The Abingdon Freewheeling Cycle Festival took place today, on a cool Sunday in April. There was a road closure, on High Street, to allow more stalls than ever before.
Cycle rides, free for everyone, were setting off from Abingdon Market Place at regular intervals from 9am to 1:30pm – with about thirty rides in total. They ranged from 5 mile family rides …
to 40 mile fast rides, or 50 mile off road orienteering courses.
The last ride was a 10-15 mile Retro Fun Ride.
New this year was a Shoretrax woodern track for the BMXers and Mountain Bikers.
The Abingdon-on-Thames Town Crier was both Master of Ceremonies – calling riders to order at the start of rides, and festival mascot – he appears on the cycle festival leaflets and fliers.
There were many cycle related stalls, food wagons, live groups playing music, and massages.
What a fantastic event!
Has anyone else noticed how many comments nice, wholesome articles on this blog get, compared to the dozens of comments less ‘fluffy’ articles generate?
Abingdon is really good at hosting this kind of big community event and everyone who attends has a great time.
As Daniel says above, it would be lovely if everyone popped over here and shared how great it was 🙂
Sadly( being a keen cyclist) I missed it.
Once again the Abingdon Cycling festival proved to be a great success, including a huge turn out of riders for each of the routes organised. Well done to all of the team who put this event on.
I thought the road closure worked well, providing additional space for stalls and ride start points. Wouldn’t it be great if the entire one way system could be temporarily closed to allow for a short criterium race to take place, but I fear this would be a road closure too much for the residents of Abingdon… It always amazes me how towns in France shut their roads at the drop of a hat, but not so over here.
Finally, it’s also great to see how diverse Abingdon’s market place can be…ATOM festival, Cycling, the town talent competition, in addition to the varied markets that are scheduled there…A great public space.
I agree with Mike and Rachel. It is also important to note that many of the events (Cycling Festival, Heritage Weekend, Atom, Splash of Pink etc) are mainly organised by volunteers from community groups, but with help and support from the Town Council officers. A different form of “public-private partnership” but it works!