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news
Guildford High Street (licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 by Oliver White on Geograph.org.uk)Guildford cyclist offers free cycle training to locals
A Surrey cyclist is offering free bike training to people in Guildford who would like to cycle on the road but lack the confidence to do so.
Terry Duckmanton, who became National Standard Cycling Instructor when he worked at a school where children were given Bikeability training, has issued his invitation to people living in the Westborough district of the county town.
He told The Guildford Dragon: “Now that I have retired, I have time available to carry out a small scale experiment to see what happens when people are offered free cycle training.
“What I can offer is training to a group of five or six people in the Westborough area of Guildford. If you live within walking or cycling distance of the Co-op shop on Aldershot Road, then you could be one of them.
“The offer is open to everyone living in this area, if you would like to be able to cycle into town and back on your own – after suitable training of course.”
One of the reasons behind his making the offer is his awareness of the health benefits of cycling.
He said: “We are constantly being told that lack of exercise is very bad for our health and is costing the NHS an awful lot of money, but as a nation we continue to default to the family car as the normal form of transport.
“The average home to work distance for most people in the UK was nine miles in 2011 (from census data), a distance which can easily be cycled, but very few do.
“For the last 13 years of my working life I was cycling 11 miles each way between Guildford and Effingham, except in high winds or heavy snow. This saved me a lot of money and kept me reasonably fit and, as a bonus, commuting was actually fun.”
Speaking about providing Bikeability training to schoolchildren as part of his former employment, he said he “enjoyed watching the trainees blossom into capable cyclists who were able and indeed willing to mix in with the traffic in and around Effingham.
“Sadly, this course was offered only to students, and the parents had to contribute to the cost of training,” he explained.
“I often wonder what the take-up would have been if the course had been totally free of charge to both students and parents. I like to think that we would have been totally overwhelmed by the number of applicants with a satisfying increase in the number of confident cyclists in the Effingham area.
“Some councils do actually offer free cycle training, sadly Guildford Borough and Surrey County are not among them.”
Besides offering free cycle training, he says he is happy to pass on advice on bike maintenance, and would also be interested in hearing from anyone else who would like to volunteer as a cycling instructor.
“The structure of the course itself would be tailored to the needs of the individual trainees, but would always aim towards the goal of being able to cycle into Guildford and back to Westborough,” he added.
The course will be offered as part of the Joining In! project operated by Voluntary Action South West Surrey.
David Rose of The Guildford Dragon is involved in the community volunteering initiative, and said: “Joining In! has been set up to help and encourage people of all ages to take part and volunteer in more activities in their community and for groups, organisations and individuals to help and support one another.
He added: “I have already spoken to The Guildford Bike Project and have put Terry in touch with them.
“The project’s recently revamped shop and community hub in Southway may well be the perfect venue for Terry to be based for his cycle training and bike maintenance courses, and where other volunteers could be based, once trained.”
Terry Duckmanton can be contacted on email terry.duckmanton [at] ntlworld.com" target="_blank">here.
What do you think of Terry's offer? Is providing cycle training to less confident riders in your own area something you would be interested in doing? Let us know in the comments below ...
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
Latest Comments
- stonojnr 9 min 44 sec ago
crazy that his own brief describes it as "his long suffering partner" also how come the two blokes he collected from the snooker club to assist in...
- stonojnr 17 min 52 sec ago
but in cases where you report other cyclists close passes, you literally are the witness to it, not the victim ?...
- S.E. 21 min 10 sec ago
1. It's obviously more aerodynamic, even a small backpack or hydration pack can help, there are studies about this....
- stonojnr 26 min ago
theres an attitude I encounter alot locally, and demonstrated in bucket loads by drivers on my commute home tonight, that cyclists shouldnt be on...
- FionaJJ 46 min 10 sec ago
When I was a student it was virtually unheard of for someone to have a car. It wasn't even that it was considered a luxury that almost no-one could...
- Keesvant 1 hour 45 min ago
If the chains snap that is lack of build quality or material.....
- Hirsute 2 hours 41 min ago
"Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good."
- Jaijai 3 hours 6 min ago
His life was only worth shy of 7 years ,that's too lenient in every book .Let alone drugged up and leaving him to die
- webbierwrex 3 hours 11 min ago
I came here to basically write the same thing, the floating bus stop near me has a very narrow cycling lane between a very narrow pavement and a...
- AS52 3 hours 34 min ago
It wasn't an official consultation meeting - see my comment above.
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17 comments
...and another thing
The book, lengthy as it is, doesn't go into any real depth about how to handle real-world conditions (as opposed to the idealised version in the book) so having read it you are likely to come away thinking you now need to do a degree-level course before you can safely venture out there. In reality most people will just decide not to bother with the whole business.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary we persist in believing that if only we convince enough people of the benefits of cycling or we provide yet more training then more people will take up cycling regularly.
The truth is that despite over 30 years spent on promotion and training the modal share for cycling sits at a derisory 1-2% nationally.
At my son’s school every child is offered free Bikeability training yet the number of pupils who actually cycle to school is zero, or as near as makes no difference.
People are making perfectly rational decisions not to cycle because they perceive it as dangerous, unpleasant and inconvenient.
As has been pointed out, training of the Bikeability kind is useful in teaching the skills necessary to survive the atrocious conditions for cyclists in this country but it isn’t going to convince ordinary people to take up riding a bike to the shops.
They don’t need more convincing or training, they need safe infrastructure. Until that changes, cycling will remain the preserve of enthusiasts.
A well-intentioned offer and I wish him every success with his “experiment” but I fear his efforts will be as ineffective as all similar efforts of the last 30 years have been.
