For our 2019 summer competition we’d like to know what inspired you to start getting around by bike – or how you inspired someone else to start.
There are brilliant prizes – vouchers/tickets for cafes, bike shops, entertainment; a Scotland rail trip for 2; and an amazing new prize of a £500 voucher towards purchase of a cargo bike!!
NOTE – closing date extended to end of the weekend, i.e. Sunday 1 September.
It need not be about how you first learned to cycle – we’d equally like to hear any (or all!) of the following…
- How you were inspired to start cycling
- How you were inspired to change from occasional cycling to using a bike for your everyday journeys
- How you inspired someone else to start cycling
- How you inspired someone else to change from occasional cycling to using a bike for their everyday journeys
To download full entry form (in various formats) see links below.
Inspiration might be a friend, or the unhealthy sedentariness of driving to work, seeing a new cycle route, persuasion by children, or maybe your parents showed you from the earliest age that this is the best way to get around; perhaps even it was something seen or heard from Spokes!
So, tell us what inspired your cycling life, or how you inspired others. You could win a great prize plus some modest fame – and maybe other people will too – we’ll publicise prizewinning ideas – your experience may inspire others!
You are welcome to say a bit more, like what the impact has been on your life.
This year, in addition to the usual great prizes from local businesses, we are offering (thanks to an anonymous donation) a fantastic new prize of a £500 voucher towards a cargo bike. See entry form for conditions.
Your entry must fit an A4 sheet, but apart from that it’s largely up to you. Words alone are fine, even just one superb sentence, but pictures, a diagram, etc often add value.
It’s easy to enter – but please carefully read our entry form, downloadable below, which has the full rules on it. Note that each person is allowed up to 2 entries.
As with all our competitions, entries will appear on our website and may be used in other ways, anonymous except for prizewinners, to provide new ideas and get more people using bikes more often.
Prizes include the great selection below. The top winner gets to choose their prize from the list, second chooses second, and so on.
- ScotRail: Return standard class ticket for 2 adults + 4 kids between any 2 Scottish stations
- Edinburgh Bike Coop: Edinburgh Bicycle £50 voucher
- Sustrans Scotland: Any 5 maps from ‘Pocket Cycle Map’ series
- Filmhouse: Tickets for 2
- Camera Obscura & World of Illusions: Family day ticket [2 prizes]
- Kalpna Indian Veg restaurant: £20 lunch-for-2 voucher
- Edinburgh Festival of Cycling: day hire of Urban Arrow cargo bike
- Laidback Bikes: Recumbent Edinburgh tour for up to 2 people
- Harts Cyclery: One week hire of e-bike
- Boardwalkbeachclub: £25 voucher
- Cafe Milk: Lunch voucher for 2
- Lanterne Rouge cafe [Gifford]: £10 voucher
- Spokes: £500 voucher towards a cargo-bike purchase. Conditions apply for this prize – see entry form for details.
Even if you don’t win a prize… near-miss runner-up entries will get to choose a free Spokes map.
HOW TO ENTER
For detailed rules, prizes, how to send in your entry, and other information, download the entry form – here in the formats shown…
Open Office pdf Word97
Please do read the rules carefully before entering.
The competition closes on Saturday 31 August. Each person is allowed a maximum of 2 entries, but no more than one prize per person.
Important – Your entry doesn’t need to refer to a place, but if it does then it should be in Edinburgh or the Lothians. If you’ve been to Copenhagen or Amsterdam, that may have inspired your cycling life, but it won’t count for our competition!
OTHER INFO
Spokes may use some or all entries on our website, in our Bulletin, or in other ways – by entering the competition you agree to this. For example, in 2015 we produced a booklet of prizewinning favourite rides and in 2018 the competition resulted in our factsheet Why E-Bike?
Judging will be by Spokes Resources Group in September, assisted by an outside expert.
For further fun and inspiration have a look at our competitions page which has the results of previous competitions, such as cycling jokes, cycling recipes, and how I’d spend £1m to get more people on bikes. Results of the 2019 competition will also appear on that page once the results are announced in September.
Please help publicise our competition by retweeting our competition tweet, or if you compose your own tweet use hashtag #SpokesComp.