What is Cycle Sense?
Cycle Sense is a social enterprise in Skibbereen, dedicated to promoting Cycling and ReUse. We offer a range of services:
- cycle skills and road safety training for all ages and abilities
- bike reuse and repair services,
- remixed paint sold as ‘Relove paint’
- advocate for active travel and waste reduction.
What is Cycle Sense’s vision and mission?
Our vision is to help create a fair, sustainable, liveable community by promoting active travel and a circular economy.
The mission of Cycle Sense is to encourage and support those trying to cycle and navigate busy roads. We aim to make cycling accessible and affordable.
Beyond cycling, the Cycle Sense workshop is about upskilling, education and creating a friendly and happy work environment. Anyone can use the community workshop to service their own bike or pick a bike from the store of salvaged bikes and rebuild it with the support of a mechanic. It’s a busy friendly environment where there is always time for a cuppa and a chat.
We’re all about community
The best bit about Cycle Sense is the team made up of instructors, volunteers, Tùs Workers and enthusiastic re-users! The collaboration and social aspect of the workshop is very important. We have a small garden too.
What does Cycle Sense do?
Cycle Sense is busy with many on-going projects.
- We provide a full time Cycle training service in schools during term time reaching approx a 1,000 students a year
- In 2024 nearly 100 unwanted bikes have been rebuilt in the ReUse workshop.
- In 2023 we collected 2300 kgs of paint and distributed approx 1500 litres of remixed Relove paint.
- We love being part of the weekly Skibbereen Cycle Bus. On Thursday 19th Sept over 40 school children and 6 adults cycled to the 4 National schools together!
When was Cycle Sense founded why?
Cycle Sense was co-founded by friends Katie Mann and Ruth Bullough in 2007. Katie had been running a cycle training course in Sherkin and Ruth was struggling to cycle her kids to school in Skibbereen, and so it was decided to collaborate and start the organisation.
Read more about Our Story.
What are your future plans and ambitions?
Looking ahead we’d love to develop a dedicated cycle track and training area at the workshop to help develop more bespoke courses for people. We’d like to build a fleet of diverse bikes for all abilities. We’d like to sell more paint and develop other reuse initiatives. Oh and blue sky thinking – we’d love to see infrastructure within Skibbereen providing safe connected routes for both the pedestrian and cyclist.
Are you looking for new members or volunteers? Can anyone join?
YES – Cycle Sense welcomes volunteers to support its projects. The organisation is community-driven and encourages people with a passion for reuse, cycling and hands-on work to get involved. Get in touch if you’d like to join in!
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