June 10, 2024

On Saturday 1 June, Travel Actively Barrow staff, Clare and Siona, were invited to attend Barrow’s Big lunch, an event designed to showcase everything Barrow has to offer, from activities to volunteering.

Westmorland and Furness Council, alongside many more organisations, including Cumbria CVS, Furness For You and Youth Ability Services, teamed up for the event, which took place at Walney Community Centre.

The event was supported by the Know Your Neighbourhood fund, which helps people experiencing loneliness and isolation, and also saw the opening of the brand new Community Garden. One of the highlights of the day had to be the presentation to some of the wonderful volunteers, for all of the hard work they do to support organisations with events and projects.

Travel Actively Barrow are building a workforce of walk leaders, bike leaders, event support and bike maintenance volunteers, so this was an ideal opportunity for us to thank, in particular, our bike maintenance crew, who have dedicated every Friday since December 2023 to fix bikes in Barrow Indoor Market. The group of men and women, all trained up as part of the Travel Actively project, have fixed over 100 bikes and repurposed over 20, which would have ordinarily gone to landfill. This has allowed us to support people to use cycling as a way to travel around safely for those shorter, everyday journeys, such as people going to work, accessing school or college or to simply to travel to the shops and for appointments.

Thank you to the organisers for inviting Travel Actively Barrow to attend this successful event, and to our volunteers supporting the project. We could not do this without you!

If you would like to join the Travel Actively Barrow volunteer workforce, and receive free training, equipment and support to develop your skills and knowledge, please contact Siona and Clare at TravelActively@cumberland.gov.uk