Donated cycles are given a new lease of life in Highland project to enable youngsters to take up cycling
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Old bikes are being given a new lease of life in an Inverness project to enable children to own a bike and take up cycling.
The venture is a joint effort involving the charity, New Start Highland, which has donated children’s bikes for renovation as part of active travel projects in the city.
It is hoped the first bikes will be distributed to their new owners in the Merkinch and Dalneigh areas.
They are being renovated by Anna Church, project worker for Own Your Street Inverness, part of the social enterprise Velocity, and Iain Thompson, I Bike officer for Sustrans.
It is also being supported by the Inverness cycling charity Spokes for Folks and local schools.
Miss Church said about 14 bikes would be distributed initially.
"The idea of doing up the bikes is to give them to children who cannot afford one or don’t have access to one for whatever reason," she said.
"It is enabling them to cycle, which is important.
"It is all very well telling people to cycle, but if you don’t have a bike, you can’t do it. This is getting them to the starting point by providing a bike."
Potentially, the project could be extended to the wider community.
"It might be that a child has a bike, but the rest of the family doesn’t," she said.
"We might get adult bikes, so the family could ride together."
She said New Start, which sells bikes for its own charity, had been generous in donating bikes which had been collected in two trikes owned by Spokes For Folks.
"We want to continue it in a low-level way, so it is not just a one-off," she said.
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