Private Teaching Facility

TWO OVERARCHING GOALS OF BIKE CRAFT CREATOR, PAULA BEARSLEY ARE...

1) To enable anyone and everyone the opportunity to give the sport of mountain biking a go; and

2) For mountain biking to be a recognised as a mainstream sport of choice in schools, just like soccer or netball etc.

With this in mind, Paula started developing a purpose built mountain bike teaching facility in Hawkes Bay in 2021. The idea to build came about through the frustrations and hurdles Paula experienced when introducing new riders to the sport and when trying to find the right features/structures in existing parks to teach progressive skills on.

We do things differently at Bike Craft - we like to think outside the square and get creative and come up with new ways of doing things. A key objective is to remove barriers and enable more people to discover the enjoyment in this sport that we do, whilst providing value to our clients.

The 2 biggest issues we wanted to address were:

1) Having to climb big hills or cycle long distances

...to find the one feature that we wanted to focus on for our skills sessions - we want to give our riders quality time on the bike in our sessions and not spend 50% or more of the time just cycling to a specific feature along a trail to learn on. This is really important when we have very young riders (5 years+) with little legs and not particularly well geared bikes, or riders that are not everyday bike fit but are eager to give the sport a go but find the demands of climbing the hills and trails all a little bit daunting.

2) The need for progressive features to learn on

...so that riders can perfect their technique on a feature and then progressively add an element of risk as their confidence and skill level builds.

So what we have come up with is a teaching area that caters for various levels of riding all within the one location. We have designed our features so that we can strip things right back and riders can focus on learning the correct technique of riding a feature or trail without
any 'fear' factor involved - we essentially silence that negative voice in a riders head that says...what if I dont make it? This approach is a game changer for a lot of people. Once a rider has perfected their technique we can then add gradual progression through enhanced features of the same kind, but that are slightly more challenging and start to tamper with your mindset.

In February 2023 Cyclone Gabrielle struck and caused many slips in the park and rendered it inaccessible for 7 months! As access, time, manpower, and funding permits we are slowly rebuilding and plan to be able to have enough features and tracks back in place to start using the area in Summer 2025.

REGENERATION TO NATIVES TREES & PLANTS:

We plan to regenerate the area back into native trees, with the first gulley being planted in August 2022. Many thanks to Bearsley Group for sponsoring 500 trees to kickstart this ongoing project.

Our vision is big - this teaching area is just the start of much more to come!

This facility is all self-funded and a labour of love for Bike Craft creator, Paula Bearsley. The plan is to enhance and extend the facility to enable us to provide more opportunities for youth to take up the sport, and to further cater for new comers who would love to learn this craft or refresh and refine their skills.

If any like-minded people/businesses would like to share in Bike Craft's vision, we would love to hear from you. We have a few tracks and features that would look great with sponsors names on them!