Olympic medal winner to cut ribbon as Northamptonshire village's new pump track set to officially open

A new pump track is being officially opened in Kings Cliffe later this month.

The track is being officially opened from 10am to 10.15am on Saturday, September 16, at the KC Active sports and recreation complex.

Olympic BMX bronze medal winner Declan Brooks will at the opening of the pump track to cut the ribbon and do the first official ride. There will also be skateboard, scooter and bike instruction opportunities available on the day.

KC Active is a charity funded organisation in the village of Kings Cliffe.

The project was pitched to KC Active by a group of local mums who helped to generate a huge amount of interest and push the fundraising.

Simon Fairhall, chair of trustees at KC Active, said: “Back in November 2021 we in the charity were approached by a couple of parents who basically were saying they have to drive their kids on an hour round trip to Desborough, Godmanchester and further afield to find pump tracks because that’s what they want to do with their kids.

“[They asked] ‘would there be any chance of the charity building a pump track at our site?’ We said, we’ll look into it.”

That Christmas holiday, KC Active set up a portable pump track for the day to gauge interest.

Simon said: “We had about 35 to 40 kids from the village get involved, had fun for the day and we asked the question ‘if we were to build one of these, would it be of interest?’ and they said ‘absolutely’.”

From there KC Active started making some grant funding applications and were successful during the course of 2022 in raising £80,000 through three different grants, one for £50,000, one for £25,000 and one for £5,000.

In January of this year they also ran a crowdfunding campaign to reach the target they had which was £90,000. They received a further £1,500 from North Northamptonshire Council and made £20,000 from their crowdfunding campaign, £11,000 of which was from the local community, businesses, and individuals, £6,000 from Sport England Places & Spaces, and £3,000 from British Cycling Places to Ride, managing to achieve slightly more than they needed which will be used for fencing and lighting.

The pump track will provide a much-needed facility for activity and exercise for children and young people of all ages in the village and surrounding local communities.

Simon said: “In terms of more informal activities, we used to have a skateboard half pipe but the weather got the better of that, so that had to be pulled down. And kids these days, they don’t necessarily want the formal stuff, they want the informal, they want to do stuff without a coach or instructor telling them what to do, they just want to explore and experiment for themselves, so I think that sense we had nothing of that sort.”

The pump track, although not ‘officially’ open, is now available for anyone to come down and use it and according to Simon it has been very busy so far.

He said: “It’s been brilliant. It’s a shame school’s started back, it would have been brilliant had we had it open over the holidays.

“We’re expecting it to be busy in the evenings, we’re pretty confident it’s what the kids want. We have got a lot of kids in the village, so it’s not just a teenager thing, we’ve got real littluns on there, so we’re confident that it’s not just a temporary thing.”