This week is Bike Week, and we’re looking back on times when Cumbrians have taken to two wheels.


Taking place from June 10-16, the awareness-raising event is the UK’s biggest for cycling, organised by Cycling UK.
It’s a time to remind ourselves of all the positives that riding a bike can bring to our health and wellbeing, as well as the wider impacts on our communities and the planet.
This year, Cycling UK wants to celebrate cycling as a force for good.

It’s keen to encourage and enable more cycling to help people become happier, healthier, greener and more connected.
Our first picture is of the amazing Ian and Heather Thwaite from Wigton who, at 82, cycled all over Europe and the US on their trusty tandem.

If the effort exhausted them, it certainly doesn’t show.

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Above is Julie Blundell, fundraising manager for Hospice at Home Carlisle and North Lakeland at the 2016 launch of the annual C2C cycle event to raise funds for the charity.

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Fundraising was also the aim of the Team XIII cyclists but, unfortunately, their tyres were punctured.

Pictured left to right are Nick Jones, Luigi Woolaghan, Scott Carter and, front, Jill Woolaghan.

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Representatives of the insurance firm Flood Re showed their compassionate side by cycling from Land’s End to John O’Groats, visiting flood-hit areas along the way and stopping off at Tullie House in Carlisle to meet the mayor, Colin Stothard, and local councillors.

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Cyclists raised a glass at the West Lakes Cycling Festival's women only Puddings and Prosecco ride.

Rachael Law and Sharon Baillie are shown enjoying their fizz.

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The bike may have been stationary but it was an all-out effort at a charity cycle ride at Age UK Cumbria’s Cockermouth shop.

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Cyclists depend on local shops and pictures show two that have proved themselves invaluable. The first is 4 Play Cycles which, in 2016, had been in business for 15 years in Cockermouth.

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Levi Van Belzen, partner at Bike 7 in Longtown, is captured working on Richard Harris’s wooden road bike ahead of him tackling the C2C route.

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Our final picture is of the Tour of Britain going through Grasmere.