It isn’t a lack of training that prevents people from cycling down to the shops, it’s the lack of safe routes to ride on that puts people off.
Mr Duckmanton would be far better devoting his time to campaigning for better cycling infrastructure.
for 20 years + Franklin has pushed his 'vehicular cycling' dogma. Essentially cycle like a car. A type of cycling that relegates cycling to a small group of fit males. Sod everybody else.
He has actively fought against decent segregated infrastructure, and published biased research to back his ideology.
The results speak for themselves; countries with proper cycle infrastructure, high levels of cycle usage. Britain, terrible / no cycle infrastructure, 2% or less.
Not sure what type of bike I have makes a difference, but I've cycled all my life, my current commute is 7 miles mostly on main roads. I certainly use what I've learnt from Cyclecraft for this type of cycling, but only because I have no choice of route.
As I said it will marginally increase your safety but it won't make the ride pleasant or a ride I recommend to anyone but a very confident cyclist.
No amount of bikeability training will encourage people on to the roads.
It'll marginally increase your survivability, but it won't make the roads a pleasant and safe place to be.
Mr Franklin and his ilk have done more damage to cycling in this country than anyone else. Terrible man.
@gwildar What a negative comment! However I think you'll need to try to justify what you say before it counts as effective trolling. Is your experience limited to commuting in central London with a folding cycle?
I'd say gwildar is spot-on. We've had all this vehicular cycling/bikeability stuff for decades, during which time cycling has remained utterly marginal. It's failed, move on.
That stuff seems to be a mixture of obvious stuff you'd work for yourself within 5 minutes of trying to cycle on the roads (how long does it take to intuit that its a good idea to 'take primary' at pinch points?) and stuff that people just don't want to do - so telling them they have to do it or they just aren't l33t enough to cycle simply means they decide to stick to the bus or the car.
And why the weird snobbery about 'commuting' and 'folding cylces'? Commuting is probably the most important thing people could use a bike for, without that its just a sporty hobby for the few who like that sort of thing.
Chapeau to Terry Duckmanton - wish there were more local people taking action to champion cycling. Clearly the gov/councils aren't going to do it despite all their hot air promises about a commitment to cycling.
Bikeability is all about dealing with the roads as they are in reality and not about how you would wish them to be. Or put another way, these are the roads we have and here is how you deal with them.
Mr Franklin's Cyclecraft is the Bikeabilty Instructors Handbook and I feel that every cyclist who rides on the public road would benefit from reading it. Certainly any adult with a child about to venture out must read it.
Yeah, except most just decide the best way to 'deal with roads as they are in reality' is to get a car (or the bus). So that's a bit of a doomed strategy.
Until there's enough political will at national/local level to make infrastructure changes and provide the money for doing so, that's the best strategy we have. Even if a huge pot of money arrived tomorrow it would takes years for stuff to be rolled out, and blanket infrastructure is never going to happen. As for one bloke in Guildford campaigning for infrastructure...that's likely to make a huge difference.
Re. 'working out pinch points' - from here in s/w london/surrey I'd say that a lot haven't, and that includes a lot of roadies, new or otherwise. I certainly didn't arrive at the useful bits without a lot of trial/error and being cut-up.
I don't know - can only say when I did get round to looking at 'cyclecraft' I found it was very much analogous to the 'help' pages in Windows. That is, it explained at length the obvious things you'd worked out for yourself pretty quickly, but had nothing to say about the less obvious issues that caused you to consult the book in the first place.
I accept that actual real-world training might, hopefully, go into more useful depth, but the book didn't impress me - plus, its complacent acceptance of the fact that motorists won't follow the law is quite irritating.
It's like a Victorian (or possibly ISIS) handbook of advice to women on how to "keep safe" around men.
And the fact is, if you tell people they have to read through and digest such a voluminous book before taking to the road, just to deal with the hazards presented by drivers (and their reluctance to obey the rules) most will just choose not to bother cycling on the basis that its clearly far too dangerous and complicated.
Getting the bus or walking doesn't require you to take a course, after all.
And the stuff about primary at pinch points and avoiding the door-zone, for example, did indeed seem obvious to me from the first time I took to the road. But the book is completely silent about the issue of, for example, a motorcyclist whizzing past within inches, squeezing between you and oncoming traffic, while you are avoiding the door-zone and 'taking primary'. Or a driver getting out and threatening to assault you because you delayed him 5 seconds by 'taking primary' a few minutes earlier.
I happily confess there are road-craft dilemmas I don't feel confident about - I'm not an expert cyclist. On many of them I just get off and walk - but Cyclecraft the book at least doesn't seem to have much useful advice to offer for the difficult cases.
I thought bikeability was about teaching users to use primary and be confident pulling out into moving traffic. Anyway, do you think Yorkshire falls within his catchment area? The whole family (myself included) would be more than happy to take him up on this offer, just a shame he's so far away.
The only thing that puts me off paying for bikeability is the cost. If it was £10 or something I'd happily pay.
seems very public spirited but doesn't bikeability along with similar schemes basically boil down to 'dress like bob the builder and ride in the gutter' which seems to me aimed at making people not confident but just terrified. I don't want to sound negative though and I hope this does get some folks out on their bikes which I'm sure it will, it's just that all it all comes across as a bit joyless when cycling is a joyful thing
Completely wrong.
Next time you pass a WHSmith, have a browse through Franklin's 'Cyclecraft' - it'll be where the other driving-related textbooks are.
Surely its rather, 'dress like bob the builder and carry a great big stick so you will feel confident in the inevitable confrontations you get into with angry drivers when you take primary'?