Adopt a Bike Day – 21 May

The Community Cycle Centre’s next “Adopt a Bike Day” is on Saturday 21st May from 10am to 12pm at the Stacey Centre, Walsall Road, Copnor, PO3 6DN. They have a selection of refurbished child, youth and adult bicycles which they will give away in exchange for a donation to cover their costs.

Also, if you have a old bike languishing in your garden shed that you’d like to donate to the not-for-profit project then give them a cal on 07407 374 497 or email community@pompeybug.org.uk.

The Community Cycle Centre is managed by Portsmouth Cycle Forum. For more details please see the Community Cycle Centre website HERE.

Photo by Paul Gonella

Family Easter Treasure Hunt

Portsmouth Cycle Forum and the PCC Healthy Pompey Team are organising a fabulous Family Easter Treasure Hunt on Sunday 24 April. The fun starts at 10am at the Canoe Lake children’s play area where there will be treasure to seek. There’ll be a short cycle ride to Bransbury Park where there will be even more things to find! The event will finish at midday.

Pompey Bug Winter Events

The Portsmouth Cycle Forum (Pompey Bug) have a bumper edition of their newsletter to round of the year. In it you’ll find details of all forthcoming events, including the launch of the Eastney Family Bike Club on 27th December. A downloadable PDF version is also available HERE.

Christmas Cycle Quiz – 9th December
Who invented the bicycle? Where does the North Sea cycle route go? What colour shirt does the Tour de France leader wear? Join us for our fantastic cycle quiz night at the Eldon Arms from 8pm on Thursday 9th December.

Healthy Pompey Santa Sleigh Run – 18th December
The Healthy Pompey team are organising a Santa related bike sleigh fest at the Mountbatten Centre, Alexandra Park where Healthy Santa will be joining in on a festive sleigh run. He will be dispensing Healthy Pompey presents, and at the final stop there will be free festive refreshments for every rider. The fun starts at 1pm! Information on this and other Healthy Pompey events can be found at http://healthypompey.com/news-events/

Eastney Family Bike Club Christmas Bike Party – 29th Decemeber
If you’ve got a new bike for Christmas or if you want to cherish and love your old bike then come along to the Community Centre in Bransbury Park on the 29th December from 12 until 2.30pm for a great party to celebrate the launch. There’ll be bike games and challenges for all ages, free Dr Bike checks, looking at routes, short rides and security marking. You can improve your cycle skills and have a good laugh at the same time. Everyone is welcome: Mum, Dad, Grandma, Grandad, aunties, uncles, nephews, nieces….. you get the idea. All you need to do is bring your bikes….

Photo: Tristan Savage

Sunday Cycle Ride around Portsmouth Harbour

In response to requests Pompey Bug have another one of their popular social rides this Sunday 31st October. This time meeting at Victoria Park at 11am for a ride around Portsmouth Harbour.

Everyone is welcome and this is an opportunity to meet other local people and to enjoy a ride and a chat. Keeping as close to the harbour as possible and using as many routes off the main road as they can, although there are some sections along roads.

The route takes you up past the Mountbatten Centre to Hilsea, along the northern edge of harbour through Portchester and Fareham, then down the western edge through Gosport to the ferry. There will be two or three short stops on the way. Don’t forget your £3.20 ferry fare!

Contact Pompey Bug for all the info HERE.

Healthy Pompey – Healthy Rides

Starting Saturday 25th September Healthy Pompey have launched Healthy Rides – a chance to ride your bike further, without taking on the Tour de France! The rides will be on different days and be of varying lengths and difficulties; something for everyone. Although you will be shown the best cycle routes, these are purely social and leisure rides – they’ll keep to the slowest in the group and keep everyone together, giving you a chance to chat. View the route maps HERE.

All rides are listed on the Pomey Bug website and can be viewed HERE. To receive a regular update on Guided Rides, or for further information please contact owen.devine@portsmouthcc.gov.uk

Family Fun: Picnic & Aquarium – 25 September
Farlington Marshes – 26 September
Tea @ Old Portsmouth – 6 Octpber
Portsmouth Cycle Forum: Langstone Harbour – 14 October
Metropolis Architecture – 26 October
Family Fun: Pirate Ride – 13 November
Tea @ Port Solent – 26 November
Family Fun: Santa Sleigh Run – 18 December
Round Portsea Island – 27 December
Tea @ Aspex – 16 January 2011
Picturesque Portsmouth – 22 January 2011

Photo: Tristan Savage

Future Cycling Cities hosted by Portsmouth Cycle Forum (Pompey Bug)

The ever busy cycle committee over at The Portsmouth Cycle Forum, also know as Pompey Bug are hosting the CTC/Cyclenation Cycle Campaign Conference, on 17th April 2010 in association with the Cycle Touring Club and Cyclenation.

The conference will take place at the University’s Portland Building discussing & sharing skills, knowledge based around the theme of “Future Cycling Cities”, focussing on how to put cycling at the heart of town and city life.

Pompey Bug has really helped push and develop a lot of key cycle points around the city and deserve our support in helping make Portsmouth a better place to ride.

