Advice needed for starting a cycle club.

Neil Fat man on a bike

I'm interested in starting a cycle club in my village.
I'm just wondering how to go about it......
The basic idea is to have club runs and low key family runs as the core activity but to be able to cover all aspects of cycling. So touring, mountain biking ( our village is in the Scottish highlands ) and hopefully get some folks into time trials and see how it devellops. I love the idea of raising some funds to purchase 'club bikes' so that anyone could have a go without needing to purchase specialist bikes ( ideal for getting some youngsters involved ).
I suppose the big question revolves around affiliations, where do you start CTC, RTTC,BCF ?
Has anyone on the board ever started a club?
How did you do it?
What are the pitfalls?

willbevan

hmmm would be interested in how you get on with this... like the idea of club bikes, not sure how that would go though, would of thought the main thing was insurance to start with but im not anything but a newbie here :S

JC.152

Sounds a good idea and good be really good if you get local support or if you contact organisitions.
The BCF do things like GO RIDE for youngsters which you might want to contact them about and CTC do leisure rides and stuff for families and beginners. The CTT is more time trials and mainly open events.

Other than that I don't know much

blackhands

The SCU is the body for competitive cycling in Scotland

http://www.scuonline.org/

so perhaps start with them.

Neil Fat man on a bike

Thank you.
Just early days but I will look into this further.
Thanks guys

Bronzie

JC.152 wrote:

The BCF do things like GO RIDE for youngsters

To get "Go Ride" accreditation is a fairly involved process - you need 2 qualified coaches and then be able to commit a fair bit of time to visiting schools etc.

I think you'd need to get the club up and running before looking at this as you'll certainly need help from others to get everything in place.

There is no need to affiliate to BC or CTT unless you plan for your members to ride bunch races or open time trials respectively, however club membership is around £100/yr (unless your club has sponsors named on the kit) for both so not going to break the bank.

As has been pointed out SCU is the body to speak to in Scotland - they may well have a "how to start a club" leaflet or similar, so give them a ring.

Neil Fat man on a bike

Thanks guys much appreciated.

zaynan

Whoever it was who mentioned insurance was right I think - our local cycle campaign tried to organise a one-off local family 'pedaling picnic' - you should have seen the paperwork and beaurocracy! It was only thanks to the local council that the ride could go ahead. Without them the 3 ride leaders (of which I was one) were liable for anyone breaking a finger nail or faling off. We were covered anyway thanks to our CTC membership.

Apart from this sort of red tape (which may well be different in Scotland - you tend to have a more sensible aproach to such issues than the English) I'm sure setting up your club will be well worth it and lots of fun - wish I lived in your village! Good luck!