Don’t reinvent the wheel - repair it! 

London Cycling Club, a.k.a. Londra Bisiklet Kulubu, is a community cycling organisation based in Enfield. It offers cycle training sessions, bike rides and bike repair workshops to Enfield residents enabling them to access and maintain this all-important form of transport. 

The founder, Ozgur Korkmaz, cycled all the way from London to Istanbul in 46 days, and this passion for bikes is also clear in the way London Cycling Club is run. As well as the cycling workshops which allow residents, mostly women from the Turkish and Kurdish communities, to learn how to ride and maintain their bikes, London Cycling Club refurbishes bikes destined for the scrap heap and donates them to families in need.   

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One volunteer mechanic, Ergin Dursun, describes how “Enfield has a lot of bike lanes but not a lot of bikes on them”.   

This is an issue London Cycling Club is addressing through their refurbishment and donation scheme. The organisation receives bikes from residents who no longer need them and recently, North London Waste Authority has connected the organisation with a local recycling facility where they can collect bikes and save them from waste. In time, the Club hopes this will mean the Enfield bike lanes are full of families and residents.  

London Cycling Club’s work goes beyond preventing waste. The community that has been created as a result of these workshops is where the true success lies. 

Ergin describes the story of one attendee turned volunteer: “She started off bringing her two daughters, one of her daughters had health issues which basically meant that she couldn’t ride on a bike at all...she was determined and after weeks and weeks we finally got her riding a bike! She just stuck with us and now [the mother] comes and volunteers to help with the other kids.”  

Having local, bike-focused community groups can open London up to more residents, offering a more sustainable, healthier way of living for the future.