Welsh Cycling Club of the Year
WENVOE WHEELERS
Welsh Cycling Club of the Year
Well what a year we have had so far! On Saturday 12th October Wenvoe Wheelers won the Welsh Cycling ‘Club of the Year’. To say we are delighted would be an understatement.
Welsh Cycling and British Cycling have, over the last few years focussed a great deal of energy into getting children into cycling, a very worthwhile aim but our club, as a road cycling club felt from the outset that we simply didn’t have the expertise, time, location or capability to offer road cycling to children. We are not an off-road club (which is what many other cycling clubs for kids do offer) and although many of our members do cycle off-road, we felt we could not offer this to youngsters.
Whilst we are open to anyone over 16 (accompanied on the road) when you look at our membership, we are probably at the other end of the spectrum, age wise! What we do is get adults into cycling and we have been very successful at it. So successful that we recently passed our 200th member mark.
We are first and foremost a social cycling club and although we have quite a number of speedy riders, the main part of our membership comprises a bunch of people who just want to ride, chat and eat cake, taking in the fresh air and scenery. Keeping fit obviously goes hand in hand with cycling but it is not just physical fitness that we all benefit from. You cannot go far these days without hearing about mental illness and how good getting out into the fresh air and taking some exercise is if you are struggling with those sorts of problems, especially with a group of like minded people. And of course, children take their cue from what they see the adults in their lives do. So if they see their parents, grandparents and their friends getting out on their bikes, it surely passes a positive message to the kids that cycling is a ‘good thing’.
We knew that our rivals offered cycling opportunities for kids and we knew that this was a strong point in the eyes of Welsh Cycling so we were a bit nervous about our chances of winning but we did! For a club that has only been in existence for 3 ½ years we think we have done pretty good.
The awards dinner was quite a smart ‘do’ held at the Cricket Academy in Sophia Gardens and so it was that a group of unusually smart cyclists turned up in their best clobber (no lycra allowed) for the evening. We had decreed that the men should wear DJ’s and real bow ties – cue much anguish on how to tie a real bow tie. Some of them couldn’t even figure it out from a You Tube tutorial but luckily one of us ladies came to the rescue. Our slate plaque was presented by Dot Davies (Wimbledot to some of you) and we hope to display it in the village, possibly in the pub.
One of the things which we think impressed the judges was our Valeothon event which started and finished in Wenvoe on the last Sunday in June. If you happened to be up and about at 8 am that Sunday you would have been amazed to see so many cyclists in the village. We had riders from all over the Vale and further afield taking part and the feedback we had was so good, we are doing it again next year. Personally, I think the participants gave us their vote of approval because of the Welsh cakes we supplied for the feed stations. Everyone loved them! We had the racing snakes doing the 80 mile route back in about 4 hours and at the other end of the scale we had the 40 milers pootling along at their own more leisurely pace. It was a fantastic day, helped by good weather (which seems a distant memory as I write this) but what really made it work was all the planning and hard work which went into it in the months leading up to it.
We have also run a second very successful ladies ride which happened in September – again in glorious weather (clearly we have a hotline to the weather gods). We will shortly start our winter programme of turbo in the village hall and watt bike sessions in a gym and next year look forward to our club trip to Mallorca. So if you fancy getting out on your bike, get in touch on facebook or find us at British Cycling