The Bicycle Academy reaches its £40k funding target in six days

It never looked in any doubt after they managed to raise £25,000 in a single day, but this morning The Bicycle Academy is a reality, after reaching its £40,000 funding target in just six days.

TBA is a new framebuilding workshop based just down the A36 from road.cc towers in Frome. Home of Charge Bikes and the Cobble Wobble, Frome is gaining a bit of a reputation as a centre of cycling goodness, and The Bicycle Academy will add another string to its bow. Taught by legendary fillet brazer and BMX builder Brian Curtis, you get to learn the tricks of the trade by building a utility bike to TBA's own design. When you've finished the course, the bike gets built up and shipped out to Africa via TBA's partner charity, re~cycle, to be used to provide transport to people who need it most.

Once you've finished your course you get ongoing access to the workshop so that you can work on your own projects; the aim of The Bicycle Academy is to encourage people to continue with building bikes once they have the skills. Now the funding push is complete, TBA will be gearing up to open its doors in February.

The first 50 courses - plus an extra handful that were made available on Sunday - have all been pre-booked by those pledging cash, which means that the Academy is fully booked for the first 10 months or so. That means if you haven't pledged money for a place you're looking at the start of 2013 before you can get on a course, but if the funding push is anything to go by those places will start to fill up pretty quick as well, so if you're considering getting some new skills the year after next, you might want to start making enquiries...

Here at road.cc we're very pleased that TBA has made it over the start line and we're looking forward to following their journey; Dave most of all, since he's booked himself a course as a 40th birthday present...

For more information head over to www.thebicycleacademy.org. It's still not too late to show your support, either; the funding push still has a month to run, there's still two one-day brazing masterclasses available (£300) and you can pledge as little as £20, for which you'll receive a TBA t-shirt, a badge and a thankyou letter. Head to www.peoplefund.it/the-bicycle-academy to show your support.