Snowdrop One Hundred

My road bike is back in action and the snow and ice have nearly gone. And in contrast to most of January the first day of February was forecast to be neither especially cold nor windy. I decided to take advantage and celebrate moving into the last third of winter with a long ride. I know February’s weather can be harsh but its sun sometimes feels warm, and the days continue to grow longer. And look, the snowdrops are out! They are surely a sign of spring’s approach.

The world is opening up again, and mine with it.

I eat a quick breakfast and am gone before 7, planning a second more leisurely feast forty miles into the ride.

I follow the River Lune upstream, cross it into Halton, and take the back road to Kirkby Lonsdale; I spy my first snowdrops at dawn in its graveyard.

I take the road north-west towards Kendal. I don’t drop into the town but turn north at Oxenholme to skirt its eastern side along little-used lanes to Meal Bank. I cross the Rivers Mint, Sprint and Kent in quick succession and stop at Wilf’s in Staveley for that second breakfast.

From Staveley I climb south to Crook and then turn west to Windermere.

A hundred mile ride is a day out of life. It’s a day spent riding through other places and momentarily through a bunch of strangers’ lives. Those places and people would be there anyway. As a sociologist I’m supposed to say that I partly make them, but I know the truth is mainly that they make me, as a cyclist.

The Windermere ferry is a gift to Lakeland cycling. It lets you avoid bigger roads and stay off the beaten track. The rule is cyclists on last, off last. So on the other side with any cars already gone you’ve the road to Hawkshead more or less to yourself. And it’s a glorious stretch, with Lakeland’s central fells rising up ahead, getting closer all the time.

Friday’s ferry was empty save for me, and I was given the trip across England’s longest lake for free (it usually costs £1).

It’s a stiff climb off the lake up to Far Sawrey. This is the ride’s literary stretch; I ride past Beatrix Potter’s Hill Top home at Near Sawrey, and alongside Esthwaite Water into Hawskhead (that it’s closed to cars lifts the thrill of riding past William Wordsworth’s school and through the village centre).

Then it’s up Hawkshead Hill, taking care not to push too hard. For someone like me, for whom long rides are an occasional indulgence, there’s a right way of riding them. Above all, that’s carefully! I ride with the end in mind, thinking particularly about needing to have something left for the last thirty miles.

This is the heart of today’s long ride, along roads ordinarily out of reach. I’m being sure to enjoy it; the descent through the woods to Coniston Water is particularly fine.

Then at the Lake’s northern tip I turn south onto the lovely lane which traces its eastern shore.

John Ruskin’s home is here, Brantwood. More easily accessed from the industrial south once the railways (opposed by Wordsworth) were built, the shores of the southern lakes are sprinkled with the mansions of wealthy Victorian men including, for all his socialism, Ruskin. But he loved nature and when you see his home and its views (views which perhaps made possible some of his thoughts?) it seems easier to forgive his extravagance.

I pedal gently below the beech woodlands of Coniston’s sheltered shore. My legs appreciate the easier terrain but still I feel their fatigue growing. The woodland’s ground is coated with autumn’s fallen leaves. After the white blanket of recent weeks, the colours seem more vivid.

I ride beside the River Crake as it leaves the Lakes, travelling south out of Coniston Water towards Morecambe Bay. It flows under Lowick Bridge and Spark Bridge, where I leave it to head round to Bouth. There I’m cheered by the Twenty’s Plenty sign; it shows the push for lower speeds isn’t just an urban one, and is having effects here in rural Cumbria.

The road from Haverthwaite to Grange-over-Sands takes me through the villages of Cark, Flookburgh and Allithwaite. It’s a lovely route which for the most part marks the line where hills give way to moss, marsh, mudflat and, finally, sea.

By Grange I’ve covered 80 miles. My hunger for food has gone, but I know my body needs fuel. I stop at Hazelmere Bakery and eat enough to get me through the homeward leg.

The route from here is a familiar one, across the flat moss roads, then beneath Whitbarrow Scar to Levens, and from there across the River Kent and south via little lanes I’ve learnt like most cyclists to link up as a peaceful alternative to the A6.

