Brentwood Preparatory School Incipe 2017-18

Brentwood School Preparatory 83 Bikeability Year 6 have been on some bike rides with an incredible Bikeability team. These instructors’ names are Chris, Mandy and Kerry, all helped by Mrs Peacock. At first, to check we were all safe on the road, we rode our bikes around the netball pitch. Once we had proved to the instructors that we were safe to ride on the road, we learnt how to turn at a junction properly. Then we went out onto the roads. We learnt the correct road positions with the best way of remembering them. They were: sharing caring (also called secondary), hogging (also called primary), and super hogging. Sharing caring meant about an arms length from the edge of the pavement, hogging meant at the middle of your lane and super hogging meant almost in the middle of the road but just slightly to the left. As you can tell we had some super fun bike rides and we learnt a lot. Years later we are still cycling! ‘Cycling Proficiency’ has now been renamed Bikeability; the main difference between this and the old scheme is that the instructors are all trained to the National Standards and, after a session in the playground, ride with the children on local roads. Our instructors, Chris, Kerry and Mandy, were fantastic - fun, enthusiastic and able to mend a stuck gear or loose chain in seconds! Level 1 of the course ensures the children can ride in a straight line whilst looking behind them, and riding with one hand. The children can then progress to the road training part of the course to try to achieve their Level 2 certificate.. The course aims to develop the children’s confidence to cope with cycling in traffic with the minimum risk, and gives the children a basic level of cycling competence and useful knowledge of the rules of the road. The Year 6 children thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of Bikeability and were very proud of their achievements, despite not being able to walk or sit down for days afterwards! Congratulations to Austin Measday who took part in a charity bike ride raising funds for the J’s Hospice, he writes: “On Sunday 15th April I cycled 36 miles around Essex in support of the J’s Hospice, which took nearly four hours of pedalling and five hours including lunch and espresso stops (for Daddy!). The route was through the countryside, and had lots of marshals to show us the way. Lots of other riders cheered me on, and one called me “inspirational” which helped me keep going. I am going to continue cycling and plan to invest in a proper road bike so that I can be as fast as Daddy! Thank you very much for your extremely generous support. With your help, I have raised £2,700 and the ladies at the J’s Hospice told me they are very, very grateful indeed. They interviewed me at the finish for their Facebook page”. Well done Austin, we are all very proud of you.