KIDS GO FREE

How a grandfather in Newport set up his own kids’ bike charity from his back yard

- Jamie Darlow

Mike Jones’s garden in Newport looks like a second-hand bike shop. Hundreds of mountain bikes jostle for position alongside swings, peek out from behind shrubs and lean dangerously against the garden furniture. I spot an old Marin Mount Vision, a Raleigh Burner (replica, sadly), and Tim Gould’s old Peugeot from 1991 (yup, another replica).

Down at the bottom it’s even stranger – this is where bikes come to die. Hundreds more are clustered between the trees, some with components missing or snapped brake levers, most with a decade’s worth of rust and all in need of some love. There’s an old pump track down here too – the bikes look abandoned mid-lap like the fallout from an industrial accident.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t come down here,” Mike says with a grin. “None of these bikes are scrap, they’re all salvageable but they need a lot of work before they can go out again, and my grandkids’ pump track needs some work too.”

He’s not selling these bikes though, this is no business, instead they’re all destined for people who desperately need them but can’t afford the outlay – local kids without means, essential workers for the NHS, those with special educational needs, and individuals down on their luck. What started with one bike bought and salvaged for £2.50 has turned into one of South Wales’s biggest bike charity schemes.

“Everyone remembers having a bike as a kid, and the thought that there are kids out there without them just gets to people,” Mike says. “For me, having a bike was just as massive part of my childhood – building dodgy ramps in the street, jumping over your mates, that kind of stuff.”