The last part of a long ride is different from the first. My natural curiosity in the wider world is blunted, and replaced by growing inward obsession. It’s as if tiredness brings automatic reallocation of my body’s dwindling resources. The places through which I move no longer attract my attention; they’re still there, but my focus now is on pedals turning, steering home.

I don’t dislike the sensation. It’s an inherent part of the long ride experience. A hundred mile ride starts with a target and ends with a memory, but perhaps the best bit is – at the end of the day – the feeling of exhaustion earned.

I wonder if I’ll ever tire of what feels to me now like the pure privilege and pleasure of a full day spent out on my bike?

Where do the children ride?

This is Flo. She’s my daughter. She’s nine years old. I think and I hope she’s learning to love cycling. The question I ask in this post, in my convoluted way, is what are the prospects of her becoming, over the next few years, an ‘ordinary’, ‘regular’ cyclist – a young woman who uses a bicycle in order to stitch the different aspects of her everyday life together?

We’re just back from a three-week cycle-camping trip to Bavaria. It was Flo’s first cycling holiday riding her own bike. Two years ago we made this same transition with Bobby, who’s now 11, by heading to south-west France. He took to solo riding brilliantly, and he continues to be on the whole enthusiastic, if not fanatical, about cycling. But Flo is a less keen cyclist; this year she has done the occasional race, and if we’re going for a cycling day out she will come along (and enjoy herself), but on the whole I get the sense that she rides only because the rest of us ride, and because – as part of a family without a car – she sometimes simply has to, if we’re to get where we want to go.

In other words, cycling for Flo is normal, but it’s not actually desirable. She has yet – I think – to discover her own love for cycling. I know there’s no guarantee she ever will. If she doesn’t that is of course fine – she’ll find her own ways to live. But in the short and medium-terms, as she is part of a family which lives without a car yet thrives outdoors, it feels important that we continue to try to cultivate her ability and desire to cycle.

Encouraging Flo’s cycling feels more of a challenge than does Bobby’s. Why? I guess partly we’re a gendered family. I’m (a bit) more passionate about cycling than Sue; I get out on my bike more; and most of the cycle-sport we follow (and so talk about) is male. Nurturing a love for cycling in Flo is also perhaps more difficult because we’re part of a gendered world – we tend to follow male cycle-sport because it dominates the cycling calendar, it’s what gets shown on TV, and it’s what gets reported in the press. (I’m perhaps privileging this concern with sporting role-models in  children’s imaginations and interests because we’ve returned home from Germany to find a nation – including many of our own friends – obviously still in the grip of (albeit now gradually eroding) Olympic, and especially cycling, fever; although in terms of gender politics the Olympics fares much, much better than does the rest of cycle sport.)

However, I think the main difference between Bobby and Flo, though still heavily cultural (and so heavily gendered), is more embodied. Basically, and maybe this has only happened over the past couple of years and Flo is set to follow, Bobby has learnt to be comfortable with – and perhaps even sometimes started to thrive on – bodily discomfort, and I think this ability is indispensable to becoming happily and sustainably active.

(Broadening my argument, I’d suggest that the embodiment of such a disposition is necessary in order to build active lifestyles more generally, and so too a culture of mass, everyday cycling; if an activity requires some degree of physical effort, for it to become normal the physical effort it requires must also become normal. It was interesting in Bavaria, how many of the (mainly older) recreational cyclists we saw would get off and push their machines up even the slightest inclines – I may be wrong, but my impression is that Bavaria has successfully built a (lucrative) culture of recreational cycling, in which many older people participate, but if those people are ever in a hurry, they surely jump off their bikes, straight into cars (BMWs, Audis or Volkswagens).)

The Olympics show us women and men pushing bodily discomfort beyond the limit, and perhaps – being so visible and so emotionally moving – that is an important and lasting legacy. Watching people exceed themselves is tremendously inspiring, and perhaps the kind of thing able to prod generally inactive people into sporting action. (Some people will note that utility cycling is precisely not a sport – nevertheless, it’s surely true that for people to start cycling they must to some degree become comfortable with using their bodies, in public; and that to do so they will need to overcome not just political, social and cultural resistance, but also overcome bodily sensations resulting from physical resistance too.)

