Over the last few years, our Ride & Stride program has worked with schools around Merri-bek to encourage more kids to walk, ride and scoot to school. From Open Streets events to e-cargo bike loans for families, we’ve run lots of programs to support families to make the switch from driving to riding the school run.
In 2025, we decided to turn up the dial in October, running our first ever Biketober competition!
What is Biketober?
Biketober is a month-long program held around the country in October. In 2024, all of our local schools, workplaces, community groups and residents were able to participate in the program for free!
It’s part of a national campaign by Love to Ride to encourage people around the country to ride for more of their local trips and re-discover the joys of getting out and about on two wheels in Spring!
And boy did our schools get involved!
We had 11 local primary schools and 1 kinder participate in this year’s competition, a great start for our first year!
Each Wednesday in October, students competed in weekly themed competitions focused on riding to school.
From the ‘Most creative ride’ to ‘Bling your bike day’, there was something for new riders through to the most seasoned scooters.
Ice-cream bike for the winning school!
Our schools were competing for the ultimate fun on 2 wheels – a cargo bike full of ice-cream provided by the Icycle Bicycle!
After hot competition, Pascoe Vale South Primary took out the prize for most engaged school!
For their fun run, we saw 325 kids lining up in a somewhat disorderly fashion for their ice-cream winnings.
Local high-school takes a top spot on the national leaderboard!
Biketober wasn’t just fun for the primary kids. We saw Coburg High School top the national leader boards, taking home second place in their category in the online competition!
We had great fun piloting our first ever Biketober competition with local schools this year, and can’t wait to bring the competition back to even more schools in 2025!
