East Midlands Region Group Coordinator Meeting

On Sat 22nd Oct ,Group Coordinators from the East Midlands met up in Derby. Les Sims who hosted the meeting has produced some notes, but there were a few other points I thought it would be useful to feedback.

Derby Cycling.
Derby has some great cycle routes. Coming from the south it was an easy (albeit quite long) ride to get to our meeting place at Derby station. Signing was very good with lots of traffic free routes right into the town centre. For a pre-meeting ride we cycled out to Etwell along NCN 54 much along an old railway track. At Etwell the route joins NCN 68 the Pennine Cycleway which will take you a hilly 355 miles to Berwick! It was only fairly recently that I became fully aware of the extent of this route. A well kept secret.

Meeting Points

CycleNation
Simon Geller who is the secretary for CycleNation gave some feedback on their recent annual conference in Sheffield. I must admit I had not heard of them before. They are an umbrella organisation for regional campaigning groups. You might want to check them out http://www.cyclenation.org.uk/index.php

Freshairmiles rides
I think there is a general problem in recruiting people onto rides - particularly novice riders. The key learning points from the discussion seemed to be:
- do something other than just a cycle ride - e.g a historical tour
- talk about time rather than mileage
- aa series of rides rather than a one off

FreeRange Kids
Dave Stevens from Sustrans outlined this campaign. It brings together a number of initiatives Sustrans has been doing for a while - "safe routes to schools", "diy streets", "bike it". There was a discussion about how ranger groups can support the campaign. There seemed to be a mixture of top down actions (e.g. policy and campaigning) and bottom up - lobby for a particular local issue (e.g. a cycle path to a local school).