Before our time in Bavaria, Flo didn’t seem comfortable with the uncomfortable bodily sensations which arise from hard physical effort. I don’t want to succumb to lazy stereotypes of ‘how boys and girls are’, but it does sometimes seem that she gets too much cultural (and gendered) support to maintain this ‘comfortable’ position – particularly from a culture of ‘young girl-ness’ which seems to be threatened rather than validated by sport. Flo and her girl friends prefer to play (remarkably imaginatively and cooperatively) indoors more than out, and tend not to challenge one another to take physical risks in the way that Bobby and his boy friends seem to do (and they’ve both moved much more firmly into gendered social worlds over the last couple of years). And she gets insufficient support to be otherwise – whilst we encourage her to be active, and we have wonderful local cycling and athletics clubs to help, there are strong counter pressures encouraging sedentary inhabitation of the private sphere.

So planning a cycling holiday which depended on Flo’s ability and desire to ride – and to keep riding – her own bike was a gamble. But I’m glad to say it’s one which paid off - Flo thrived on cycling in Germany.

Over the three weeks, she amazed me with her tenacity, endurance and skill. She sped across loose gravel surfaces over which in the past she’d have ridden with trepidation. Often coaxed by her older brother, she dug into and excelled on hills which I’d have thought might make her cry, and she looked thrilled with herself when she reached their summits. And often she and Bobby forced the pace, leaving Sue and I struggling behind – laden donkeys on the racecourse.

What Flo made me realise is that if only we could take away the factors which constrain our children’s desires and abilities to cycle, they’d be able to attain a freedom, independence and grace we can nowadays scarcely even begin to imagine.

Rid of the barriers which operate back at home, Flo was free to fly. These barriers include ‘typical’ ‘girls’ activities’, and TV (or in our case – as we don’t have a  TV – the probably slightly less invasive iPlayer) and computer games. They include a socialized aversion to the bodily discomfort which physical exercise produces.

But we all know, don’t we, the overwhelmingly significant (I’d be tempted to call it the ‘determining barrier’, were that not likely to see me regarded as a bit too crude and somehow ‘unreconstructed’) barrier? Although key players within (what in my more cynical moments I’d label) ‘the cycling promotion industry’ sometimes seem intent on denying it, the major barrier to all cycling, but children’s cycling especially, relates to space, and how amenable or not it is to cycling.

In my admittedly limited and partial experience, Bavarian cycling infrastructure varies, but almost everywhere it puts British cycling provision to shame. And where facilities are less cycling-oriented, driving seems to have been civilised to the extent that it doesn’t matter. We certainly didn’t find a cycling paradise, but we did find ‘a cycling situation’ far ahead of the one in which we’re mired here in Britain. I now understand why my friend and colleague Tim Jones considers Germany more relevant as country which Britain could emulate than the Netherlands or Denmark – whether we were riding along dedicated cycling routes running parallel to big and busy main roads, or pedalling on the road through traffic-calmed town centre streets, I often thought how these quality cycling experiences could relatively easily be reproduced back home.

Cycle-touring is very popular in Bavaria. We felt normal! ‘Ordinary’, utility cycling is also unremarkable, although I personally found one sight quite remarkable – in a small town somewhere south of Munich, as we sat in the shade eating lunch and chilling out, we watched a girl of maybe four or five pedal up and back down the main street, several times. She rode completely independently. She looked happy. She looked free.

I’m angry about my children being barred from riding where they live. Seeing their own taste for freedom and the freedom which other children enjoy when we go somewhere such as Bavaria helps me to see what’s possible, and thus helps me feel more optimistic. But the clear fact that we’re not moving any closer in the UK towards achieving what’s been achieved in Bavaria makes me angrier still.

Each time we’ve travelled overseas to go cycling as a family it has felt to me as though we’ve taken a little step into the unknown. Of course, we know the different reputations for cycling which countries have. We know and talk to people who have cycled in these places. We read guidebooks and websites, and buy maps. But still, we don’t really know what a place will be like – particularly for children’s cycling – until we’ve been there.

