Community / Secondary pupils bag new bikes as part of push to encourage more cyclists
SECONDARY school pupils from Brae and Lerwick built and took home brand new bikes last week as part of an initiative to get more people cycling.
The teenagers will also deliver fun cycling sessions to pupils in nearby primary schools, with the aim for young people to discover the joy of getting out on their bike.
Scottish Cycling is behind the Rock Up and Ride project, with the local transport partnership ZetTrans working in tandem, which has put new bikes into the hands of 12 pupils over the last week.
Project officer Nathan Brown said it was the “first time getting a new bike” for some of those who took part.
“They’ve all been really keen, they’ve been very, very keen,” he told Shetland News outside the Anderson High School on Friday.
“We had eight bairns in Brae, two girls and six boys, and then we’ve had four young girls doing it at the Anderson.
“The kids here will now go and coach younger bairns at schools like Bells Brae.”
The secondary pupils were given the chance to take a brand new bike straight out of the box and put it together themselves, before taking it off for a test run.
Veloform’s Robin Atkinson, himself a keen cycler, was also on hand to offer bike mechanical training.
On a gloriously sunny Friday morning, 15-year-old Emily Garriock was preparing to take her new set of wheels out for its first cycle around the town.
She said she had “grown up on cycling”, and had found the project “really fun, but also educational at the same time”.
Garriock will be one of those delivering sessions to primary school pupils, and she said she wanted them to feel that cycling was “a hobby, not a chore”.
Brown said they wanted to “encourage a cycling culture here in Shetland through Emily’s generation”.
“We want them to be risk taking and more adventurous,” he said.
“We’re always asking, ‘how can we get involved and get out to the young people?’
“We have a container of bikes up in Brae for people to use, and we want to have a high school fleet and a primary school fleet of bikes.”
The aim for Brown and Scottish Cycling is for the newly trained secondary school pupils to train up the younger generation while the coaches are off the island.
“We want them to deliver sessions when we’re not here,” he explained.
“They’re more relatable to kids in the primary schools. They’re not from a cycling background, they approach it in a much more play-based and fun way.
“They’re likeable, personable and really good with young kids.
“A lot of the ones we’re seeing are considering careers with young people, so this will help them with future jobs.”
Garriock herself is considering studying psychology when she leaves school, and said the sessions would help her gain experience working with younger children.
This is Scottish Cycling’s fifth visit to the isles as part of the Rock Up and Ride project, with Brown and participation coach Neil Morrison spending the week in Shetland.
Brown said much of the programme was about commuting to work by bike, but he said that had to be changed for Shetland after they experienced what cycling in the isles could be like.
“We came up last August and cycled from Lerwick to Hamnavoe,” he said.
“By the time we got there we were all in drips – it was so hard with all the hills.
“So we had to totally change the programme.”
Morrison said the distance from town to Burra was the same as his commute to work in Glasgow.
But he said the Shetland cycle had left him thinking: “I’m going to die.”
The aim for the Shetland project is to encourage more people to get out on their bike, but in a much more fun and playful way.
“We want to organise more events, games and fun challenge,” Brown said.
“There’s been definite interest from ZetTrans, they want to see more of a sporting culture around cycling.
“There’s already a thriving sporting culture here, so we want to get more people interested in cycling.”
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