New options for Oliver’s Battery and Abbots Barton residents
We’ve written before about school bike buses in Winchester, which are going from strength to strength.
Three bike buses have been running successfully for some time now: Abbots Barton to St Bede Primary, Badger Farm to Oliver’s Battery Primary, and Colden Common to Kings/Westgate (the latter currently in hibernation due to shorter daylight hours).
We are excited to announce two additional new buses!
A second Oliver’s Battery Primary bus is now running on Friday mornings, meeting at 0820 at Old Kennels Close. Readers will know that Old Kennels Lane is a long, hard climb, but little legs have been training hard, and are now cresting the hill like Tadej Pogačar on the Col du Tourmalet.
Meanwhile, another group of parents has organised a bus from Abbots Barton to Barton Farm Primary, meeting at Austen Close at 0810 on Fridays.
Anne Forder, who coordinates the Oliver’s Battery bike buses, says: “A really positive knock-on effect of our bus is that we have kids who don’t feel that they can join the bike bus yet because of the hill, but they are going out with their parents and practising on their bikes so that they can join in the future. We had a new girl on the bus this morning who had been practising really hard so that she could join in. We’ve also had recent recruits who are really determined to get up the hill and each week you can see them getting a bit further up it. It’s fantastic.“
We salute the parents who are launching these bike buses. Cycle Winchester is here to facilitate and advise, contact us via hello@cyclewinchester.org.uk if you need help.
We love that there are five bike buses in Winchester… how many more can we launch?
