Bacon Butty in Return for Biking

It was all hands to the pump this morning, as many hundreds of school children biked in all the way from suburbs around Hastings, and were rewarded with a great breakfast.

Twenty kilograms of bacon, 30 loaves of bread, 300 half muffins, and a box each of apples and bananas cleaned up in no time, served up by volunteers, including Hastings District Council staff and councillors.

It was the annual Go by Bike Breakfast and about 1000 people, mostly children, headed from all points across the district into the city, from as far away as Havelock North and Flaxmere.

More than 200 of them came all the way in from Flaxmere, making the eight kilometre journey in about half an hour, led by Flaxmere councillor Henare O’Keefe. After a hearty breakfast and a play on a bouncy castle, they were back on their bikes to head back to school.

The Flaxmere children looked forward to their big bike trip every year, said Mr O’Keefe.

“And it’s one of the highlights of my year too, to be honest. The kids just love it - there’s so many happy smiling faces.”

The children’s road sense had improved vastly over the years, and Mr O’Keefe put that down to the Bikes in Schools programme which encouraged kids to get into cycling. Started in Hastings in 2010, the programme is now run by The Bike On New Zealand Charitable Trust in schools across New Zealand.

ENDS

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