Paul Wilcox, better known as Pushbike Paul, started fixing up bikes for his local community church. However, the project soon spiraled, and since then, he has raised over £150,000 from the comfort of his garden shed.
Paul lives in the small village of Breaston, Derbyshire, and after retiring in 2018, he decided to start helping out his local Hospice- Treetops. He started out as a volunteer, and one day, when he was helping a neighbour with fixing up a few old bikes, he decided to put an ad in the local newspaper to reach out to those who had old bikes lying about.
Since then, the project has blossomed, with a team of volunteers picking up dozens of bikes every week for Paul and his fellow volunteer Peter to fix and sell to donate to charity. The 70-year-old, originally from Bilborough, Nottingham, retired from his car sales business in 2018, which was based in Long Eaton.
He has since had a very busy retirement, helping fix over 3,000 bikes and donating all the proceeds to three different charitable causes. The ex-salesman never thought that the project would snowball into this massive operation, but now the team has a bike warehouse, two mechanics, including Paul, and a fleet of volunteers who traverse up and down Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire collecting bikes.
The majority of the funds have gone straight to Treetops Hospice, with Paul stating that he has helped raise £88,000 for the end-of-life care service. The rest of the funds have gone to the Long Eaton Rotary Club, which has received £59,000 to distribute to local charities and £22. 000 to the Church Wilne Satalite Rotary, which helps us sell them out of their shop in Draycott.
Paul said, “I’ve got one other chap who helps me repair them, and then we have a couple of retired Rotary guys who help with the collections. Church Wilne has sold at least 700 bikes from their shop, and I think we have handled around 3,000 since we started. Some of them we sell for about £10 or £20, but some of them we sell for £200.
“It’s a win-win situation. People love getting involved because they know that the proceeds are going to a good cause, and people are getting cheap bikes. I do it all out of my back garden, but we now have a storage facility where we keep most of them. At one point, I couldn’t see my back garden because it was so full of bikes.
Boston promotion in Draycott, is one of the sites where the repaired bikes are sold.
(Image: Paul Wilcox)
“Everybody is so over the moon with the project. People want to donate to say thank you to Treetops for looking after their family, and then they know it’s going to be a good cause. They know their bikes aren’t going to landfills or being sold for personal profit, and they know that every single penny we raise is going to a good cause.”
Paul originally chose Treetops because his father was a volunteer gardener there before needing their services himself when he reached 90 years old. Paul’s wife, Pauline, also volunteers for the hospice, driving minibusses for guests.
While Paul has always enjoyed fixing bikes, he never thought this project would get so big from its humble beginnings in the village of Breaston. While the venture started small, he soon found himself inundated with messages from people asking him to collect their bikes from all around Derbyshire.
Paul continued: “It’s flat out, almost seven days a week. Every time I turn the laptop on, there are more requests. I can barely keep up with the repairs and getting them to the salespeople; it’s brilliant. At one time, sometimes, we had over twenty bikes waiting to be repaired. Now we have a storage place with over 70 bikes in there.
“I’ve always played about with bikes since I was young. I’ve always had that mechanical side to me, fixing motorbikes, pedals, and then onto cars eventually, so that’s how this started out, and I’ll continue to do it as long as I can.”
If you would like to get in touch with Paul to donate a bike please use the following email to contact him: pushbikepaul4treetops@gmail.com