Proud Owners of a Trishaw

One day the residents at Roselea were reminiscing about their bikes when they were younger and one of the residents told us how free she felt going out on her bike and always loved speaking to the people of her community.

Our fabulous wellbeing team had heard about Cycling Without Age Scotland and investigated this further. We were very keen to try out the trishaw with our residents and found there was one available at Stirling we thought we could access this for our residents but it became a lot harder than we expected.

So, we thought we would investigate trying to purchase one for ourselves for our amazing VIPs here at Roselea Court Care Home in Stirling. Our first initial contact was away back in January to the cycling without age headquarters, then having a meet & greet with Christine who kindly came to give us a chat and a trial ride out in the tri shaw, Christine and her team, kindly took our VIPs and family members “oot a wee hurl” and when they came back they could not wait to share their excitement with us.

So, after this “wee hurl oot” we decided we were definitely having a trishaw of our own. We arranged numerous fundraising events from our ‘spooky’ nights to football cards and abseil off the Falkirk wheel.

We had so much support from families and friends of Roselea which was very much appreciated. We made a target board for everyone to see at our front entrance how our fundraising was going and each month we achieved a milestone and within six months we raised £9000, which was enough to buy our new hot wheels and our storage area for it to be parked up at night.

We now have our new addition Lilibet Rose at Roselea Court.

We also have had eight staff members completing their pilot training this month and are now out and about on Lilibet Rose to gain experience. We will all be signed off as competent Trishaw Pilots by the end of October.

We also have four volunteers from the community who have signed up as pilots with Cycling Without Age Scotland and have kindly joined forces with Roselea to become our experienced Pilots.

We can not wait to feel the fresh air and to go out and about in our community to share memories of cycling and what cycling means to each of us.

We all agree that cycling is about freedom, joy, and adventure, which can be hard to come by if you are in a nursing home. It has been proven that to understand that freedom is what most people associate with cycling. From their first bike as a child, to their first solo adventures in the Community and longer rides into cities and nature.

Our residents cannot wait to go out on a ride and we cannot wait to take them out.