Your health, your climate, your pocket and your community are all better by bike. 6th – 12th June 2022 is Bike Week, delivered by Cycling UK and this year it’s all about you and your local community.
Cycling UK want to encourage as many people as possible to get out and enjoy their community by bike. There are so many benefits to cycling, which a lot of people have discovered over the last few years – either taking up biking for the first time, dusting off a bike in the shed or adding more miles into a routine.
Whether you’re cycling for exercise, to commute to work, or just to enjoy the fresh air, cycling gives people the freedom to choose how to travel and how to live their lives better and healthier.
Here are a few facts from Cycling UK:
- Cycling to work can mean you have a 45% lower risk of developing cancer, and a 46% lower risk of cardiovascular disease
- A switch of one journey per day reduces a person's carbon footprint by approximately 0.5 tonnes per year
- If all cycle journeys increased from the current level of 2% to 25% by 2050, the collective benefit would be £248bn.
There’s plenty happening in the region around cycling and it’s great to see some of our members using cycling to engage with their service users and their communities.
VONNE Bronze Membership+ members, Cycling Minds https://cyclingminds.org/ are on a mission to “establish a virtuous circle where we leverage cycling as a sport to engage young people initially and then foster a long-lasting relationship with them so that they can develop the skills and knowledge needed to work with us as active participants in developing a permanent home for our community cycle hub (The Link) and ambassadors for cycling in their local communities.” Established last year in Hexham, Northumberland by three locals with a love of cycling, their social mission is to address poor mental health and long-term unemployment for young people in the region by giving them the opportunity to interact with the local cycling community and receive training for future careers as bike mechanics or lead riders in a sociable and nurturing environment.
If you’re feeling inspired to get cycling this weekend, then VONNE core members Recyke y’bike! can help. With centres in Newcastle and Durham, they specialise in refurbishing donated bikes and selling them at reasonable prices to fund their charitable objectives. You can find out more about them here. https://recyke.bike/
Find out how you can get involved in Bike Week 2022 here. https://www.cyclinguk.org/bikeweek