Central Bedfordshire schools cycle their way to Lapland

Date Added: 29/11/2021

Central Bedfordshire lower and primary schools are once again taking part in a Christmas challenge; counting up their walking, scooting and cycling trips to school to see if they can travel virtually to visit Santa in Lapland.

We are organising the challenge, in partnership with sustainable transport charity Sustrans, which takes place between Monday 29 November and Friday 10 December and aims to decrease the number of cars used on the school run.

Almost 30 schools have already signed up to take part in this year’s challenge which also gives pupils the opportunity to learn about the towns and cities of the countries they visit along the way.

Using a class record sheet, pupils and their teachers will monitor active travel trips to school. All journeys will then be combined with the goal of achieving 2,000 miles, the equivalent distance from Central Bedfordshire to Lapland. Each participating school will receive a scooter for one of their lucky pupils taking part.

The challenge has been running for eight years now and every year there has been an increase in the number of schools signing up to the challenge. Last year, pupils in Central Bedfordshire collectively travelled 175,245 sustainable journeys to school during the two-week challenge.