Latest News

Happy New Year to all our friends and clients at Alice Holt Inclusive Cycling! We hope that it is a good one for you all!

As with most things in life there is some good news and some bad news. I thought first of all I’d get the bad news out of the way first.

At our last Trustees meeting we reluctantly decided to increase our charge from £3.00 to £4.00 per person and amend the group minimum charge to £32.00 (based on a minimum number of 8 users), with effect from Thursday 12th February 2026 (the date when we re-open). As before there is no charge for carers,teachers and family members accompanying disabled folk. This decision was taken after a lot of discussion and soul searching amongst the Trustees.

This is the first time we have needed to increase our charge for over 6 years, but sadly we need to keep pace with inflation in order to invest in new cycles and maintain them. We are very conscious of the fact that some of you and the organisations you serve, are on challenging budgets, but for our charity to survive we need to be financially viable. For example, soon we are planning to buy another of our very popular ‘side-by-side’ adult tricycles, and to give you an idea of the cost of these a new Van Raam ‘Fun2Go’ costs nearly £6,000.

Moving on to the good news (of which there is a lot!), we are shortly to have two new 30 foot storage containers installed on site which will replace our existing old and leaking container, and will give us 50% more storage space for our cycles (and to save our long suffering volunteers from hanging bikes from ropes on the ceiling!). These two new containers are already at Alice Holt in the overflow carpark, and we are awaiting Forestry England to move them to our current site once the necessary ground work and foundations have been completed. We are hoping that this will be done in the coming weeks in time for our re-opening in February.

We are very lucky to have an enthusiastic and empathetic team of 15 volunteers, many of whose faces will be familiar to you. Several of our volunteers have great skills with regards to fixing bikes (some of which jobs can be quite tricky), but I won’t mention their names for fear of embarrassing them! We also have a very good relationship with a local repairer – (Leon at ‘Crank it Up’) who helps with jobs we can’t manage ourselves.

We also have an excellent relationship with our ‘landlords’ Forestry England, and have recently renewed both our tenancy permission and licence to operate (for which we are charged) for the coming year.

Lastly we have been fortunate in receiving donations from The Army Golf Club, Hart Road Runners and ‘Muc0ff’.

Our Annual General Meeting will be held on Thursday 22nd January 2026 at 10.00am in the Activity Centre at Alice Holt, and you are warmly invited to attend.

Howard Robinson 

Chairman

Alice Holt Inclusive Cycling

The arrangements for the next AHIC AGM! It will be held at 10am on Thursday 22nd of January 2026 in the Studio Room, in the Activity Centre, at Alice Holt Forest. You are welcome to attend and if you would like any subject to be formally added to the Agenda please us know through the AHIC WhatsApp page. Copies of the agenda and minutes of the last A.G.M. can also be obtained in the same way.

Our last open Thursday morning session this year will be on December the 11th, 2025.

We start the sessions again on Thursday the 12th of February 2026.

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all the Volunteers at AHIC

Our History

The beginning.

In 2002 the Cyclists Touring Club (CTC) as it was then, set up a “Cycling for All” Centre at Alice Holt Forest to facilitate and encourage adults and children with physical and or learning difficulties to be able to cycle in the safety of Alice Holt Forest. CTC, N.E. Hampshire District Council and English Heritage all contributed to the purchase of a fleet of adapted bicycles and the Forestry Commission provided a large container for storage. At the beginning CTC funded a paid full time cycling officer who was in charge of the cycling sessions and the promotion of the venue. At that time CTC asked for volunteers to help with the running of these sessions and that is when I (Peter Jeans) became involved.

Intermediate years

Over the following years it became obvious that there were not enough clients cycling to warrant the employment of a full time cycling officer. It was decided at that point to have open sessions on Thursday mornings and this would be supported by a CTC cycling officer and the two existing volunteers. This situation carried on for a few years during which there were a variety of cycling officers from CTC running the sessions. Eventually in 2013 CTC took a back seat and handed over the repair and financial control to Quench, the permanent bike hire company working at Alice Holt. This was an unsatisfactory partnership, poor relationship between our two volunteers and Quench. Repairs and up keep of our fleet were poor so the fleet of bikes slowly deteriorated. Then CTC involvement ceased in July 2014 leaving two volunteers to run the sessions. In July 2014 matters came to a head when both volunteers were ill and the wife of one of the volunteers had to come to the rescue. At this point an appeal was made to the local cycling communities for volunteers and over the next couple of months we recruited a happy band of volunteers to help running the sessions. In August 2014 we started to charge the clients £2.50, receipts were issued, attendances recorded and an accounts spreadsheet started for accounting purposes. The money raised was used to maintain the bikes, buy spares and stationery. At the same time a bank account as opened under the name of Alice Holt Inclusive Cycling to deal with the money and pay the bills. At some point at this time we were granted a large grant from one of our client’s family. This was used to buy some new adapted bicycles but through the CTC to avoid having to pay VAT. This was fraught with difficulties and bureaucracy which started the thought that we should become a registered charity in our own right.

All through this turbulent period the Forestry Commission were supportive and allowed us to continue free of charge.

In 2015 the sessions were up and running smoothly with average attendances of 12/13 per session, our bank balance was increasing and we could maintain the fleet of bicycles and obtain insurance. In March 2015 we had enough volunteers to start a Rota of attendance on Thursdays. In 2016 we started to hold pre-booked “Special Sessions” for groups on holiday in the local area on days other than Thursdays which proved to be very successful.

Current history

In early 2019 it was decided that we should apply to the Charity Commission and become registered as a Community Integrated Organisation and this was achieved in April. 6 Trustees were appointed and regular Trustee meetings and AGM scheduled. The management of Alice Holt Inclusive Cycling now became their remit. An account system was started, policies and procedures adopted to conform to the Charity Commissions reporting requirements. Having now become a registered charity we were able to attract several large grants of money and these enabled us to purchase new adapted bicycles to replace old and worn out ones,

Our client base has grown over the years, we now have regular “Special Sessions” in the summer holidays and several special schools attend regularly during the school term. We also provide cycling for the Dementia Friendly Alton group at weekends.

Communication with our clients and volunteers is achieved via WhatsApp groups, email and our Web site.

If you would like to see or have copies of our Complaints Procedure; Equal Opportunity Policy or our Safeguarding Policy please contact us by email and we will be pleased to send them to you.