PUPILS from Aloeric Primary School have been pedalling their socks off over the last two weeks to earn as many raffle tickets as possible, hoping to win themselves a new bike.

The Melksham school has been promoting the national Big Pedal challenge to encourage both children and parents to cycle to school.

Each child earned themselves one raffle ticket every time they cycled to school, then all the tickets were entered into a draw to win a Specialized bike, provided by Melksham Cycle Centre.

The lucky winner was Year 5 pupil Levi, who picked out a bike, just in time for the Easter holidays.

Headteacher Matthew Nightingale said: "The number one benefit of the Big Pedal is to get the children and parents travelling to school healthily, and creating good habits that we hope will last a lifetime."

The school takes part in the Big Pedal every year, which encourages pupils to ride their bikes to school for free fruit smoothies, water bottles and T-shirts, all to promote a healthier way of travelling.

"So far, more than 1,500 journeys have been made to school by pupils on their bikes, a figure Mr Nightingale hopes will continue to grow.

He said: "We have the facilities to park around 60 bikes at our school, but I think we have had around 100 bikes here every day. It's great to see."