Ride Leader Toolkit

Advice from Bob Tinley

We don’t have formal guidelines governing when a planned ride would be called off.

The people who ride with us are all sensible and make their own mind up. However, we do cancel rides from time to time when the wind is strong – say, 20mph if I’m forced to give a number.

Also, as we get older we try to avoid ice and hurting ourselves by falling off. I don’t go cycling when there is snow on the roads, always remembering that many of the lanes we use don’t have much traffic to clear the snow. Low temperatures are not a problem in themselves, but you can encounter black ice on north facing slopes. Some roads have “permanent” wet patches in the winter and they are a real hazard in low temperatures – I think most of our winter falling off episodes have occurred in that sort of situation.

In summary, whilst it’s difficult to give precise rules I will always support any leader who says they aren’t prepared to go ahead with their ride because of possible weather conditions. We’re dealing with a group of adults and the leader is essentially saying, “I’m not going out, but you can if you want”.

When it looks like it’s going to be inclement there’s usually a flurry of emails between the leaders and they usually come to the right decision – you can always refer to one of the old lags. Our current booking system makes it very easy to contact everyone on the ride to send out a cancellation on Saturday night. I can always send out a general notice through the Mail Chimp system used for the Bulletin. At an appropriate time I will remind everyone to keep an eye on their emails for an eleventh hour change.

Sometimes Mike Thomas has offered an alternative walk, so all is not lost.

The Cycling UK Website has a ‘Ride Leader Toolkit’ of useful information to assist and guide  Ride Leaders as to how they can perform their role.

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