Club Development Club and Bike Park Development Club Development Setting up a mountain bike club and building a bike park

Setting up a mountain bike club and building a bike park Hot

Written by stumpy_dan July 23, 2010 1117 0Add

Setting up a mountain bike club and building a bike park

The Vision and Story of The Urban Bike Park Network.

Imagine a world where you live in a bustling city of cars and shops and folks rushing around breathing in a busy life. Imagine on your commute back from work or your ride home from school or on those weekends you only had an hour or so to kill you could ride to your local park and take on the whoops and loops of the rollers of the pump track, hone your northshore skills in a freeride area and race your mates on the 4 cross of bmx dirt track. Imagine the community love this park and work to sustain it. Imagine the police and the local kids from the estate built it hand in hand together. Imagine Saturday morning kids with no bikes take skill courses in the youth club believing they could one day be a coach or a even a world champion.

For quite a few years iBIkeRide has tracked my experiences as a mountain bike enthusiasts. The site as well as telling many riders stories tells mine too. The words I write chronicle my own experiences in this amazing sport and hobby. I try to tell the good and the bad. There are times like many of us my biking mojo has gone and others that I'm a pure addict out every evening practising bunnyhops onto kerbs. All is shared as I believe my journey is similar to most of us.

The last year I have not blogged much or shared. I with a bunch of amazing folk have been busy having tons of fun setting up an inner city bike park whilst developing a community club culture with The Trax in Tottenham in North London. I am doing this for three reasons:

Firstly I believe passionately in my local community and want to see opportunities for youth here.

Secondly I believe that mountain biking which has given me such focus should be a available to to all regardless of socio economic and cultural barriers.

Finally, ok the idea of a bike park that the council won't bulldozer down in your local hood is for city dwellers like me too good an idea and opportunity to not make real.

I have been lucky that the most amazing group of people have joined together on this project and the team we are reminds me we have a special mission to deliver on. Sometimes I feel when I see the different skills and personalites of the team making this happen that we must have a guardian angel out there.

Now the project is becoming established and the team in place I have more time so i wanted to start sharing and chronicling these experiences of the last year as that is why the site iBikeRide exists for us to share for greater community knowledge.

I also want to share as what we are doing in this little patch of park land in North London is I believe relevant and helpful to anyone starting a local community project regardless of location or sport and is also a blueprint of what can be taken to all inner city parks around London, all UK cities and even internationally. The Urban Bike Network concept is born.

The topics that I will cover in the Resources section to help folks get started: