The Walkers Cycling Club Annual General Meeting will be held on Monday 27th October at the North West Area Centre, Western Road, Kilmarnock. 7.15 for a 7.30 pm start. All club members are requested to attend. Prospective members are also very welcome to attend.

Evening MTB Ride - Wednesdays

The club holds MTB rides on Wednesday evenings, starting from a variety of locations in the Ayrshire area. Rides usually assemble at 7.15 pm for a 7.30 start and are of around 1 to 1.5 hours in duration. The pace set will accommodate the slowest in the group - no one gets left behind. Details of the current week's ride can be found on the Organised Club Rides section in the Club Forum.

Evening Road Rides - Tuesdays & Wednesdays

Ladies' Road Rides

The ladies' rides will resume in spring 2009. Check back then for details.

SXC Series - 2008

Scottish Cycling/British Cycling Race Calendar

Leisure Cycling Events

West Highland Way in a Day

Six solo riders & three teams of two from Walkers Cycling Club lined up at Fort William at 5:30am in an attempt to cycle the whole of the West Highland Way in one day, in so doing, raising funds for the Ayrshire Hospice.

The whole event would see the cyclists ride over some of Scotland’s most rugged & beautiful scenery, involving 95 Miles of off-road biking, gaining 14,275 ft of hard earned climbing on the way. The group traveled to Fort William the night before & with early morning alarms set for 4 a.m., everybody knew it would be a tough day ahead. After checking bikes & equipment, the group headed out to their first checkpoint at Kinlochleven over some forestry roads & singletrack. The weather forecast had proved correct & although it was only 2C at the start, the sun was out & the first climb warmed all the cyclists up.

With good conditions, everybody kept the pace high & rolled into the checkpoints pretty much on schedule, with the hardest part of the day over the Devils Staircase & into Glencoe being achieved without one puncture – due mostly to everybody inflating their tyres to 40 PSI! Support crews were on hand at all the stops to make sure all the riders had plenty of food & water for the next sections of the challenge & after 8 hours cycling, the group stopped at Tyndrum for a 45 minute break for lunch.

After Tyndrum the group headed to Inveranan & the Drovers Inn, where they would leave the West Highland Way & ride to Inveruglass on the A82 & catch a ferry to the Inversnaid Hotel on the East bank of Loch Lomond. This allowed the riders to miss out the very top part of the route along the banks of Loch Lomond, which would have involved scrambling over some difficult rock sections, never mind lugging a bike as well. At this point the riders split into two groups for the ferry & the first group were in luck as their arrival at Inveruglass coincided with a ferry waiting to depart. The second group, only 20 minutes behind, suffered the agony of arriving to find the ferry would be tied up for an hour before it set off again to the Inversnaid Hotel, seriously denting their target of reaching Milngavie before the end of the day.

Both groups negotiated the remaining 37 Miles of track & road through Rowardennan, Balmaha & Drymen without major incident, although at this stage some tired legs were beginning to show – no wonder after 15 hours on the bike. Pretty soon the first group hit the outskirts of Glasgow & Mugdock Park, where a new lease of life saw them speed up & then kick off the party in Milngavie High Street at 9:45 p.m., some 16 and ¼ hours after the start at Fort William. After the initial elation, thoughts turned to the second group who were battling against the clock & dwindling daylight to make the finish on time. A big cheer went up, when just after 11:30 p.m., the lights of the second group came into view & some tired, but happy souls checked in to the finish on the High Street.

Plenty of people to thank for the event going so well, support crew of Andrea, Cathryn, Jane, Shelia & Hamish (Hamish was both support and rider – special mention to him!) and  Catherine for being there at all the stops to give encouragement & food, the boat crew at the Inversnaid Hotel for helping as much as they could, Walkers Cycling shop for the loan of their van for the weekend & finally all the club members for their brilliant effort on the day:-

Solo riders: Drew Thompson; Gavin Hanna; Peter Forsythe; Stuart McLean; David Belding & Martin Kuhn.

Pairs: Gavin Turnbull & Alex Craufurd; Russell Mowat & Gavin Young; Steven Lockhart & Scott Russell.

Some Pictures from the Ride:

 

See more images from the ride on our Flickr Gallery.