Sue shares this latest news from the Re~Cycle Bikes for Africa charity. Ed
Off we go again! Eleven stalwart volunteers spent two hours yesterday afternoon loading bicycles on to one of Bartletts’ fleet of 7.5 Tonne trucks.
That sounds very innocuous, but if you had been in Cowes yesterday afternoon, you would have witnessed the hard work involved.
The bikes are trussed up with cable ties and have to brought down, ten at a time, in a lift. Then passing 140 bikes up into the back of a truck and stacking them two or three high, requires strength and stamina.
Local co ordinator, Sue Bailey, joked,
“I don’t think any of us will need to go to the gym today after all this exercise.”
Donated by Islanders
The bikes, all unwanted bicycles donated by people on the Island, were kindly stored for the charity.
Some had seen better days, but many will be perfect for the job they are going to, because all of them are on the first step of their journey to Africa.
Even those that are beyond repair won’t be wasted as they will be stripped down to salvage any usable spare parts.
Sue said,
“It was a bit of an early start as we, and the 140 bikes we have just packed in to the truck, were on the 4am Wightlink ferry.
“We are driving up to Colchester where the national headquarters of the charity Re~Cycle: Bikes to Africa, is situated.
“We won’t know, until we get there, exactly which part of Africa this consignment of bikes are likely to end up. We’ll let you know!”
Sue shared this update at the end of the day. Ed
We arrived at 8.15am in Colchester, to be greeted by two Re~Cycle workers, ready to help unload. Opening the back of the truck is always a ‘hold your breath moment’. Sometimes the bicycles shift during transit and it is hard to open the tailgate, and even when we have that open, unravelling the bikes can be like undoing a tangled kite string with chain sprockets, mudguards and cranks seemingly doing their best to interweave themselves.
The warehouse in Colchester where the bikes are prepared and stored prior to being packed into shipping containers, is exemplary in its organisation. Neat stacks of bikes stand in regimented rows ready to be loaded; there is shelving with individually labelled baskets containing stripped down components: brake levers, gear shifters, and saddle posts. Nothing is wasted- Every nook and cranny of a shipping container is filled with either bicycles or spare parts.
By 9am, the 130 bikes brought from the Isle of Wight were offloaded.
Many of these bikes will probably be sent to the Kaloko Trust in Zambia where they are used by adults and children to get to work or school. The Kaloko Trust is one of 7 partner organisations in Africa, with whom Re~Cycle works with their focus being ‘to advance education and promote healthcare in rural communities through improving access to schools, health clinics, and clean drinking water’.
In the last two years, we have taken eight truckloads of bicycles to Colchester. That is about 1200 bicycles – just from the Isle of Wight.
We are very grateful for the bicycles people donate. It’s mutually beneficial – people discover space they didn’t realise they had in their sheds/gardens and we can send bicycles where they are really appreciated. You might wonder how much it costs to store and transport all these bikes. Thanks to Bartletts who give us free use of a truck and Wightlink which gives us a free ferry crossing, it is just the price of the diesel (~£100) that we need to find.
If anyone has bicycles they no longer want, please contact Sue on 07837 601 315. For a small donation we can sometime collect bicycles.
Just ready for your clear out to make space for new bicycles that Fr Christmas might bring!
Article edit
1.30pm 20th Dec 2023 – Reference to Inner Spaces removed
