Photos from the Fit for Fun Fahrrad Festival

The morning of the bike ride, Saturday 21 May 2005, not only was it pouring with rain in Strasbourg but there was also lightning and thunder. Fortunately, by the time we left Strasbourg at 10:30 it had stopped raining and started to brighten up.

Twenty-five of us, members of Etoile Education, set out from Strasbourg on our bikes (usually it is an early bus). Even little kids, for example Jeannique (from the second year Dutch kindergarten class),completed all 20 km from Strasbourg to Appenweier, where we took the train to Karlsruhe. There we met up with the school group and Daphne Scobie, Science teacher in the Upper School, led over 60 of us, including school director Tom Høyem, across town, through the forest to the European School, another 8km at least.

In addition, many families joined us at the school and an enjoyable afternoon was had by all. Children handed in their sponsorship forms, collected their certificates and biked around, a fitting end to the “Fit for Fun week”. For those who raised the most money there were bike-related prizes. Adriano (4th year primary English section) was the winner having raised over 170 €. Well done!

Etoile Education would also like to thank Faiza Zaidi, an ESK parent, who donated the first 500€ to the Bike & Bus Fund on behalf of INIT, a Karlsruhe-based company in telematics and electronic fare collection systems for public transport. Also, Lise Meyer, in charge of the Parents' Association's Transport Committee, and the School Canteen. We also recommend the European Commission's excellent publications “Kids on the Move” and “You beautiful Swallows”. Together, we hope we managed to raise awareness about how kids travel to school and encourage environmentally friendly, healthy and independent habits such as public and group transport and, of course, cycling.

Etoile Education would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for participating, rain or shine.

We would like to make the Bike Ride an annual event and build on all the things that went extremely well and learn from what didn’t quite come off. This year proved to be quite the learning experience!!

Over 2000€ were raised for the Bike & Bus Fund, which will go towards the School’s newly inaugurated Bike Programme and buying a school bus. Nor should we forget the Usborne Book Fair, which also proved very successful resulting in over 350€ in books being awarded to the Primary School Library.