Arran’s community volunteers and health workers have cycled an impressive 1000 miles since the start of the lockdown. Riding their Eco Savvy e-bikes they have been commuting to work, delivering prescriptions and helping Arran increase its supply of locally grown vegetables. The e-bikes while still fulfilling their original objective to reduce car miles on the island have been repurposed and assigned to Covid Volunteers and health workers.
The bikes allow them to get to work safely and build in a bit of exercise to their daily routines. While e-bikes take the sting out of hills you still have to push, if you don’t the bikes stop! With quiet roads and good weather, two of the key issues for cyclists, it’s never been better for cycling- as long as we stay within lockdown guidelines.
Riders delivering prescriptions for those self isolating in Corrie and Sannox have used the bikes to get to work at Lamlash Medical Centre as well as delivering prescriptions to our more vulnerable islanders on their days off.
On the food security front Simon Ross Gill has been working hard on improving our vegetable supplies and working with other volunteers to set up new community growing areas. Simon says, ‘the crisis has highlighted our dependence on imported food and the need to grow more of it on Arran’.
Health worker, Janette Head, at Arran Medical Group has been commuting to work on her e-bike and says ‘I’ve not used my car for weeks, the e-bike is very useful during the crisis. The one I have just bought is stuck in Glasgow due to the lockdown’.
Eco Savvy is delighted with the response to their e-bike initiative. Andrew Binnie, their Cycle Co-ordinator, has been working hard to make sure the bikes are serviced and safe during the crisis and says, ‘It’s fantastic to see the e-bikes being used for such a positive outcome in difficult times. At Eco Savvy we are trying to be as imaginative as possible during the lockdown with a Tuesday film night, online quizzes, reorganised Co-op food share and much more. We are engaging with our fellow islanders through social media and trying to help out where we can’.
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