A recent funding boost has allowed for significant improvements to be made to the provision of sustainable cycling across the city.

Adventure Aberdeen, part of local charity Sport Aberdeen, the city’s award winning community leisure trust, has received a total of £38,000 from Cycling Scotland and Aberdeen City Council, to promote cycling to schools, community groups and local businesses.

£18,000 has been awarded by Aberdeen City Council through the Civitas Portis Transportation Project and the Smarter Choices, Smarter Places fund, to make sure every 11 year old in the city can ride a bike.

Working with schools and young people across the North East, Adventure Aberdeen has noticed children in almost every p7 year group who don’t have the key skill for life. This project is designed to ensure that active travel and healthy lifestyles are made even more accessible for everybody across the city and that nobody needs to leave primary school without being able to ride.

In addition to this, £20,000 was awarded to Adventure Aberdeen by Cycling Scotland to facilitate the coordination of the Bikeability Scotland cycle training programme, which is designed to give children the skills and confidence they need to cycle safely on the roads as well as encouraging them to continue cycling into adulthood.

In addition to the funding from Cycling Scotland, Adventure Aberdeen received a further The Civitas Portis Transportation Project is a four year £3.2 million project led by Aberdeen City Council that tests innovative and sustainable urban mobility solutions in five European port cities; Aberdeen, Antwerp, Trieste, Constanta and Klaipeda.

Commenting on the recent funding, Sport Aberdeen’s Director of Healthy and Active Communities, Keith Gerrard, said:

“We are delighted to have secured this funding from Cycling Scotland and Aberdeen City Council. Sport Aberdeen is committed to creating opportunities, inspiring people and changing lives and getting children out and on their bikes from an early age is so important to ensure that this practice carries into their adult lives and helps move Aberdeen towards being the most active city in Scotland.”

Many schools across the city struggle to deliver regular Bikeability sessions due to staff shortages or teachers unable to give up class time. The money received from Cycling Scotland will be used to run Cycle Training Assistant (CTA) courses which will enable volunteers to deliver Bikeability Levels 1 and 2 in schools citywide and will combat these issues.