Tweed Valley Bike Bash

Just back from the Tweed Valley Bike Bash - a wee event organised for the kids at St Ronans Primary School at Innerleithen, as part of National Bike Week. Rich and Dierdre, members of the Tweed Valley Tourist Consortia and the school did a great job putting on various biking related activities (with help from several local companies, organisations and individuals) to get the kids excited about biking.

First up though was a bike demo from the Clan, including the extraordinary talent that is Danny MacAskill (doing a stupidly high bunny hop in the pic above). Needless to say it went down an absolute storm, as did the freebies from Cycling Scotland. Lots of noise, enthusiasm and very happy faces.

Next up for the kids was a series of activities including: have a go mtbing with Peebles Cycling Club and the Tweed Valley Bike Patrol; pump track demonstration (on a beautifully crafted, portable wooden track built by Ben Wills and Rich Latimer); mtb skills with Emma and Tracey from the Hub; downhill bikes on display from the guys at Icycles and finally a wee trailbuilding demo from myself (FC and 7stanes).

How do you even hope to keep a bunch of kids attention following a stunt demo?? Fortunately I think most were still buzzing from the display and seemed quite interested in the trailbuilding, even the different types of soil!

I showed them the different stages involved in developing a trail from plotting the initial line, to brashing the trail corridor, right through the tamping down the finished trail surface. And hopefully didn't go on too much about the fantastic mineral soil the hillside is blessed with!

Mmmm. Very tasty golden mineral soil! The McCloud is standing on what the finished trail surface will look like. No need to surface with imported crushed stone here.

Of more interest for them was the possibility of a short section of trail being developed in the woodland next to the school where we were working.

I was asked by the school to have a look at the possibility of developing a trail in the woodland for the kids to ride on. The woodland isn't too big but I managed to plan out a new descent (think Blue Velvet and Electric Blue stylee at Glentress) that would work out around 120m long and would link in well with an existing trail that could be used as a climb to form a 250m loop.

It's just at the initial planning stage just now but what a fab wee project it would be. If approved, it would be great to get the teachers, kids and local community involved with handbuilding the trail.

A safe, fun, all weather trail to practise on right where people live - how fantastic would that be.

Cheers,

Andy