Sonder Bikes
Five grassroots projects using outdoor activity to tackle loneliness and isolation, from intergenerational allotments to trishaw bikes and men's sheds.
At a community allotment in Bristol, a woman watches her husband tend the soil.
"I get to see the old J when I'm here," she says. "He's so happy and enjoys it so much."
Her husband has dementia. At home, the illness is hard. On the allotment, something shifts. He's purposeful. Engaged. Present in a way that indoor life doesn't always allow.
Getting outside helps most people. For those living with isolation, loneliness, or a life narrowed by age or illness, going outside with others can do something more. The Alpkit Foundation has funded projects working on exactly this. These are five of them.
Alive Activities — Bristol
Alive Activities runs fortnightly intergenerational gardening sessions at a community allotment in Bristol. Older people living with dementia join children who are being home-schooled. They grow vegetables together, improve the allotment, and talk in the way that shared outdoor work tends to produce.
The feedback from carers keeps returning to one thing: the person they know comes back, briefly, in the garden.
"When we're at home we argue all the time. But we never do that when we're at the allotment. We just talk like in the old days."
The children benefit too. New skills, genuine purpose, and the kind of conversation that only happens when your hands are busy with something real.
Nature Memories Café — Thatcham
On Monday mornings, the Nature Discovery Centre in Thatcham opens early for a specific group: people living with dementia and the family members and carers who support them.
The main visitor centre stays quiet. It's just for them. Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust runs guided walks, wildlife watching, crafts, a hot drink and homemade cake. A space built around their pace, with nature as the backdrop rather than the point.
The Alpkit Foundation funded the initial 10-week trial in 2017. It worked, kept going, and the sessions remain free and weekly.
Late Bloomers — Towell House, East Belfast
Many of the residents at Towell House, a residential care home in East Belfast, were keen gardeners before they moved in. The move into care often means leaving the garden behind.
Fiona from Towell House applied to the Alpkit Foundation for help with raised bed planters: accessible at height, reachable from a wheelchair or with limited mobility. The aim was to let residents who had always gardened simply get back to it.
"We have many gardeners missing their gardens," she says. "The health benefits, both physical and mental, are immeasurable."
"Not only have they brightened up the patio area, but they have brightened up the lives of all the residents."
Amy's Care — Keswick
Some of the people Amy's Care supports in Keswick haven't moved independently outdoors for years. Trishaw bikes changed that.
A trishaw puts the passenger up front, out in the open, facing forward. A trained volunteer pedals from behind. In Keswick, that means lake views, country roads, and the feeling of wind that no indoor room can replicate.
Ten volunteers were trained as pilots. The trishaws are also available to other local community groups, so the benefit reaches beyond Amy's Care's own participants.
Fraser Dooley, who founded Amy's Care, describes what happens when they go out: "People love to wave, stop and chat. They really are fostering a feeling of community cohesion."
Reddish Men in Sheds — Stockport
For many older men, retirement or bereavement closes off the places where they used to meet people. The work friendships fade. The week loses its shape.
Reddish Men in Sheds meets three afternoons each week. Around 20 members, most of them older, many of them passionate about bicycles. They take in donated bikes, repair them, and sell them on at modest prices through a local charity shop. Around 200 bikes a year.
At Christmas and in the summer holidays, children's bikes go to a local school for children who wouldn't otherwise have one.
The bikes matter. But so does the shed: a reason to show up, something useful to do with your hands, and other people to do it alongside.
The Alpkit Foundation supports grassroots projects across the UK using outdoor activity for health, wellbeing, and community connection. Grants are open to small organisations working with the people who need it most.