Thanks to Tweed Valley Tourism Consortium, St Ronan’s Primary School in Innerleithen enjoyed a biking extravaganza on Friday the 19th June. The Tweed Valley Tourism Consortium, a marketing consortia made up of 67 businesses involved in tourism in the Tweed Valley has recently been part-financed by the Scottish Government and the European Community Scottish Borders LEADER 2007-2013 programme with match funding from Scottish Enterprise. This has given it more opportunity to become more proactive in its marketing and work closely with the local community.
The Mountain bike sub-group, chaired by Richard Latimer, felt that a local school event would really help achieve its aims. Richard said after the event “it has been great to have the chance to put something back into the local community – Mountain Biking is so important to the local economy, it is important to share its success with the future generation of Innerleithen”.
The afternoon began with a fantastic biking display from ‘The Clan’, Scotland’s very own stunt team. Boasting some of the most talented riders in the world, Danny, Nash and Duncan wowed the kids with some amazing jumps, back flips and bunny hops on their locally built trials rig.
The pupils were then given the opportunity to see and try some of the wealth of Mountain Biking that is available in the Tweed Valley.
Following the buzz of the Clan display and some freebies from Cycling Scotland the kids were encouraged to get on their bikes and learn some skills from top mountain bikers Emma and Tracey from the ‘The Hub’ at Glentress.
The one and only Carl Lane from Peebles Cycling Club and Glentress Bike Patrol setup a biking obstacle course where the pupils were encouraged test their skills and balance.
Andy Wardman, a trail building expert from the Forestry Commission at Glentress came along to give the pupils an insight into the construction of a top class mountain biking trail. With the help of pupils and staff at the school he has drawn up plans for an all weather professionally built trail within the school grounds for the kids and community to enjoy.
Ben and Rich from local company bikesandberms.com setup one of their purpose built pump tracks to show the pupils how to have fun without pedalling. With help from local trail builder Richard Hamilton the bikers raced around the track using only a pumping motion to propel the bikes forward. The pupils looked on to make sure there was no cheating and to count the number of circuits the riders could do within a fixed time.
Finally, Elliot from I-Cycles in Innerleithen gave a talk about downhill bikes and biking. Innerleithen is hosting both the British Downhill and Cross Country National Championships on the 18th& 19th July this year and pupils were asked to answer questions all about the downhill bikes and the local downhill courses. The afternoon was a great success, even a spot of rain couldn’t dampen the fun.
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