Our first port of call on our visit to Girvan began at the Biosphere Bike Shop where we were met by Project Officer and Founder. Our reasons for setting up a visit with Biosphere Bikes was to find out how they used cycling activities as a tool to engage with their community, how they financially sustain the project their methods of engagement with disadvantaged groups and any challenges they had met and overcome. After a tour around the premises, we settled down to speak to the Project Officer who explained how the Biosphere Bike Shop came about, the services they run for the community, i.e. the elderly, young people’s volunteering and training opportunities and their methods of generating income through bike hire, bike sales, and bike repair services. After a lengthy discussion we were able to speak to the Founder who spoke in-depth about their day-to-day services, the work carried out by volunteers and their use of government training schemes to train disadvantaged members of their community offering them work experience, certificated training and the opportunity to improve their physical and mental wellbeing. TCA found the visit very informative and having the opportunity to meet with organisation gave us an insight into how we can use some of these working practices to contribute to the potential success of our Twechar Outdoor Pursuit Centre opening in the Spring of 2025.

From the Biosphere Bike Shop we headed down to the Community Garden where we were met by Jim and Julie. TCA have three community gardens within the village, and we were interested to find out how we could turn these working gardens into a community space where the community can use the garden as a social space where events can be held and thus increase the communities engagement outdoors and maximise the use of the gardens. Jim and Julie were excellent hosts, and we had a good discussion on delivering workshops, hosting community events and using the garden for elderly people to meet up with neighbours and friends and enjoy it as a social activity.

After lunch we arrived at the Girvan Tourist Information Point meeting up with the volunteers who run the Centre. Our wish to visit this Centre was a fact finding visit to see how it operated and the role the volunteers played. East Dunbartonshire has never been geared up to promote itself to tourists despite it being the starting point of the West Highland Way, its long-documented association with Roman settlements and the historic Forth and Clyde Canal running through the region. With our new Twechar Outdoor Pursuit Centre opening in Spring 2025 and the influx of visitors coming into Twechar we were keen to learn how the Information point generated income, how we go about sourcing tourist information and the methods they use to promote tourism and the work involved in running a small scale tourist information point.

Learning Outcomes

• Information Centre To find out how they operate their tourist information centre on a voluntary basis and where do they get all their information flyers knowledge from ?
• Bike hire for all abilities, To find out what hiring systems they use to mange the bike hire ,costs of bike hire, insurances needed bike servicing and repairs, Level of qualification needed for in house mechanic and storage and security.
• Community garden, What social events they run, licenses needed ,health and safety for cooking on site etc

"The exchange gave us an informative insight into how TCA can maximise the potential use of its existing outdoor community spaces to increase its engagement with the community, how to financially sustain its active travel activities and expand its community learning and volunteering programme and we were able to gather information on the setting up and promotion of a sustainable small scale tourist information point."