great taste and great energy source . Gels are synthetic ingredients wrapped in synthetic packaging…. an unsustainable choice.
Hexham “Youthy”
After all the hard work readying The Link for opening, our attention is now firmly focused on reaching out to potential beneficiaries and professional referral partners to begin helping local young people to improve their mental and physical health and employability through cycling.
We are lucky to have a Referrals team of volunteers with extensive experience working in the social care and youth work fields who are busy contacting local social and healthcare providers, charities and schools to find beneficiaries and distributing posters and flyers to raise awareness of our offering.
One of the partners we will work with is Hexham Youth Initiative (or “Youthy” as it is known). This long standing project helps many disadvantaged young people overcome difficulties and lead full and active lives free of fear and stigma. It provides groups, drop-in activities, parental support and counselling to over 500 children and young people and they are looking forward to referring some of their young people to Cycling Minds.
We recently ran an icebreaker session with Youthy involving a basic bike maintenance session and e-bike ride taster for their service users, which was a great chance for workers and volunteers from the two organisations to meet and share ideas about how we can best work with Youthy to maximise engagement.
Our well-being wheel below gives an idea of what aspects of a person’s life we hope to enhance through our ride and workplace training programmes.
Other partnerships for health
We’re also really pleased to announce our first events in partnership with Northumberland Recovery College: a series of free guided rides in May run by Cycling Minds and starting and finishing at The Link accompanied by some basic bike maintenance classes.
A new organisation itself, Northumberland Recovery College is as keen as we are to make these events a success and we are both looking forward to a long and fruitful relationship.
Our launch party towards the end of April was also a great chance to invite everyone we have reached out to along the way including funders, local businesses and other charitable organisations such as Hextol Foundation, which is actually named as the asset-locked body that would receive all of Cycling Minds’ assets in the event our organisation is wound up.
It was great meeting Hextol’s CEO, Bruce Howorth, from this amazing project that offers working opportunities for people with learning disabilities and mental health conditions. We agreed that our two organisations shared a lot of synergies and will definitely be working together to help more young people in Hexham and the surrounding area in the future. Their amazing project is a real inspiration to us and something we hope to replicate in the cycling world.
Hexham together with Ukraine
Cycling Minds is also collaborating with Hexham Together for Ukraine which is coordinating the response to help Ukrainian refugees coming into the town. One of our volunteers is collecting bikes kindly lent by local people, which we will check and service free of charge if needed. One Ukrainian family is already keen to get some bikes to enable them to travel from the village where they are staying into Hexham without having to rely on their host family.
We never envisaged providing such a service but are very pleased to lend our expertise to such a worthy cause. We’re also hoping some of the young Ukrainians might join our guided rides and find other opportunities to meet others and begin the process of healing after their terrible ordeals during the war.
Until next time, free your legs and your mind will follow!