A Swindon church minister has been fixing unsolvable bike problems for residents in his own free time.
Roger Cole from Tadpole Garden Village helps his neighbours each Monday.
He started during the Covid pandemic, aiming to get people out after the lockdowns, but was shocked by the massively positive response from residents.
“I used to live in Henley-on-Thames and posted on Facebook offering to solve people’s bike problems,” said Roger.
“I had a queue of people waiting outside of my house to get their bikes repaired which was a big shock.
“I made £3,000 from repairing and selling the bikes in the first month and it made it a viable thing to do.”
The 70-year-old originally developed an interest in bikes at a young age due to his family’s cycling habits.
“I started mending bikes as a kid after I saw my brother taking them apart and putting them together and painting the frames,” said Roger.
“It is a hobby that earns me money now as I got out cycling with a couple of cycling groups but my motivation is to be neighbourly.
“I want to make sure people who ride around here have safe bikes and enjoy it.”
Roger is a minister at Swindon Community Church but makes sure he is in Tadpole Garden Village each Monday to help out residents.
“I do some repairs in my garage but I have a workshop on a farm but I can’t have the public there so I take bikes there alone,” he said.
“I have never done bike repairs as a full-time job and the church work always comes first but I have always done bikes, repairing them for 40 years.
“We are outside the Tadpole Garden Village shops each week under our gazebo barring holidays.”
No problem is too much for Roger who even had a dream which helped him solve a particularly tough issue.
“A couple of years back we had a bike come in with old-style disc brakes and the cable broke and stopped working,” he said.
“Lots of bike shops said nothing could be done and he was told to scrap the bike but he came to me from Bristol.
“It was an expensive bike and I worked out I could adapt a different cable system from a different bike after having a dream about it the night before.”
You can contact Roger via Facebook for help or find him outside the shops on Maizey Road on Mondays from 2.30pm to 4.30pm.
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