Windsor and Maidenhead

Community mission

Human bicycle chain

3 GoodGymers made their way to help the Maidenhead Cycle Hub in Windsor and Maidenhead.

  • Amy L
  • Michelle Burke
  • Tessa
 
Monday, 27th of September 2021
 
Led by Amy L
she/her

A huge well done to Tessa and Michelle, who escaped during their lunch breaks today and joined me in helping the Cycle Hub move premises. Michelle ran from her desk, Tessa walked, and I cycled, so we had every aspect of GoodGym's 'Run, Walk, Cycle' mantra covered.

Active travel is also at the heart of what Cycle Hub do. Their goal is to promote the benefits of cycling and to get more people out on their bikes. You can read more about their brilliant work by clicking here. One of their many activities is to take in donations of unwanted bikes, refurbish them and sell them on. Their current stock of donated bikes is around 900, so moving premises means shifting a LOT of bikes!

They hired a flat-bed truck to ferry bikes from the old work-shop to the new, and estimated that the truck would need to do 10 trips to shift all of the bikes. I had in mind for the title of this report to be 'push it wheel good', but with lots of flat tyres and a spiral staircase thrown into the mix, the task involved less pushing and much more lifting and climbing. Think less pedal in the park and more Alpe d'Huez!

I arrived after Tessa and Michelle had helped Sarah, Mark, Toby and Shyam from Cycle Hub to unload the first truck-full and haul them up the stairs. The team were all smiling, but it was clear they had been working hard. While we waited for the next load to arrive, we had the fun task of helping to assemble the bike racks, which were made out of scaffolding poles and had arrived with the first load of bikes.

One of the challenges of bulky bikes, many hands and a spiral staircase is finding room to pass on the stairs, so for the second and third loads we made a human chain...it was a bicycle chain, but not as you know it! It was an effective system and still a great workout for biceps and quads. Michelle had to get back to work after load two and Tessa had to dash after load three. Having missed the first load, I stuck around for load four, before I had to hop on my own bike and head for home.

By the end I felt wheely tyred, but it was super satisfying seeing hundreds of bikes racked up in their new work-shop and knowing that we had helped with a big chunk of the move. Huge kudos to the Cycle Hub team, who continued working hard after we had gone.

Next Monday is part two of the move, so please sign up here to help if you can. The listing is three hours but if you can only stop by for part of it then that would still be a great help. Part two promises fewer bikes and fewer stairs but more tools and boxes of bike parts. Can't wait!

Report written by Amy L


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