About Us

Welcome to the world of YOGi Cycling – a very active Road and MTB Club with many regular rides each week.

We are passionate about cycling and we are keen to share that passion with others. Hopefully our website will give the essence of what we are about.

Steve Clare and Ian Roberts initially set up the group after a chance meeting whilst mountain biking and thought it would be good to get more like-minded individuals together by placing a simple poster in Barretto’s cycle shop window. We think this all happened around 1987-89. The group had no name, this was to come from another chance meeting between Steve Clare and Kim Wiltshire whilst on separate training rides prior to the Saltram Lions Mountain Bike Race.

The name was inspired by the American Jacquelin Phelan’s womens mountain bike group called WOMBATS (Womens Off-road Mountain Bike and Tea Society). We were going to be called the Dartmoor Mountain Bike Club but it soon became clear that title could be a red flag to the various groups who used Dartmoor (some were quick to jump to the conclusion that having MTBers rampaging over the bridleways (and err footpaths) was something akin to the beginning of Armageddon!  Well anyway it was hardly an innovative name.

So why YOGi?  Well the famous at the time cartoon character Yogi Bear spent his whole life avoiding the park ranger and looking for cakes from picnickers.  Perfect for us but what could it mean? Cue Kim’s inventiveness.  We agreed with Youthful Off-Road Gurus Of ideology. Yes our routes very much started in the very early days of the UK MTB scene.  And yeah we like to think we’re youthful. Since then we have evolved in to one of the bigger UK cycling clubs and arguably one of the very first ones to recognise that the typical UK cycling clubs rarely met the needs of the majority of the MTB, social, leisure and sportive type of road rider.  So we feel that we have played a big part in bringing about a whole new way of thinking to cycling clubs. Steve Clare, Ian Roberts and Kim Wiltshire are still very much a part of the YOGi scene and all three take pride in how the club has evolved to date.

Now we have a very comprehensive list of rides at all levels for both road and off road riding preferences. For those who are trying our club for the first time and especially if unsure of your fitness and ability level please know you will be very welcomed along to one of our Saturday Fun/Social Mountain Bike (1st and 3rd Saturdays of each month) or Saturday Leisure Road Rides. For latest details of what’s happening this week have a look at the Home page.To get a taste of what our various rides are like, have a look at our Home page, you can also see some routes here.

Our riders take part in many different areas of the cycle sport including sportifs, road racing, mountain bike racing, enduros and some ride for pleasure.

So the bottom line is that we’re a cycling club based in Plymouth organising lots of different rides each week. We have a common bond – a passion for cycling. Why not pick a ride and join us, we guarantee a warm welcome.

In 2010 we finally took the plunge and formed as an official club affiliated with British Cycling and Cycling UK but rest assured that the YOGi ethos is still very much intact.

Updated March 2016

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