I’ve stuck something up in the classifieds but I though you lot might know of somewhere?:
Four of the lovely nurses from St Annes Hospice (and my wife who is also lovely and is their boss – this is utterly irrelavent) are undertaking a quite sizeable cycling endeavour to raise awareness about bowel cancer and to raise some money for the hospice.
The only problem being, they don’t (apart from my wife) have mountain bikes. So, they’re now each looking for some reasonable quality (nothing too bling required) front suspension mountain bikes (full bounce if available but probably unafordable).
It’s just occured to me that ther might be somewhere such as a bike hire company that will have some for sale? Anybody have any suggestions? They’ll each be buying their own bikes from their money and have a budget of around £200. They were looking at Edinburgh Bikes low end stuff and two went inot the local store to chat about it and the bloke in there tried his very best to get them to buy some £1,200 each spesh full sussers. I don’t think he quite grasped the concept but well done to the bloke for trying to up his commission, bad luck he ended up with nothing when he could have flogged four bikes for around £200 or so each. Never mind.
Anyway, anybody know of a company selling off ex hire ex demo front (or very unlikely full) suspension bikes for around their budget? Anything form 1 to four bikes required and ladies hieght ranges from 4’9″ to 5’3″.
Thanks

why not ask a major cycling manufacture to lend you a few of their demo bikes for the duration? they could only say no.

The hub at Glentress is selling off their ex hire bikes Bargainacious

I would try what MrNutt said first

The cheapest Hub bike is £200 too dear but thanks anyway.
It’d be a very long term loan so I doubt they’d be interested but it’s worth a go.
4 of the 5 are going from virtual none cyclists to riding Stockort to Liverpool to Leeds and back, off road (all be it river bank and canal tow paths) as quick as they can (maybe a couple of hours stop at each location and few rest stops on the way but no sleeping allowed) so they’ll need to get the bikes soon ans they’re going to have to do some mileage on them before the big ride in August. Possibly too long a period for an extended loan I would have thought?

I would also look second hand – I have bought a Cannondale (XT/Minis/etc) for £250, and a Scott Contessa (was £550+ new) for £150 in immaculate condition. We also bought a kiddies Specialized (was nearly £200 new) for £35 with new cables etc in amazing nick.

Have a ‘wanted’ for their sizes on classifieds here – I am sure people must have old / unwanted bikes of that kind of value available.

I was just fussy over which bikes etc – but both times was less than a fortnight.

Pick up some cheap (and probably hardly used) secondhand hybrids off Gumtree?

I know you got your £200 budget and I am a bit stumped at that price, Skyline at Afan had two 16″ Kona cindercones at half price a couple of weeks back at £300 and I have seen quite a few new 07 Speialized Hardrocks at about the £270 mark, shops might haggle further to sell 3…

Worth ringing Skyline I rekon…

Rutland Cycling have quite a large hire fleet, which they regularly sell off.

Why not use cyclescheme? Ok it’s not what it’s for but surely they will need to do some training and maybe they could do that cycling to work?
Depends on the NHS trust though, so do cyclescheme some don’t.

It’s a hospice Ziggy. They’re charities, nothing to do with NHS or hospital trusts etc.
The big boss at the hospice said “No” when asked about introducing the Cycle Scheme.

Barca – email me at willcarrjnr3 at hotmail dot com. I may have a contact who might be able to help you out (large hire centre), I cannot guarantee anything though, so don’t get your hopes up too much.

Bugger, ok was just an idea, I’ll email a couple of my suppliers for you today then see if any are willing to do a deal.I’ll be honest though manufacturers and retailers get these requests all the time.