Would you like to ride a trishaw?

If you would, then we’ve got plenty of opportunities for you. We are the Shropshire Cycle Hub, and you may well have seen our trishaws out and about around Shrewsbury at weekends giving free rides to locals and visitors alike.

However, we’ve felt for some time that the trishaws are being underused. Several of our volunteers thought we should become involved with the excellent charity Cycling Without Age (CWA), so we have now become the Shropshire chapter of CWA, the aim of which is to give everyone the experience of cycling, whether they are individually able to or not.

People love having rides, and it also helps older folk to reconnect with their community as they often feel cut off. We are part of a global movement of 39,000 trishaw pilots worldwide, and we all have a lot of fun and an immense feeling of doing something worthwhile helping others.

We are beginning to introduce residential, care and nursing homes and day centres to our activities and have given several introductory presentations to residents. These culminated with short rides around the residences, and the question commonly asked was “When can we do this again?”.

Well, that’s down to you. If pilots were to do one day a week, it would require at least ten pilots. Most of our current pilots work full time so can only manage weekends. Also, as I’m sure you are all aware, there are many such homes in Shrewsbury. If we were to provide this service to each of them on a monthly basis, it would require many more pilots.

Therefore, we are asking every cyclist to consider becoming a pilot and maybe volunteer once a month to participate in a CWA activity. We would give tuition in piloting a trishaw (it’s not difficult!), and don’t worry, they’ve got electric motors!!

If you’re interested, please email cwa@shropshirecyclehub.uk, or phone/text/WhatsApp Pete Lobban on 07794366496. if you don’t want to be a pilot, you can also help us on the admin side with bookings and comms, and also on fundraising as we will need to start generating some funds soon to cover maintenance as well as future purchase of more trishaws.

For further information:

shropshirecyclehub.uk

cyclingwithoutage.org.uk