Portsmouth Cycle Forum May Meeting

Portsmouth Cycle Forum have their May monthly meeting this evening at Portsmouth Guildhall between 7pm and 9pm. The meeting includes a report from the Velo-City conference held in Seville in Marchand they’ll also have an update on the Local Sustainable Transport Fund bids by Portsmouth City Council and Transport for South Hampshire. The forum are also after input from local cyclists so if you have any ideas or opinions you want to share come along and get involved.

Find out more about Portsmouth Cycle Forum on Facebook HERE.

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

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

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.

Portsmouth Cycle Forum Open Meeting

Portsmouth Cycle Forum will be holding an open meeting on Thursday 14th at 7pm at Meeting Room 1, Portsmouth Guildhall 3rd Floor. The agenda for the meeting will be:

• Traffic lights & cycling – the inside story
• Seafront cycle route phase II
• CTC / Cyclenation conference

Cycle parking is available in the Guildhall Square and the Guildhall is close to Portsmouth and Southsea station and to all City Centre bus stops.

For all information about the Cycle Forum visit www.pompeybug.org.uk, check Facebook and also Twitter (twitter.com/pompeybug) too.

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!”

Build a Bike in Portsmouth

Portsmouth Cycle Forum want to know if you want to learn how to fix and maintain your bike for free and if you fancy learning how to build a good bike from scratch? Got a spare old bike taking up space to donate? Want to get that old bike on the road again? Are you looking for bike spares?

If the answer to any of these is YES, roll up to the popular Break and Make bike sessions at Somerstown Fire station (in Somers Road North, opposite Somers Park Primary School) from 10am to 2pm on the these dates:

- 9th January
- 23rd January
- 6th February
- 20th February
- 6th March

All are welcome and lunch is provided for those with oily hands. Also if you know all about bikes and want to share your valuable knowledge, please join them as well. Help PCF get more bikes on Portsmouth’s roads!

Any questions contact Jayne Rodgers on 023 9283 4590 or jayne.rodgers@portsmouthcc.gov.uk

Free Bike Marking in Portsmouth

Portsmouth Cycle Forum got in contact to say that the police are offering free ‘Cycle Marking’ sessions in Commercial Road, Portsmouth between 10am and 4pm on the 19th January, 17th February and 17th March. If bikes are stolen the markings make it easier to return bikes to their owners once they have been recovered. Pop it in the diary.

Family Christmas Cycle Ride

Portsmouth Cycle Forum are having a family Christmas cycle ride on Sunday 6th, meeting at the Hayling ferry in Eastney at 10am. The route is from the there, up Eastern Road and around Langstone harbour then back down around Hayling (using the Billy route) to the ferry with post ride refreshments at the Ferry Boat Inn before catching the ferry home again.

For more information check the Facebook event.

Portsmouth Cycle Forum Meeting

The next Portsmouth Cycle Forum open meeting is tomorrow night (19th) at 7pm at Meeting Room 1 on the third floor of Portsmouth Guildhall. Cycle lockups are available in the Guildhall Square.

The agenda, will include:

a. Cycle Parking – a short DVD
b. NEW CTC Right to Ride appointments
b. Strategic Cycle Routes
d. NEW PCC Cycle Strategy
e. NEW. Seafront cycle route
f. Cycle theft

More details at www.pompeybug.org.uk and on Twitter twitter.com/PompeyBUG.

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