Glentress funding bids to boost Scots mountain biking levels
"It feels great to be out in the hills - it's a powerful way of either staying or becoming healthy as well as socialising," she said."The benefits of mountain biking are widespread and there is support from across government as it helps tourism, the rural economy and the health of our population."She said DMBinS was "great at making a lot from a small amount of money"."They can make an impact by collaborating and coming up with new ideas," she said."We have great assets - like here at Glentress which is not far from the central belt - and there are electric bikes now which can help you onto the hills."
As well as launching programmes to encourage more people onto the trails, DMBinS is exploring the creation of links between active travel routes and off-road trails. DMBinS head Graeme McLean said: "Getting people onto bikes is going to be hugely important for our health, wellbeing and transport."There's a whole range of people who maybe aren't as privileged as us to be regularly riding bikes - this could be because of affordability, mental health issues or a physical disability."We have programmes for all of those groups to help them access mountain biking and experience beautiful places like Glentress."
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From a hijacked van to the Brazil team bus (and kissing Pele)... Elsie Cook's journey has been incredible
THERE is laughter, even the merest gasps of joy and incredulity, as Elsie Cook tells her story. There is the trip to Hampden in the official Brazil team bus after a meeting with Pele in 1966. There is the hailing down of a furniture van in Argyll Street in 1972 so that the first Scotland women's team could get to training in Greenock. There is the meeting with Jock Stein. There is a moment when a women's team is changing behind a bandstand in an Ayrshire Park in the sixties, providing more than frisson of shock for the church goers leaving a Sunday service across the road. All these, and so much more in her life story, can raise a smile but there is a deeper tale of struggles, regular disappointment and pain just beneath the surface of congenial hilarity. Born in 1947, Cook has done it aw and seen maist of it, as the vernacular in her outstanding memoir, A Kiss Fae Pele, might put it. The Scottish Women's Premier League begins on Sunday. Professional women players will play on good surfaces, in front of paying crowds with authorised referees. In the early days of Cook's passion, even obsession, of organising women's football none of the above applied. 'We had to clear dog mess off the parks,' she says. 'The councils would not allow us to change in the dressing-rooms. The SFA would not allow referees to officiate at our matches. We changed where we could and we were grateful to those on the sidelines who would come and referee our matches.' This was Stewarton, Ayrshire, in the 1960s and beyond. The landscape of professional women's football, of thousands of young girls being coached and given a vision of a future of playing football, was out of sight then. This destination was reached by the efforts of many. It is, though, impossible to imagine it being secured without Elsie Cook. Cook was inducted into the Scottish Hall of Fame this month. It was long overdue and, full disclosure, as chairperson of that august body I must share culpability for the delay. Cook, though, was sanguine about it all. After all, the story of her life has been one of fighting battles in the face of outright opposition or chronic indifference. But there are signposts on the journey that took her from football in a mass of grassland, dubbed the Jubilee, in Stewarton to the inner sanctum of the hall of fame at Hampden where she was inducted in front of a packed crowd. They had all been touched by the driving force that is Cook. She tells her story. Then others emerge from the audience to tell their tales of Elsie. Of course, there is fitba' chat but there are also the tributes to another Elsie. This is the Cook who took up art in her fifties and graduated with honours from Glasgow School of Art. This is the lover of nature who took up hill-walking and became an Alpine climber. This is the runner who tackled marathons for the first time as she was approaching 40. She was inspired by her mother and auntie, who both completed marathons in their sixties. There is obviously something in the genes that propels Cook but there is something defiantly individual too. She is a woman of ideas but one of action, too. The Pele story shows this. As a teenager, she ventured from Stewarton to see the great man in Troon in 1966 where the Brazil squad was staying in preparation for a friendly against Scotland before the World Cup in England. 'When I heard he was there I had to go,' she says. She took a tartan tammy and presented it to her hero. 'I was standing there when Garrincha, Tostao and others were passing by. My knees were knocking like coconuts in a hurricane when Pele came up to me.' She made an impression. She was given tickets for that night's game at Hampden and a place in the official bus that followed the team bus up to the national stadium. 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The idea of just accepting that it just was not her day did not cross her mind. This first international in 1972 – 3-2 loss to England in Greenock - led to a wondrous, significant moment at Celtic Park. In 1974, the phone rang in Stewarton. Cook's mother told her: ''It's for you, it's Jock Stein.' The Celtic manager invited Cook to bring two women's teams to Celtic Park as pre-match entertainment before Celtic faced Olympiakos in the European Cup. 'I was standing in the tunnel as our game finished. I was beside Jock Stein. There I was this wee woman for Stewarton alongside this football great. He was such an imposing presence and he congratulated every one of the players as they came off the park. I was so proud. He was a big man but so much more than a physical presence. I detected an honesty and a gentleness about him.' The same could be said of Cook. Her gentleness should never be misconstrued as softness, however. Women's football was never given anything in the early days. 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