Clyde Muirshiel
Supporting staff and visitors at Scotland's largest regional park to get on their bikes.
Scotland's largest park
Clyde Muirshiel is Scotland’s largest regional park and welcomes over 700,000 visitors a year to walk, run, cycle and enjoy its beautiful surroundings. The park started working to encourage staff and visitors to cycle to and within the park, using Cycling Scotland's Cycling Friendly programme to help them do this.
Supporting staff and visitors
David Hill is a Senior Instructor at the park and said that the Cycling Friendly Employer award was a very useful tool for Clyde Muirshiel to evaluate how they could support the staff who wanted to do more cycling but didn’t really feel the workplace was suitable to do it. He said “the assessment exercise is a good way to look at how you do things and explore what could be improved to help more staff feel they can and should be doing more cycling.” The park was awarded the Cycling Scotland Cycling Friendly Employer award in March 2015, and then, after working to support visitors to the park to cycle, the Cycling Friendly Community award in October 2017.
In the same year, Clyde Muirshiel was successful in securing a grant from the Cycling Friendly Employer Development Fund which it was used to create a drying room and install dedicated cycle parking for up to 60 bikes, where before there was virtually no provision.
David added “we have certainly seen an increase in the number of staff commuting and also cycling for fitness during breaks or with the cycling club after work which has been great to see. In addition to the staff benefits we have also had the extra bonus of improved facilities for anyone cycling to the centre, so the process has been very worthwhile for all sections of the cycling community in this area.”