One of the best ways you can help make Pedal on Parliament a success is to lead a feeder ride – and this year, with POPs taking place in three cities in Scotland (confirmed so far…), we need more feeder rides than ever!!
Running a feeder ride needn’t be complicated. At its simplest, you could join forces with a group of local cyclists, agree a start point and time, and plan a route.
And, if you let us know, we can add your feeder ride to our website and spread the word on Facebook and Twitter. Some feeder ride organisers set up an event on Facebook, Meetup, or other social media sites. You can see what’s already planned for Edinburgh, to give you an idea.
Rides can be as short or as long as you like. We’ve had one from Fife every year (although, sadly, this year our regular organiser can’t make it – anyone want to step in?) and also from Glasgow. At the other end of the scale, last year there was one from Sciennes Primary School to the Meadows which was all of 200m long – but was still a great success.
Thank you @JDKDY for organising #popfife #pop2016 feeder – great turnout – here's group at Inverkeithing pic.twitter.com/fPDT9Y8UxG
— Richard Pelling (@rxpell) April 23, 2016
For larger feeder rides – especially family-friendly ones – you may need to do a bit more organising. The Harrison Park feeder ride regularly has over 100 cyclists – many families with small children – and has become an event in itself. In order to get a group like that safely and easily to our start points in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen takes some marshalling and careful planning. Fortunately, the organisers of that ride have written us a great commonsense guide to running a big family feeder ride which you can download here.
This year, it’s the local elections so we’re really keen to spread the POP message as widely as we can. Running feeder rides from every ward in Edinburgh and, in Glasgow, from some of the outlying local authority areas, means we’re showing council seat candidates that cycling is something their potential constituents care about too.
Even better, if you can invite your candidates along on the day – even if it’s just to the start of the ride – it’s a chance for you to talk with them in person and show them some of the issues you have to deal with every day.
If you can help out – or if you’d like to know more – then please let us know at hello@pedalonparliament.org.
For each feeder ride we advertise we need to know:
- Your start time and place
- A rough route, including any interim points where people might be able to join you along the way
- Who the ride is suitable for (and maybe some idea of the pace, especially if it’s a longer route)
- How participants can contact you to find out more
- Links to any website, route map, event page or other source of information.
If you’re coming to POP anyway, there’s really no better way to get that little bit more involved – and have a nice social ride in with like minded cyclists to boot. What better way to do your bit to help make Scotland a cycle-friendly country?
https://twitter.com/suegyford/status/459987050083917824/