Given the recommendations and actions taken to address the covid-19 pandemic I believe we now have no choice but to suspend rides and group meetings until further notice.

Cycling is still an excellent activity that is good for you. You could try one of the many routes on our website here, search for them here, or you could discover new routes of your own.

If you wish to contact other members remember that you can do this though the website. We would like to offer more advice on small informal rides but are unsure whether/how to do this. If anyone has any ideas/thoughts please let me know.

You can find informed Government advice here:

• Advice on social distancing
• General guidance

Please keep safe and hope to see you all back on the bike soon.

Joy Forrow
President, Portsmouth CTC

Update: Since publishing the above, we have received this advice from Cycling UK which is consistent with our position.

At the ride leader workshop in August we talked about running a further workshop to help ride leaders and members build confidence and independence in using GPS for planning routes and riding.

I believe that we have a lot of expertise within the Club that we could share but the workshop model may not be appropriate as there are many different systems and everyone will be at a different starting level. In order to take this forward could you e-mail me and tell me if you are interested, and what you would like help with. For example:

• how to plot a route
• finding and downloading routes – general
• as ride leader, adding GPS to website
• as ride leader, editing your ride on the website
• advice on choosing a GPS
• practical issues with using GPS
• common GPS problems
• other

We will need to know what system you are using. For example: Garmin or Phone.

For those who are already fluent with one or more systems, are you able/willing to help others and, again, on which devices, phones etc?

Once we know what help people want we can work out the best way to take this forward.

Thank you.

Paul Whitehead - a past President of Portsmouth CTC - passed the 300,000 mile mark on Sunday, 31^st March, while on tour in France.

He is now eligible to join the exclusive 300,000 Mile Club; something that only a handful of Portsmouth CTC members have achieved.

To put his achievement into context, that's over 12 times around the world - at the equator! Or a lot further than the distance to the moon!

Congratulations, Paul!

Josie Dew asked us if she could change the date of her club night presentation so we have swapped it with the Competition Night.

Josie's presentation will now take place on Thursday 14^th March and the Competition Night on Thursday 28^th March.

For those who don't know, Josie is a near-local and Vice President of Cycling UK. We know many of you are looking forward to hearing her speak so please make sure you mark the new date.

Andy Henderson
Secretary, Portsmouth CTC

As you may be aware we are very short of leaders for the Wednesday and Saturday Havant rides. For the current 3 month programme, initially only 4 people put their names down to lead rides. This not only puts pressure on those four but could ultimately threaten the rides. We are therefore looking for potential new leaders.

It might seem a big step, but it really isn’t, and to help with that, we’re arranging a workshop

The workshop is intended to introduce and discuss the various aspect of ride leadership.

All non-ride leaders who feel they could and would like to support the rides programme by becoming ride leaders are invited, as are existing active ride leaders. We plan to have a short ride to a café, where over coffee/tea/cake, we will hold the workshop, possibly on a Thursday morning in January (10th, 17th, or 24th). There would be no obligation to become a ride leader.

We need to settle a date, so please tell us what dates you can do and thereby we can maximise the numbers attending.

Regards

Robert Sebley
PCTC President