Hi. For anyone who’s ridden with the club you’ll know that a key part of the experience is the post-ride cuppa & chat in the hall. We’re not the only people who use the hall and we’ve been asked to do our bit to keep it clean and tidy for other guests at the sports club (especially important as we go into autumn & winter). I know we already do our bit to tidy up afterwards but there are some specific things we need to do or stop doing, namely…
- Muddy bikes & gear which aren’t stored in cars after a ride (eg. for riders who cycled to the hall) can be left in the “cellar corridor” which is located at the bottom of the main staircase inside the hall
- No bikes, muddy/wet shoes, clothing and backpacks in the main hall or in the seating area – use the inside of your jacket or some cardboard (from the cellar corridor) to keep the seating area clean
- If there is any dirt brought into the hall it must be swept/wiped up before we leave; this can be done while the tea stuff is being put away
- Continue to clean up after ourselves in the kitchen, like we do each week.
- Suggestion: If you take the train up and need a change of clothes/spare jacket for after the ride then I’m sure a fellow club member won’t mind you keeping your kit in a car while we’re riding.
We’ve asked the sports club to make sure they have brushes etc available for us to use to tidy up. We’ll also report back to the sports club if we find the hall left in a mess when we arrive. The hall gets cleaned on a Wednesday afternoon so we need to do our bit to make sure it’s still in a good state come Thursday morning for the kids clubs. It’s not much to ask and just part of being good tenants at the hall.
The Cellar corridor – I take it that’s not the main quarry tiled foyer area ? In which case, how big is it and how many bikes can easily go there ?
Hi Iain – no it’s not the main, quarry tiled entrance hall area, it’s just off that – at the bottom of the stairs, behind a white door. They’ve cleared out the space so it looks like it’ll take quite a few bikes & backpacks now. There’s a light for the space too – it’s the left-hand switch of the 3 on the wall near the white door.
I’m aware of some comments about this on FB. The hall fee we pay probably does go to cover cleaning in some shape or form but that’s not anything we have any sight of or say over – it’s up to the sports club how they use our hall fee. Maybe the best solution is for the cleaner to come in on Thursday mornings rather than Wednesday afternoons. I’ll raise this with the sports club.
As mentioned above, the cellar corridor is more than suitable for temporary storage of bikes, we don’t often have >6 bikes in the hall anyway so there’s plenty of space. Most people seem to drive straight to the hall after work and most of them put their bikes into their cars after the rides anyway so the number of bikes going in the cellar is limited.
Re: dirty gear/clothing in the hall – if you drive up to the club then you’ll have space to pack spare shorts, socks and dry shoes and it takes just a few minutes to remove/swap outer layers – you don’t need to get fully changed unless you want to. Would you get into your car/van caked in mud? If you can’t pack spare gear then knock off the worst of the mud and turn your jacket inside out to sit on and we’ll just have to sweep up any dirt that’s left while we’re washing the mugs.
I realise it’s a change to how we may have used the hall previously but in the grand scheme of things I really don’t see this as being a major inconvenience.