This article was published in 2018, in Newsletter 140.
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Ellie Gooch
‘I live in Cambridge and I am a student at the University of Oxford, so I spend my life immersed in the culture of cycling, and have developed quite a passion for it. I started volunteering at Camcycle at the start of the summer, and it has been a fun, flexible way of filling my summer with interesting work.
‘The Camcycle team has been so inviting and has consistently tried to help me get the most out of my volunteer work, which has involved developing our city-wide cycling survey and promoting it around the city, writing an article for the magazine and helping to organise events for the Festival of Cycling.
‘I have been living in Cambridge for less than a year, so volunteering at Camcycle was a great way to get involved in the issues affecting the city and to gain an insight into the tireless work of a charity trying to make Cambridge an even nicer place to live.’
This summer, Ellie has been a regular in the Camcycle office. She has been working on the Cambridge Cycling Survey by researching similar projects, producing survey questions and distributing survey leaflets. Ellie has also been supporting the organisation and planning for the Cambridge Festival of Cycling, as well as creating content for the magazine. With her help we have launched the Cambridge Cycling Survey, covered bike sharing, leafletted bike shops and even organised the Why we Cycle film event.
Simon Nuttall
‘I got involved with the Campaign at the time when cycling was banned in the centre of Cambridge during the middle of the day. I thought that was wrong and I wanted to add my voice to a group that wanted to right that. I stayed working with the Campaign because I found it was made up of people determined to use the democratic process to bring about change.’
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As most people know, Simon has been involved in the Campaign for some years now. But this summer Simon has worked tirelessly to produce the pilot street cycle parking survey and the subsequent full survey for the Romsey area. He has had several meetings with the county council, and as a result of this hard work the new resident parking schemes will include cycle parking at the informal consultation stage.
In addition to this, Simon single-handedly delivered the pilot survey to residents on Catharine Street. He also led a team of volunteers to distribute the full survey to residents in Romsey. With Simon’s perseverance we have pushed the street cycle parking project onwards and hope we can make even more of an impact.
Liz Irvin
‘I have been an enthusiastic cycle commuter since 2012, when some cycling colleagues of mine suggested I ride the 8 miles to work instead of taking the bus. After a few months I was hooked: not only was I fit, strong and saving money, I could eat all the cake I wanted! I started volunteering for Bicycle Network in Australia, then when I moved to Canada I worked for a trails organisation on their cycling programmes. I have just moved to Cambridge and I’m extremely excited to live in the cycling capital of the UK and be involved in the community here.’
Liz recently joined Camcycle and began volunteering as soon as she signed up: she has been researching venues for our upcoming AGM, and working on the Mill Road vision project. She has also been supporting the street cycle parking project by distributing leaflets in Romsey. On the social ride to Eddington, Liz was the first aider, without whom the ride might not have gone ahead.
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Kiu Li
‘I enjoy cycling very much and admired the great work by Camcycle to improve cycling for everybody, for all ages and all abilities. ‘Volunteering for Camcycle to help promote and publicise Cambridge’s campaigning on everyday and leisure cycling culture to more people is fun and rewarding.
‘Cycling has so many benefits on many levels such as physical and mental health, lower air and noise pollution, I want to help spread message of the positives for the benefit of everyone.’
Kiu worked hard to help plan the route for the social ride that kicked off the Cambridge Festival of Cycling. She secured the alternative meeting spot for the start of the ride, opening the event up to even more attendees. Kiu has also been a huge help for the Festival, giving her time and energy as a volunteer to support our events.
Emma Pritchard