How the club began.

The early beginnings of Rochdale Special Needs Cycling Club date back to 1998. The Founder, Louis, was then a member of the Trans Pennine cycling Club in Rochdale and used to ride with them every Sunday. He noticed a youth of 16 or 17 who came to wave the riders off, and watch enviously as they rode away. Louis asked him if he would like to join the rides but the youth replied that he didn’t have a bike. Louis took pity on him and bought him a bicycle. A couple of weeks later the young lad returned with a friend, and pointing him out to Louis said, “Err, he hasn’t got a bike either.” Realising that in this very deprived neighbourhood there must be many such children Louis formed a cycling club for underprivileged children who didn’t own or have access to a bicycle. He got some bikes from the police that had been lost or stolen and couldn’t be traced, put them in good condition, and within a few months the club had over twenty bikes and members queuing up to join. The club then received enquiries to see if they could take out blind children and with charitable donations, bought two tandems to cater for them. As the years passed more and more children joined and enquiries started coming in to see if the club could cater for children with other disabilities.

The present day.

The club now has many active members. In addition to tandems it has bicycle-wheelchairs for amputees and quadriplegic or paraplegic children, bicycle trailers for infants, tandems with a recumbent seat for children with spinal problems and a variety of other dedicated machines. A large purpose built clubroom with disabled toilet facilities and a fitted kitchen has been built where the club provides a meal at the end of each ride. To house the growing number of bicycles required we acquired some local land and built a large shed.

Our future intentions.

All being well with a new management committee running things we have hopes for fund raising by doing a possible end to end ride (Lands end Cornwall - John'O'Groats Scotland), maybe get some of our more serious bikers to enter competitions. Right now after the sad year this club has undergone we just hope to get back to the blossoming state we once had in the past.

Now back to the present day.

We have continued to expand. This is now all by word of mouth because we have temporarily ceased advertising and publicising our activities. We now have 3 wheelchair bikes for children with severe disabilities and hand crank ones for children without the use of their legs. We are now well known to the local traffic and cars usually stop to allow us to cross junctions etc.

We have three Rickshaws with signs on the back warning following traffic that there are  novice riders ahead, so the rides can split up into groups that meet at a café stop.

On the 19th October 2010 the cycling club held its first AGM where an 8 strong management committee was elected with Steve Durham as Chairman, Reeka Kataria as Vice Chair, Val Craddock as Secretary, Carli Yates as Treasurer and 4 other trustees being John Ingham, Anthony Sale, Peter Greenhalgh and Andrew Whittaker (who is the Caretaker)