A man says he has been “humbled” by the support he received for his idea to fix-up bikes and donate them to an East Lancs charity.
David Brown, 62, spends a lot of his spare time out cycling and has always been handy with bikes, managing to do his own repairs and maintenance.
With many people receiving new bikes for Christmas, he thought there would be plenty of old bikes that people no longer need taking up space in their homes.
He put out social media posts to say he could take the unwanted bikes off people’s hands, fix them up and then they would be donated to the Secret Santa charity in Blackburn.
David, from Whalley but now living in Feniscowles, Blackburn, originally thought he’d just get a few bikes to work on, but he has been left delighted with the huge response.
He said: “It’s certainly more than I would have expected. I’ve been quite humbled really.
"I thought I’d get a handful of pretty shoddy bikes and it would take me ages to do them.
“I’ve been humbled by the generosity of people, and those who haven’t donated but have seen the posts and have been happy to comment saying well done.
“I’ve had some lovely comments from people which is really nice – not that I’ve done it for that but it’s always nice to get some appreciation.”
David said the idea came about around Christmas after he had seen news reports about charities looking to provide bikes for low-income families, and he felt as though he had the skills to help out.
He said: “I do a lot of cycling, I try to do my own repairs. I thought no more of it then there was a feature in the paper about the Secret Santa charity in Blackburn.
“I thought I should put an enquiry out there on the Facebook group saying if anyone has any old bikes, rather than take them to the tip or dispose of them in any other way, I’m happy to collect them, service them, refurbish them and donate them to the charity.
“Within a couple of days of putting the enquiry out I got something like 28 bikes promised, all in various degrees of condition.
"I spent two days filling my car up and bringing them back home and sifting through them.
“I took nine to the charity shop on Thursday morning, I’ve got probably another nine in the garage and I’m collecting four more today.”
David has had so much interest in his work that he has had to stop taking new bikes in for the time being, but he says he is happy to help as it thinks it is doing a lot of good for the community.
He said: “I’m going to halt it for a few weeks so I can catch up. The outpouring of generosity has been incredible.
“At one point I had to say we’ve been overwhelmed, we can’t take any more in at the moment.
"As I’ve got rid of a few people have now seen posts about going to the charity shop and said they’ve got a couple I can collect or they can drop off.
“It seemed a nice thing to do. I’ve got quite a bit of spare time, we’ve got a reasonable-sized garage, and I’ve got a bit of competence around bikes.
“I think it’s good for the community and also people gave got a bit of a buzz from it. It’s obviously sparked quite a bit of interest and hopefully it’s raised a bit of interest for the charity too and the good work they do.”
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