History
This section of the site is very much work in progress and as such will be incomplete and likley inaccurate for sometime to come.
If you have something to add to the archive, be it a gallery of pictures from a club trip or a few memories of key events, please keep them safe for now. We will be making a call out to club members for contributions in the near future.
potted History
In 2016 James Connelly launched The Gorilla Coffee Cafe and with it Gorilla Coffee Cafe Cycle Club. His goal was to create a cycling hub that would bring like minded people together. At the time local clubs met in pub car parks, local parks and outside people’s homes. He felt that the cycling community were in need of a bricks and mortar place to call home.
The first club logo 2016-2024.
In the early days group rides would leave the cafe with just a handful of members. Soon a few keen members volunteered to lead rides, and before long several groups were venturing out twice a week into the lanes of South Birmingham.
In 2017 the first general manager - Malcolm Cowie, and social secretary - Stuart Bulloch were appointed to help keep the wheels turning on the now rapidly growing club.
During 2019 the club organised the first of it’s annual Inter-club Charity rides, bringing together many of the local clubs from South Birmingham to raise money for good causes.
Inter-club Charity ride posters 2022-24. Framed prints were auctioned as part of the fund raising efforts.
Later that year the first trip abroad was organised with 18 members heading off to Majorca for some late season sun.
In 2020 COVID hit, and while this could of meant the end for the cafe and the club, it proved the opposite. The membership pulled together, supported the cafe, and Gorillaroo was born bringing the cafe experience to people at home.
We emerged from sheds and spare rooms, put the turbo back in the loft and started riding in small groups again. However, it was now under the guidance of Bruno Brown who was appointed in September 2020 as the club’s second general manager after Malcom stepped down.
In late 2024 the cafe closed, and along with it the first chapter in the club’s history.
The club took some time to regroup, but before long the seeds of Gorilla mark two were sown. A more traditional club structure was agreed on and the old membership met to vote in the first committee; Chair - Bruno Brown, Secretary - Lindsey Trivett, Treasurer - Eugene Vichare, General members - David Morton and Stuart Bulloch.
The first Thursday night club ride. circa 2016.
Inter-club Charity Ride, June 2019.
The first club trip away to Majorca, October 2019.
Bruno Brown setting off on a Gorillaroo delivery, April 2020.
Voting in the first committee, Kings Heath Cricket Club, November 2024.
In February 2025 the club relaunched as Gorilla Cycling Club.