The 'Go Slow' Cycling Project, currently raising funds via a crowdfunder, is designed to allow participants to take as long as they need, at minimal cost, on their personal journey towards switching to a healthier and more environmentally sustainable mode of transport.
Family Bike Club founder Luke Balnave (right) outside the club's headquarters at Enfield Chase Station, with Enfield-based professional cycling instructor David Hilliard
Getting young people away from their screens and onto bikes, teaching them maintenance skills, and getting to know their local area better are among the aims of a new project which an Enfield-based social enterprise is planning if a recently launched crowdfunding campaign is successful.
The Go Slow Cycling & Slow Mechanic Training Skills project is the brainchild of Luke Balnave, who in 2022, along with family members, set up the Family Bike Club with its base at Enfield Chase Station. It is being supported by Sport England, who have undertaken to match fund all pledges received providing that the target amount of £14.500 is reached. Match funding is also offered by the Aviva Community Fund.
The project is designed to give people an opportunity to learn (or re-learn) cycling skills in a safe environmnent and without the need to first buy or hire a bike. But that is just a part of Luke's wider vision:
"We want to empower local people with the technical and mechanical skills to confidently look after their bikes and to develop lifelong skills that they then pass on through generations. The mechanical training delivered by us will help develop their technical, problem-solving and social skills, in addition to enabling them to cycle with confidence for life.
"Money raised by the crowdfunder will be used to buy a small fleet of reliable and safe bicycles for both adults and younger people, so that anyone can join our rides using a bike that we know to be reliable and safe, will give them some confidence and will set them on their way."
Contribute to the crowdfunder
In order to launch the project, the Family Bike Club is running a crowdfunder. If it meets the target total of £14,500, match funding will be provided by Sport England and by the Aviva Community Fund.
There are special rewards for anyone donating to the project, including free or reduced-price training sessions, a free "MOT" for your bike, festive bike lights, comprehensive winter bike servicing, a discount on hiring a kid's bike and half-price coffee for a month at Leo's at Enfield Chase Station.
The club has developed a bespoke plan suitable for "never-before cyclists", "long-tine-ago cyclists" and "very occasional leisure cyclists". It will include a regular programme of slow group bike rides to local points of interest, such as Forty Hall (including its monthly Sunday markets), the River Lee towpath, or Trent Park, enabling members to see parts of their borough that they might otherwise never have visited.
As well as the group rides, there will be a regular programme of bike maintenance training, run by the Family Bike Club's team of skilled mechanics. Training will be provided both at the club's premises at Enfield Chase Station, where there is a specially equipped "community bike kitchen" and in one of the barns at Forty Hall Farm. During school holidays the club will be running parent and child mechanic camps.
Luke says the bike rides will be "unashamedly slow" - at the speed of the slowest participant - and the hi-viz gear worn by riders will bring them to people's notice and inspire them to join too and start their own personal journey into cycling.
Though primarily aimed at younger people, the scheme will be open to all ages. In Luke's words: "The more the merrier".
The Family Bike Club
The Family Bike Club was set up in 2022 by Enfield resident Luke Balnave and is based at Enfield Chase Station. As well as hiring out bikes of all shapes and sizes - Long-tail family bikes, child trailers, front and back child seats, cargo-carrying trailers, trailers for dogs, cargo bikes, e-bikes, and just plain old-fashioned pushbikes - the club organises family-friendly bike rides and helps people take up this environmentally benign transport means.
