Lots of celebrating this year, Ten years of being a Bikeability instructor, 3 Years or surviving a near- death experience that sort of thing. Short post today is part of that celebration. In 2005 when I started actually working in cycling couldnt have imagined that one day employers would have had multitudinous organisations encouraging them to get active and cycle. They do now and part of that has been this January to March with the ‘Workplace challenge’ from Active Dorset and using lots of coaches service in Dorset. The outline is here and Im lucky enough to have been asked to lead the cycling sessions for Organix and other business’ as part of their taster sessions info .We went on a couple of short rides from my Routes vs Queues selection of the type of distance ideally suited to lunchtimes or a short commute. Strava details here Seems like the need to get people active with easy things like cycling is as important as ever in todays world. Doing these rides in winter also starts to dissolve that idea that you cant cycle all year, well you can and massive numbers of workplace commuters now do so in the bigger cities of the U.K
Heres a shot from one of these rides where I took a client down ‘Woodland walk’ in Boscombe, when I first arrived in Bournemouth 2008 this was ‘cycling prohibited’! how times change. You can see the post with a cool childs drawing that won a competition I ran at Corpus Christi Catholic School next door, when I worked as a Bike It Officer for Sustrans. More recently the school have been working with the Velo Domestique cafe over the road, on a great project where parents cycle to school with their kids, then leave the bike there for a service before collecting after school- great work.
These Workplace challenges until end of march come together for 2 Employers with an Orienteering challenge called ‘Bourne Valley Challenge’ I concieved. Pitched this idea to the employers yesterday and am pleased they both thought it sounded great so will be running in April. Using the Middle and Upper gardens teams will have to allocate their members to map read and find several of the individual trees on the trail, they are marked with small plaques and competitors will know they are at the right place by matching the Latin name to the one on a list I have given them. What they will have to do is write the English name and pick the letter Ive asked for which forms part of an anagram. When the team reassembles after finding all the controls, they will need to figure out the 2 word anagram, first team to get back and do that within the hour wins!
Heres a couple of shots of the Bourne Valley and a sneak preview of the map, if youve never been in the Bourne Valley Greenway it really is super, loads of interesting trees, redwoods, walkways and perfect direction up to Coy Pond and Poole. Will update this post later and let you know how it went.
