Hayling Herald article for May 2022

Here’s what we submitted for our Hayling Herald May 2022 column, with online links and more pictures …

This month

Let’s get Hayling cycling!
Cycle Safari
New map
More houses?
Fuel costs!
Tip of the month

Let’s get Hayling cycling!

Cycle Hayling’s mission is to get Hayling cycling! For fun, for exercise and health, and for everyday transport. Good for us, good for Hayling, good for the planet.

So this year, we’re planning more cycle rides, more training, a new cycle map, and supporting the 2022 Cycle Safari, on top of working for better cycle paths and infrastructure.

More rides. We’re aiming for at least one ride a month – gentle, short, social rides, aimed to help build confidence. If you’re looking for faster or longer rides, try local clubs like Portsmouth CTC who ride from Havant several days a week.

Roger Knight will front ours – he’s very experienced, a qualified Cycling Without Age pilot and a member of Cycling UK. We’ll adapt each ride to whoever turns up. Roger also has an adapted trike for wheelchair users if you tell him in advance – he loves to see their smiles as they experience the freedom of riding.

We’ll announce rides on our Facebook page at facebook.com/CycleHaylingPage and through our website, so do sign up at cyclehayling.org, and do come along.

Cycle Safari

This year’s Cycle Safari will have more venues, covering the whole island. It’s a fun event for all the family, with a challenge to cycle to as many venues as possible, with some great new prizes for those that complete the challenge. It’s organised by Hampshire County Councillor Lance Quantrill, with us supporting.

It starts 1st of June with the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations, running to the end of September. All the details on our website at cyclehayling.org/safari.

New map

Our new Cycle Hayling map will launch in time for the Cycle Safari, and highlight the best routes to cycle around the island.

It will also help you find some of Hayling’s quieter streets – hint – they’re not the ones you’d normally drive down!

Which is why we love them.

More houses?

Like most islanders, we don’t want Hayling filled with housing estates that bring more off-islanders, more traffic, more pollution. But with the government planning system heavily biased towards big house builders, we may not be able to stop all of them.

Rook Farm and Fathom’s Reach make very fine statements about encouraging cycling, but are only planning FOOTPATHS through to each other and the surrounding land, which will stop us marking them on cycling maps. And it’s FOOTPATHS they’ll build unless the council insist on cycle paths as a condition of planning.

St Mary’s Rd is narrow and very busy at times. For young children, cycling through these new developments would be much safer and family friendly.

Please OBJECT on the Havant planning website, and demand THROUGH CYCLE PATHS to all surrounding housing, roads and open land. The planning term is “cycle permeability”.

With Goldring Close (now the Halyards), Bellway consciously built a house that blocked the last possible cycle path to the schools from from SE Hayling. We found a way to link it, but they wouldn’t budge. We can’t have that happening with Rook Farm/Fathom’s Reach.

Fuel costs!

Stop paying petrol pump prices! Save money AND save the planet with a bike or e-bike! E-bikes are at least twenty times greener and cheaper to run than even an electric car, let alone petrol or diesel. They produce almost no air or particulate pollution, and do the equivalent of 1,000 to 2,000 mpg. And they still keep you fit.

Tip of the month

Convert your existing bike to an “E-Bike of the Year” with a Winchester-based Cytronex kit for under a grand. Other kits are available from £500 upwards. See cyclehayling.org/ebikes for more details.