How to be a good ally
There is so much more I could say about this, but here's one good piece of advice
Hello friends,
I hope you’ve been well since I was last in touch. My week has been one of speaking engagements, of train journeys and bike rides, of late nights and hotel breakfasts, and of conversations with all sorts of interesting people, in various parts of the country.
And I recorded and edited the first audio chapter of What Goes Around, which I’ll be serialising via this newsletter for the next year. Paid subscribers can find it below the paywall.
Last night I was in Otley – and thank you to everyone who came along, especially the several people who came up afterwards and told me they had lived or travelled in Pakistan back in the 1980s. (There’s been a lot of interest in the trip that Moin and I announced a couple of weeks ago, and we’re still offering our earlybird discount of $500.)
Tonight Duncan and I are in Lincoln – a town I’ve never visited before, so if you have any recommendations for places I could go and see on tomorrow morning’s run, please let me know.
And last week I spent a night in Gloucestershire, near the Welsh border, for a Forestry England conference at which I was the keynote speaker. I was delighted to see a few friends were also on the programme: Hannah Reynolds (whose book, Britain’s Best Bike Ride, launches in Kendal this Wednesday), and Sue and Nic from the New Forest Off Road Club, who were there to share their success story. As they spoke about how the club came together, and the work they had put in to make sure it was genuinely welcoming to all, I could sense everyone else in the room sitting up, paying attention, and thinking “OK, how can we replicate this?”
I had heard NFORC’s origin story a couple of times before (and I mentioned it briefly in one of last summer’s newsletters), but this time something different stood out for me. Nic told us about getting into cycling during lockdown, and going to her local bike shop – The Woods Cyclery in Lyndhurst – to ask where she could find a group of women to ride off-road with.
Tom, the co-owner of the shop, was at a loss. He couldn’t think of a group to recommend, so instead he suggested that Nic start her own. She wasn’t keen on the idea at first, but he gently persisted, talking her round over the next couple of months. Then, he set up a WhatsApp group for her and five other women he knew, sent them a route, and promised them free coffees at the shop when they finished their ride.
That was the first outing of the New Forest Off Road Club, and since then they have gone from strength to strength – leading hundreds of rides, training mechanics and ride leaders, and providing a visible and viable alternative to the traditional lycra-clad, male-dominated cycling club.
And if ever anyone asks me how they can be a better ally to women, or any other minoritized group in the cycling world, I’m going to tell them to be more like Tom.
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