A COMBINED effort from several organisations has resulted in the Troon Scouts Group building a new cycle facility.

At the beginning of February this year, the Scout Group were successful in their bid for funds of £3,000 from the ‘Decision Day’, which was used to fund their bike project.

It was officially opened on Wednesday, June 20 with a plaque on the front, referring to it as the ‘Bike Hütte’ - Hütte being the Scouts link to the International Scout Centre in Kandersteg Switzerland, where the group go every three years.

Craig Provan, the Assistant Scout Leader at Troon Scout Group, explained: “Through the scouting organisation in Troon, we ran a cycle award and we found that the kids didn’t really have good bikes and they hardly used them, so we turned it around and tried to get the kids out cycling – we went up to Lochearnhead where we hired really good quality mountain bikes.

“They came back absolutely enthused by the bikes – so I thought, lets get the funds so we have our own.

“Now we have eight good mountain bikes – the BikePost – they’re our sponsors and they supplied the bikes which cost next to nothing for us and during that process, the Troon Round Table heard about our cycle project and approached us – they gave us £2,500 and used it for the bike hut to be built.

“This is all in place now and we now want to celebrate it. Without the help from the BikePost and the Troon Round Table, we’d have nothing.”

Colin Fidler from the BikePost added: “The guys paid for the bikes, but we contributed to them as well – they will be bringing them back, so we can get them kitted out with bags for doing the Duke of Edinburgh and so on.

“We have done a few cycles with the group and Mark [Fidler] did a class with them and talked about the basic bike maintenance as well.

“We try and help them out where we can.”