Gravesham Repair Café

We are offering a free bike repair service at the Cyclopark between 11am and 3pm.  If you or your children need a bike repaired you know where to come.   The Tollgate Watling Street Gravesend DA11 7NP It is signposted off the roundabout on Wrotham Road (opposite the Morrisons junction): And then a turning into the Cyclopark: Parking   Under 30 minutes    FREE Blue Badge Holders  FREE Up to 4 hours       £1.90 Over 4 hours / All Day  £7.00

Possibly the hottest day of the year - or was that yesterday? Despite the weather, we had plenty of visitors, many with electric fans that needed attention (little surprise there). Of special note was the extending (a lot) pruner for trimming the branches of tall trees.  It made its first appearance at Gravesend last week appearing to be a simple matter of replacing the broken cord that operated it.  But is was so complicated threading a new cord that it had to return at Vigo and our heroic member Robert spent nearly the full four hours doing battle with it.  Perseverance was rewarded in the final minutes. Here it is at last.  Well, the lower end at least. We couldn't extend the pruner to its full height for the photo or it would have poked through the roof.     Those electric fans?  Broken switches, disconnected cables, jammed motors ...  Here's just one being worked on: Plus the usual fare of bikes, food mixers, electric garden tools, kitchen ap...

Recently a sub group of Gravesham Repair Café needed an overlocker (a special kind of sewing machine) for their sewing projects.  This group by the name of Crafty Yarns has its own Facebook page and it’s definitely worth checking out. ‘Wanted’ requests were placed on websites like Freecycle, Freegle and Olio.  Elizzy quickly responded offering an overlocker and even personally delivered it today at St George’s Church Hall. While Elizzy stayed for a coffee and chat we established that she wanted a bike and a laptop. Amazingly one of our volunteer repairers had a bike that he wanted to move on and another felt confident of sourcing a laptop for her.  It seems that by Elizzy helping us source an overlocker she'll be the happy recipient of the bike and laptop she wanted. Meanwhile, our team of repairers was at work dealing with clocks, fans, toaster, wildlife camera, a very long tree pruner and more...