Mums on Bikes

Transition Finsbury Park is running a bike project which aims to engage parents, particularly Turkish mums, from Parkwood Primary school. Nuran, one of the Parkwood parents, is a strong believer that the best way to get children on bikes is to teach the parents. She organised and publicised the project, literally catching parents as they left the school playground and signing them up. She was supported by her sister, Nurçan, (a bike trainer with Sta bikes) and Bart from the travel group.

The money (almost £5K) is being used to
- provide the group's training
- pay for a bike pool and
- pay for cycle maintenance teaching

The funding comes from Transport for London and the London Cycling Campaign and we're really enjoying running the project.

Lots of mums have been cycling on the tarmacked area in Finsbury Park on Wednesday and Friday afternoons. We're also holding bike maintenance workshops. The group is a mixture of people who never learned and those who cycled as children. Everyone is much more confident about riding and soon the group will start gaining experience of road cycling.

Rachel Aldred from the University of East London has been following the project with some interest as it fits in with her Cycling Cultures project. More info here.