Should I Join A Cycling Club?
Most clubs will let you ride with them once or twice to try it out to see if you like it. If you decide to join a club, you should choose a club that’s closely aligned with your interests because anything less would be doing you a disservice, especially when there are so many clubs to choose from.
To find a cycling club, you have a few different options, which are listed below.
Visit the “Club Finder” section of British Cycling’s website. Once there you can filter your search to find a club within a certain radius, postcode, city, or region. Or, you can simply search for a club by name. Available information varies between clubs but there’s enough there to give you an idea of what the club is about.
Chat up the folks at your local bike shop to see if they have a club or if a club uses their shop as a departure point for club rides. Then ask to join one of the rides to try it out.
If any of your friends who also ride belong to a club, see if you can tag along on one of their club rides.
You could always start your own club if none of the existing clubs tempt you. It could be a club of your own design, with its own guidelines however, if your club starts to outgrow its grassroots origins, you may want formalise it and make it a legit club. British Cycling lays out how to do that in a section on “How to set up a club”.
