Biketober

For the School Holiday Skill sessions, we prefer that you bring your own bike and helmet. However, we'll have a limited number available for learner riders.

For the Community Rides, you'll need to bring a bike and a helmet. Please ensure all bikes and helmets brought to sessions and rides are in good working order.

Yes, our holiday skills sessions are designed for all types of riders, but some capacity may be reduced if we have learners. If you'd like to bring tamariki (children) to our community rides, they'll need to be in a suitable bike seat or trailer. As our community rides will use a variety of paths and roads, we would prefer not to have children riding their own bikes, unless they are confident riding within the road space.

We also have a community ride event just for families, where we welcome all ability of riders including those on balance bikes. Our family ride will be about 3.2km with a mid-point break so please ensure tamariki (children) are able to cover this distance.

There is no cost to attend any of our holiday programmes or community rides.

Yes, please indicate they are a novice/learner rider at the time of booking, and we will ensure one of our expert cycle instructors are able to support and encourage their participation within the session. We often find children progress quickly during these sessions, building confidence, and capability to ride independently when they’ve previously struggled at home.

We'd prefer not to use bikes with stabilisers/training wheels. Instead, we can offer one of our bikes which are ideal for learner riders. We find the progression of new riders who learn without stabilisers/training wheels much faster and it promotes greater control and balance, leading to better, stronger, and more confident riders.

We ask you to register in advance – this ensures we have appropriate staff-to-participant ratios and we can provide further details to all registered participants in advance of their selected session. This will include parental consent forms for the school holiday programmes which must be returned prior or at the start of your session.

We unfortunately cannot accommodate on-the day participants, with bookings closing 24 hours prior to the session commencing.

Generally, we will aim to go ahead with all planned sessions irrespective of weather. In the event of a severe weather event (e.g. cyclone, prolonged heavy rainstorm, etc) where the risk to staff, participants, and the public is assessed as being unsafe to conduct the activity, then we will unfortunately have to cancel or postpone the scheduled session/ride. For School Holiday Skill Sessions, in the event a planned session is shortened due to unforeseen circumstances, we will ensure contact is made with parent/caregiver and collection arrangements are made as required.

We aim to advise of any cancellations or postponements 24 hours prior to the scheduled start time. Please ensure you have provided the correct phone/email details as these will be our primary communication method.

Things change and sometimes it is last minute – please send an email to cycling@hcc.govt.nz at the earliest opportunity as we may have a waitlist of people wanting to attend and we’ll be able to offer your slot to another participant.

The earlier the better. There may be high demand for some sessions especially during the school holiday period and we have limited spaces to meet with instructor to participant ratios.

Children could bring a scooter for the Community Family-Friendly Ride, but for our regular community rides we require all participants to be riding bikes as there may be occasions where we must ride on the road and our instructors have to maintain group safety at all times.

No, we would prefer not to have any dogs attending the community rides. If your dog is a registered service dog, then please email cycling@hcc.govt.nz to discuss how we can best support your requirements, ensuring the safety of all participants including the service animal.

All registered participants will receive pre-event information that detail meeting places, equipment to bring, and a rough outline of your selected session. This will be emailed to the address provided at time of booking. If you have not received any information 24 hours prior to the start of your booked session, please email cycling@hcc.govt.nz.

Absolutely, our routes and locations have been selected to allow all confidence and competency levels to attend. We understand everyone has different confidence and competency threshold levels when riding their bike and we aim to support all riders’ participation. Rides will use safe cycle pathways as much as possible with any on-road sections being carefully managed by experienced instructors and leaders. We have limited participant numbers on all rides to ensure our instructors can support all participants with helpful hints and tips especially those who are a little nervous/anxious.

If you have any specific concerns, please email cycling@hcc.govt.nz to discuss these with the instructor team.