Where we are and where we’re going – A word from HHVT chair, TIm McInnes
With 2020 now behind us and with more than 1,112 laps of the track in my legs after my all-in-one Festive 500 ride with Boru in late December I thought it would be a good opportunity to press pause and reflect on what the last year has thrown at us, perhaps prematurely given this most recent closure, what 2021 may have in store.
2020 and 2021 so far has been difficult for almost every Charity in the UK and for the Herne Hill Velodrome it has been no different. Since March we have been closed for around 5 months and for most of the rest of the time we have been running under partial-lockdown restrictions making life difficult for our staff, coaches, riders and financial situation as we are almost wholly reliant on track income to make the facility work. We were lucky enough to receive a Covid-19 grant from Sport England to help pay for some of our costs and the furlough scheme has also meant that we have been able to keep staff employed and our losses under control. Despite their own obvious difficulties, it has also been beneficial to secure the continued support of Exodus Travels, who have relaunched their sponsorship agreement with us to mark the third anniversary of our partnership. We have also been having some exciting conversations with them about how we can work together more closely in the future, including prizes for Track League in 2021, competitions to get more people riding down at Herne Hill and a new co-branded cycling holiday for our users. We’ll let you know more about all this in our next blog.
In the last year we have also welcomed two new faces to the Herne Hill Velodrome team, Iain Cook who is our new Cycling Manager (with responsibility for all cycling and cycling related activities) and Thea Smith who has joined as our Youth Development Officer. Iain is well known to many people at Herne Hill and it’s been a real bonus to get him back given the impact he’s made in such a short space of time and in such difficult circumstances. Thea has also hit the ground running and her appointment represents a big step forward in our work with The Rapha Foundation who announced their support for Herne Hill Velodrome only a few weeks before the lockdown started. More will be happening with the Foundation over the coming months so keep your eyes open and your ears peeled for new equipment, site improvements and more new riders dipping their toes into track or off-road riding at Herne Hill.
With the Festive 500 behind me I’m now starting to think about what 2021 has in store. As Herne Hill goes, I think we still have some challenging months ahead, but we are starting the new year solvent, with a great community of support behind us and with a healthy amount of momentum courtesy of the work the staff, the coaches and the Friends have been doing over the second half of the year. We are also bidding on some new funds to make some improvements to some well-used but unloved parts of the site and we hope to be able to say more about this in the coming months.
As for me, now my beard has fully thawed out, I’ve started to think back to this time last year when I was starting to get ready for the Atlas Mountain Race which took place in February just before the lockdown. Morocco is a great place to ride and if your wanderlust is starting to get the better of you, you can check out Exodus Travels’ own trip to the area here (though you’ll be glad to know it’s fully supported and, unlike the AMR, there’s no rough sleeping!). Their website also brought back memories for me of cycling in Colombia, which if you’ve not been is a truly amazing place to ride a bike (it’s a cliché I know but some of the climbs literally did take my breathe away) and Tuscany in 2019 on my first ever bike-packing adventure in Strade Bianchi territory. Tough riding should always be accompanied by an indulgent reward, and Italy never fails to disappoint!
After a late-December trip to Tenerife was cancelled courtesy of Tier 4 my diary is now pretty free, apart from a short trip to the Ardennes at Easter (which I’m not that optimistic about at the moment). So I think it’ll be local roads (and when the lockdown eases a bit, also Kent’s chilly lanes) for me for a while, and hopefully a bit of off-road now memories of me broken rib are in the fairly distant past. Fortunately, like the track, the mountains will always be there.
In the meantime there is plenty to keep us all busy at Herne Hill. My top priority for 2021 is to push awareness and to let more people know about what we do and the variety of activities taking place at the Velodrome. I know our site’s in a particularly affluent part of London but that’s not an excuse for not doing what we can to reach out and get as many people falling in love with a bike as possible.
