Club History
Pre 2005
SCCC was founded by Jim Court in 1999, in response to SMBC’s Strategy for Cycling. The strategy identified the need for a Community Cycling Club to encourage residents to cycle and to provide an entry-level club for newcomers and returning cyclists.
The original emphasis was on youngsters between the ages of 7 and 16, adult newcomers and families with younger children, addressing a glaring gap in the cycling market. Most local cycling clubs would not take riders under the age of 12 and if they did, they insisted that parents went along. Also, they did not offer shorter rides that SCCC would provide. Many of the ideas for SCCC came from the Community Cycling Club based at Boggart Hole Clough in Manchester, which operated on similar lines, in a similar type of area.
SMBC provided facilities at the Lapwing Centre in Brinnington and the NHS funded the initial leader training and first aid training. Leaders became qualified as British Schools Cycling Association Off-road leaders.
The club engaged nearly 200 youngsters in regular cycling over several years. Highlights included an award from United Utilities for members to attend a Commonwealth Games cycling event at Manchester Velodrome in 2002; working with Stockport NHS PCT to set up a Healthy Living Centre in Reddish Vale, leading evening and weekend rides with adults; participation in British Cycling challenge events, staging local heats and producing several finalists, with one SCCC girl becoming a silver medallist.
Post 2005
By late 2004, the numbers of young riders had declined. In 2005, in response to numerous enquiries from families asking about shorter rides, Jim decided to relaunch SCCC as a club for families and adults. Since transport was also possible for families, Jim decided to explore new routes further afield, beyond our early base in Reddish Vale.
The rides programme began with fortnightly Saturday rides of around 15 miles. Rides soon became weekly when alternating Sunday rides of 30 to 40 miles were introduced. Later, 10 mile Wednesday evening summer rides were added to the programme.
In recognition of the success of SCCC, our founder Jim was awarded the CTC Volunteer of the Year award for the North West in 2008. Cycling UK (formerly CTC) now has a network of its own groups and affiliated community cycling clubs. Their popularity and success stems largely from the pioneering work done by Jim and the other early community cycling club founders.
With an expanding ride programme, membership continued to grow. In 2012, SCCC was the first cycling club to be awarded Stockport Sports Club of the Year, recognising our success in engaging the wider public in physical activity and raising funds for charity. It was a big achievement for a non-competitive club being compared with mainstream sports such as Athletics, Cricket and Football.
Since 2005, SCCC has held an Annual Club Weekend in September at different locations within a couple of hours travel, enabling us to explore new routes and enjoy more varied scenery and terrain. As fitness builds and friendships form, various club members band together to organise their own more ambitious day rides and longer tours. Over the years these groups have ridden many of our national end to end and coast to coast trails and some have ventured to cycle in Europe.
Sport Stockport has recognised Jim’s huge contribution to cycling, not only by founding and running SCCC but through his long involvement of competing, organising and judging regional, national and international cyclocross races over many decades. He received the Stanley Matthews Trophy as the Unsung Hero of Sport in Stockport in 2014.
Still keen to encourage families to ride, Jim introduced monthly Saturday afternoon shorter rides in 2015. In the same year, weekly Wednesday evening rides were proving so popular that a duplicate ride on Monday evening rides was added to the programme.
Over the years, partnerships have developed with local cycle traders. Woodsons Cycles provide an excellent service to club members, helping to keep us on the road. We regularly work with CERA Cycloan, a cycle workshop specialising in training young people to repair bikes and refurbishing cycles for both shop sales and donation. Projects have included running bike events and rides for local schools and events under Cycling UK’s Big Bike Revival initiative, aimed at encouraging more people to ride.
In 2018, the community engagement aspect of the club was advanced when SCCC took over running the weekly Cycling Activity part of the Physical Activity Referral in Stockport (PARiS) scheme from Life Leisure. Health professionals referred people who wanted healthy exercise by cycling in a safe, park environment. The scheme was moderately successful, with several people re-learning to ride, but it was forced to finish when COVID-19 struck.
COVID lockdowns stopped all group outdoor activities in March 2020, although eerily quiet roads led to an explosion of cycling for individual and later informal groups of up to six socially-distanced riders. Lockdown was eased, but ongoing restrictions meant that SCCC did not resume rides until April 2021.
Initially, weekly Saturday rides were limited to 10 riders plus leaders, but the renewed appetite for cycling meant demand for ride places was high. In May, we introduced a second Saturday ride starting an hour later. This was followed, in July 2021, by an increase to 13 places per ride plus leaders. September 2021 saw the restoration of our Club Weekend in Lancaster and the reintroduction of Sunday rides on alternate weeks to Saturday rides.
We steadily returned to a ‘new’ normal ride programme, but we chose to continue with limited ride places simply because it made the rides more manageable. Jim had tirelessly managed ride bookings by email, but in February 2022 we started to look at using the Spond App to help reduce Jim’s workload in managing the bookings.
On Sunday 6th March 2022, while cycling to meet other leaders for a ride recce, Jim, our friend, founder and remarkable leader, had a heart attack and passed away. The sad and shocking news left us reeling, but we knew that Jim would want us to continue to enjoy our cycling together. Since Jim had performed most of the club administration we needed a new Treasurer and Club Secretary and a more devolved system for running the club. The committee, ride leaders and club members were exceptionally supportive, which meant we have been able to take the club forward, with new committee members, additional ride leaders and many new members joining and booking on our regular rides using Spond.
We established a Memorial Ride for Jim in April 2023 and installed a Memorial Bench in Woodbank Park in December 2023. This is a meaningful location, as over the years, Jim had many cycling links with Woodbank Park: organising races, charity events and running the PARiS scheme there.
In 2025, SCCC will celebrate the 20th Anniversary since Jim relaunched the Club in its present format.
