Donegal Bike Week was officially launched at Drumfad National School in Kerrykeel on Monday morning.
Speaking about the event, Louise Gallagher, who is Green-Schools coordinator at Drumfad National School, said that all of the school’s 34 pupils were involved.
“We have established a great partnership with Green-Schools and Donegal Sports Partnership. We are also working our way towards the active flag at the school, so it’s a great way of linking the programmes together,” she commented.
“We are currently working towards the Green-Schools travel flag and part of that whole initiative is to try and get our pupils travelling to school in renewable ways, or in ways that don’t involve everybody taking a single car. We started this flag in September but have been doing Green-Schools for a number of years. We are working towards trying to get out children cycling, walking or running to school.
“Part of that is looking at our local area and how can we make it safer for our children. This is a very rural spot in Donegal and it’s not always the safest. It was brilliant to have An Garda Siochana with us at the launch to promote bike safety and show us that our local area can be safe,” the Green-Schools coordinator added.
Drumfad NS Principal, Sara Narin, said: “Bike week is an excellent initiative that the children in the school have thoroughly enjoyed. With the help of Aengus Kennedy from the Green-Schools programme, Donegal Sports Partnership and some members of our local Garda Station, our children were able to safely cycle to and from our local beach, learning and practising vital road safety skills.”
Senior Green-Schools Travel Officer, Aengus Kennedy, who attended the event on Monday, noted that the An Taisce Green-Schools progamme was celebrating 25 years this year.
“Donegal schools were there at the very beginning, so Donegal schools have been pursuing these environmental awards and green flag awards for 25 years. The schools’ engagement is massive. Forty Donegal primary and secondary schools were awarded their green flags only last week. A new element to that is the safe route to school scheme. Donegal County Council has been working with us for many years on bringing infrastructure around schools. We look at speed limits, footpaths and all sorts of walking and cycling infrastructure to help make that journey active, safe and sustainable,” he commented.
“One of the many things we celebrate during the year is Bike Week. We’ve been participating in National Bike Week for the last number of years with the help of Donegal Sports Partnership who have provided us with grants. That grant support enabled a bike mechanic to come to Drumfad National School the day before the launch event, go through everyone’s bike and make sure they were serviced and roadworthy,” he added.
“All the pupils from Drumfad NS cycled down to the local beach in the company of local gardai and we all took part in a big clean-up of the beach, cycled back and had a little picnic. The big success of events like Monday’s is that it is local children cycling on their own local roads using bikes that have been fixed up, and doing what people used to do in the past and what we all should be able to do. Even though it was only a few kilometres, the children would not have cycled that distance before,” he said.
Pointing out that not every road is safe, Mr Kennedy continued: “In relation to a lot of our smaller rural Donegal roads, there’s no reason why people cannot be cycling on them once they have the appropriate training in place.
“There are some brilliant people in the Road Engineering Department of Donegal County Council who work as active travel officers. They have been working with us to try and make the front of the school safe, and the route to and from school safe while also looking at speeding and infrastructure.
“That was echoed by the Cathaoirleach of Donegal County Council, Cllr Liam Blaney at Monday’s launch. He had visited Drumfad National School a couple of weeks ago. The school had done its own walkability audit and had identified a few issues that they felt could make it safer for them. To me, it’s just democracy in action.
“So, they wrote letters to the county councillors, and credit to Liam Blaney, he read those letters, came out and visited the school and listened to the children. Now they are going to see what they can get done to help make it safer for everybody and the whole community,” he added.
Praising all involved with Monday’s event, Donegal Sports Partnership’s Community Sports Development Officer, Karen Guthrie, said: “I’d like to thank the Cathaoirleach of Donegal County Council, Cllr Liam Blaney, and Drumfad NS for helping us launch Bike Week here in Donegal.”
“The investment over the last 14 years has been significant in terms of creating and sustaining cycling opportunities for people of all ages and abilities. We are indebted to the cycling clubs, community groups and schools for continuing to provide those opportunities, year after year. These people have been huge leaders for us in terms of sport and physical activity,” she added.
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