Sunday will see the launch of the Skyride series with Skyride Manchester. The Skyrides see Sky and British Cycling teaming up to provide an opportunity to ride around the centre of Manchester, Glasgow, Leicester and London without the traffic or pollution. Along the route will be a series of different events, with a chance to ride through the velodrome, a family section, the go loud tunnel and Albert Square which will have British Cycling and Wattbike set up to offer a chance to find out more about Cycling in the UK and an activity zone – the Wattbikes.
The road is closed for the whole route and is open from 10am to 4pm. The Activity Zone is also open for the same time, so come and have a go on the Wattbikes where we will have a 200m challenge going on, but be gentle on us, we will be there from 6am for set up so maybe drop by with a coffee – mine will be a cappuccino if possible.
We seem to have chosen the hottest days of the year to go to London in the last couple of weeks, although it was well worth while as it was to meet with British Cycling and Sky and discuss their involvement with cycling and where Wattbike fits into “the landscape”. Our meeting with Sky was related to the up and coming Skyrides and took place at their offices. I was officially quite excited to see what it would be like, but it was just another office building, with a few small changes – it is massive (not unexpected), the Simpsons can be found lounging on their sofa in the waiting area of reception – which I have to admit I did not notice straight away even though I was sat opposite them, and there are a few huge SKY HD ads painted onto the walls – you might come round a corner and be face to face with Spiderman! The meeting was very interesting and I know have more of an understanding of the Skyrides which should really engage people in cycling in the 5 cities (Manchester, London, Leicester, Glasgow and Hounslow). We were looking at providing a Wattbike experience stand at each of the events to provide people with the opportunity to have a go on a Wattbike and pit themselves against the best in the country.
The meeting with British Cycling was in less exciting circumstances, but was equally worthwile with us planning how we can help them to develop indoor cycling, to enable them to maintain the growth in people cycling all the way through the winter.
