A national project called the Big Bike Revival that encourages people to cycle for every day journeys is coming to Inverness.
The award-winning programme developed by Cycling UK is funded by Transport Scotland and literally aims to get people on their bikes.
The Highland Council and Velocity Café and Workshop have again been awarded Big Bike Revival funding to deliver activities in the local community.
Events include free workshops and Dr Bike sessions where a mechanic undertakes safety checks, basic repairs, diagnosis of bigger problems and offers safer travel advice.
They operate on a first come first serve basis with Dr Bike proving particularly good for checking bikes that get limited use.
The two maintenance and repair workshops at Velocity are also funded as part of the programme and both are now fully booked.
The aim of the Big Bike Revival is to help people across the country start using their bikes.
By providing maintenance checks, sharing knowhow while giving people more confidence it hopes get more people in the saddle.
The Big Bike Revival aims to get thousands of people to ditch short car journeys and instead hop on their bike.
In 2018, Big Bike Revival activities in Scotland enabled 2,656 bikes to be fixed and brought back into regular use and it helped replace 18,792 car trips by cycling.
The Scottish Government wants to see 10% of every day journeys done by cycle by 2020.
Councillor Allan Henderson said: “I am grateful to Cycling UK for the funding which has again supported this collaboration between our Climate Change Team and Velocity to host a range of Big Bike Revival events in Inverness.
“These events, coupled with the upcoming rollout of a pool bike pilot in August, demonstrate that the Council supports the Scottish Government’s target of one in ten journeys to be made by bicycle by 2020.”