For more information and to book a place head over HERE and download the poster and booking form HERE

Support the Seafront Cycle Route

The new Seafront Cycle Route needs your help. Most of you will have noticed by now that the first phase of the seafront cycle route is being built – indeed a long stretch of it is all but complete. You may also have noticed that there has been considerable criticism of the route in the local press. The loss of parking spaces in exchange for the new parallel system is creating a lot of controversy. I fully understand peoples comments regarding fewer parking spaces at Eastney, but honestly, when is it ever full. Even in high summer it’s not difficult to find a space. I ride home everyday and often take the extend route along the seafront from Eastney and more often than not there are dozens of spaces and at least 2 people reversing out in to my path.

It is vitally important that we show Portsmouth City Council how popular this route is – otherwise there is a great risk that the decision makers will get cold feet when asked to approve phase 2. Therefore the Portsmouth Cycle Forum please ask all of you to write to Simon Moon, head of traffic and transportation at Portsmouth City Council expressing support for the seafront cycle route.

Support the Seafront Cycle Route by contacting Simon Moon directly HERE, or better still a unique letter or email always has more impact, so if you have time to write please use the following contact details.

Simon Moon
Portsmouth City Council
Civic Offices
Guildhall Square
Portsmouth
Hampshire, PO1 2BG

email: simon.moon@portsmouthcc.gov.uk

Photo : Hilary Reed

Portsmouth Cycle Forum – Vote for a Logo

The guys over at the PCM really do a lot more for cycling in this city than most people would generally know. Always campaigning and keeping people up to date on all things cycling and the city, they always have their ears to the cycle lane. If you haven’t checked their website yet head over and be sure to save the RSS feed. Always updated.

For a fresh face in 2010 they want to update their logo and help make it more appealing to all audiences, including younger riders around the city. Voting is now open for the new Pompey Bug logo and closes February 11th.

Check out the logos HERE and then vote HERE.

Family Frostbike Cycle Ride

The Portsmouth Cycle Forum have organised a Family Frostbike Cycle Ride on Tuesday 29 December to help work off some of the excesses of Christmas. Here’s the itinerary:

- Assemble at the Ferry Gardens in Gosport (next to the ferry pontoon) at 10am
- Travel using on-road and off-road cycle routes via Gosport Station, through Rowner, Stubbington and back roads to Hill Head.
- Refreshment stop (either Visitor Centre or Osborne View PH).
- Return along coast road to Lee-on-the-Solent (Solent Cycles on seafront for emergency repairs!).
- Carry on towards Stokes Bay but with optional loop to Gosport BMX track.
- Stokes Bay seafront then cycle path on old railway line back to South Street and ferry.

Aiming to finish between 1pm and 2pm. Ferries leave Portsmouth and Gosport every 15 minutes (www.gosportferry.co.uk)

“We hope you can join us!”

PRIMARY – Extended & Improved

We have some great news about our PRIMARY phonography exhibition (find out all the details here) that we can now announce:

- The deadline for submissions has now been extended to Sunday 4th March. We have had some incredible submissions but want to set aside more time to make the exhibition something really special.

- The competition is now open to up to 10 submissions from each individual. With the ability to capture many photos on your phone over the next two months we we want you to not feel restricted to just three. The same rules apply about the photos conforming to compositions using the primary colours though. If you have already submitted feel free to send more photos over as and when you please.

- The exhibition will be hosted by Albert Road’s own Bonzo Studio who are also partnering up with us in the creation of the exhibition space. More news on this soon!

- Finally, we will be running a competition as part of the exhibition where the best three photos submitted will win some incredible prizes. We will be announcing the prizes available very soon but got to say, these will be the best prize haul we have ever offered.

- We will be putting together a poster for the exhibition that will be on sale on the opening night. The poster will feature some of the best submissions and all profits from the sales will go to a local charity (details to follow soon). Due to this we need to say that any photos submitted to PRIMARY will involve you giving us permission to use them for commercial purposes, if you do not want your photo used in this way simply let us know via email.

Well, that is it for now! We really hope to drum up as much coverage locally for PRIMARY in the next couple of months so if you could Facebook/Tweet/+1 about the exhibition we would really appreciate it. We would love this exhibition to be a real reflection of the whole population of Portsmouth with everyone taking part and feeling involved.

It’s going to be a Strong Movember – Closed at £725

Righto chaps, it’s time to clean shave your boat race and get that mighty moustache on the grow in support of Movember for The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. For 30 days of November you can help support and raise awareness through selflessly parading your top lip for charity.

You can sign up yourself, as I’m sure many of you already have, or you can join the Strong Island team and seek out sponsorship as a team. Through the Strong Island Movember page you can ask people to join the group, make donations, upload photos and post updates via the MoSpace page, Facebook and Twitter.

Head over to www.mobro.co/StrongIsland if you would like to get involved and grow a Strong Moustache to help raise awareness, or simply head over to www.uk.movember.com and sign up to personally raise money.

The funds raised in the UK support the number one and two male specific cancers – prostate and testicular cancer. The funds raised are directed to programmes run directly by Movember and our men’s health partners, The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. Together, these channels work together to ensure that Movember funds are supporting a broad range of innovative, world-class programmes in line with our strategic goals in the areas of awareness and education, survivorship and research.

Poster: Tristan Savage