DYEMILL, Arran's Bike Park

Arran High School Mountain Bike Club are building, managing and maintaining an accessible, inclusive and safe, all-weather Bike Park. Inspiring Arran to cycle, the facility will encourage residents and visitors to engage in cycling in it's many forms. With this new facility our Island’s cycling community will benefit from being able to grow and develop local competition and event opportunities, in addition to providing a safe and accessible area for coaching and skills development. The Vision of the Project, is that through increasing and diversifying participation in cycling, our island's community experiences can reduce health inequalities, improve physical and mental health and well-being and reduce social isolation. In addition, it will contibute to the Island economy through an increase in cycling's impact on tourism.

This facility will provide an ideal area, within cycling distance of Arran High School, for pupils, young leaders and coaches to deliver mountain biking sessions safely. The link between physical activity, contact with the natural environment and improved mental and physical health is well established. To ensure the recreational area is utilised by as many of the community as possible, the Club will develop the site for family and school use, with outdoor learning opportunities, while improving the site's biodiversity, by planting indigenous trees and opening up areas for wildlife. The Arran Bee Group will maintain a beehive on site, with the intention of including it in nursery and primary school forest school sessions.

Key Elements of the Facility will include: progressive free to use mountain bike trails with blue, red and a jump line. An all-weather, multi-ability asphalt pump track (for bikes, skateboards, scooters and balance bikes) with floodlights. An accessible nature biodiversity pond, outdoor furniture, interpretation panels, accessible composting toilet, beehive, off-grid solar panels and batteries, public bike repair station, rainwater harvesting bike wash, free to use pump track bikes, community maintenance equipment and large open shelter adjacent to the pump track.

After a competitive tender process, the Award Winning CRC Trails have won the contract for the bike trails and have already started work. Velosolutions UK Ltd have also been awarded the preferred contractor status for the pump track. Both companies are arguably the best in their field and very highly regarded by Scottish Cycling and Developing Mountain Biking in Scotland.

To complete and enable the project to be open for all by Summer 2023 we need to raise an extra £10,000. Your contributions will be most gratefully accepted and allow another amazing asset to become available on our island.