CTC

CTC, the Cyclists' Touring Club, is the United Kingdom's largest cycling membership organisation. It also has members and district assocations in the Republic of Ireland. It was established in 1878, originally as the 'Bicycle Touring Club', making it the oldest national tourism organisation of any description in the World, and renamed the Cyclists' Touring Club in 1883. Since January 2007, the CTC's president has been the newsreader and journalist, Jon Snow.

Today CTC is concerned with the promotion of cycling for recreation, travel and transport, and has about 55,000 members. Among its recent successes have been a benchmarking project to spread best practice in cycle-friendly infrastructure design, and a grant of nearly £1 million to promote national standards for cycle training, standards the CTC helped to develop.

CTC is organised at a district level, with district associations (DAs) organising cycle rides on most Sundays and often during the week in Summer. The more leisurely CTC rides are notoriously planned around café stops, the quality of the ride often being judged on the standard of the cakes; CTC has jokingly been referred to as "Café To Café".

CTC is one of the founder organisations of The Slower Speeds Initiative, an unincorporated association dedicated to reducing traffic speeds on all roads.

CTC works with other organisations such as Transport 2000 and Sustrans, and has at least two charitable offshoots, the CTC Charitable Trust and the Cyclists' Defence Fund.

The members' magazine, Cycle, covers a variety of subjects including ride reports, product reviews and legal and technical advice. Members also benefit from public liability insurance, which is extended to cover rides organised under the auspices of CTC DAs.

CTC is a member of the European Cyclists' Federation.

History


In times gone by, the Cyclists' Touring Club gave seals of approval, http://www.wingedwheels.info such as the one on the right, to Hostelries which offered good accommodation and service to cyclists. Nowadays, approved establishments are offered a plastic window-sticker carrying the blue and yellow logo shown above.

External link

 * CTC site
 * Badge of CTC on buildings