I’ve heard far less about cycling provision in Germany than I have the Netherlands or Denmark, but to be both blunt and blithe, we found Bavaria to have almost as good provision for cycling as the Netherlands, but with the advantages (for us as camping holiday-makers) of higher temperatures and better scenery!

We experienced a wide variety of cycling environments. This included dedicated cycle routes alongside many bigger roads, signed cycle routes on very quiet rural back roads, and – within towns – lots of space shared (with no obvious conflicts) with pedestrians. Our upland rural itinerary also included lots of forest tracks – these would often start out (near to a village) as a surfaced lane, before switching to a loose gravel track through forest, and reverting to a smooth tarmac surface ‘on the other side’, as we approached another village.

Uncertain as to how Flo would cope with hills, we’d anticipated staying on flatter ground to the north of the Alps. But it quickly became apparent that she was up to any challenge we might throw her way so long as we kept daily distances appropriate to her age – our longest day was around 55 km (or 35 miles) and most days we rode more like 35 km (or 20 miles). So we rode into the heart of the Bavarian Alps, into Austria and out again.

Flo’s surprising and unwavering appetite for cycling forced me into realising how children – including our own children – are capable of so much more than we usually imagine. Provide them with appropriate opportunities and support to do something, and they can and probably will do it.

So I think the moral of this cycling tale is this – provide children with safe and supportive places to cycle, and of course they will (love to) ride.

During three weeks we had only one day off the bikes. We’d expected to have more, but even when we camped at the same place for a few days, we’d use the bikes to get around – visiting nearby towns such as Bad Tolz, Mittenwald and Fussen.

Bavaria lacks a coastline. Nonetheless, water’s everywhere – and people know how to make the most of it; in the summer heat they flock to the region’s lakes and rivers, and we did too. But guess what, on our rest day, the kids wanted to do? Ride surf-bikes!

By the last week Flo was riding in ways I’d have no thought possible only a few weeks before – descending hills at 30 miles per hour, climbing up them with both grit and composure, and handling her bike over rough, rocky roads.

Over three weeks she rode 400 miles. And in all that time there was not one close and/or uncomfortable encounter with a motorised vehicle. Holidays are different from everyday life; often we are in less of a hurry, we are keen to see ‘the best side’ of people and places, and we tend to go to places we think we’ll like.

Holidays can also sow seeds of dissatisfaction with ‘ordinary life’; they throw new light on ‘things as they usually are’. This is something we badly need in Britain – more people (including, but not only, so-called ‘decision-makers’; we’re all decision-makers) seeing what cycling elsewhere is like, and thus what it can be like, even here. Then agitating to make it happen.

That our idyllic Bavarian cycling holiday experience could be replicated anywhere in today’s Britain is utterly inconceivable to me: there isn’t the provision to keep cycling separate from fast-moving motorised vehicles; and not enough courtesy, care and consideration towards cycling and cyclists has been structurally embedded in ordinary driving practices where motorised vehicles and cycling do co-exist.

So back home in Lancaster, England, Flo’s freedom to ride has been curtailed. She moves around independently on foot in the immediate neighbourhood (and Bobby moves around independently by bike further afield, but only to quite a specific and limited set of places). But she’s no longer routinely using her bike to move around. Although she’s become a great little cyclist, we’re refusing her that independence.

A nine-year old girl moving around an urban area independently by bike? It seems outlandish, doesn’t it? But it’s not outlandish across much of the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. In a small town south of Munich, I know for a fact that it’s not outlandish for a girl a good deal younger to be moving independently by bike.

Flo should be moving towards independence over the next few years. As part of that move, I aspire to her being able to move around her town by bike. But how many teenagers do you see cycling where you live? How many teenage girls? The outlandishness of the idea of young people cycling independently is a sign both of how badly we’ve lost our way in organising our urban spaces for movement, and of how far we’ve got to go in creating sustainable, democratic and convivial urban space.

Yes, I know there are rare exceptions, and I’ve little doubt that I will be told about them. But I don’t want exceptions; I want norms! I don’t know what I feel more angry about – the fact that young people don’t cycle, or the fact that even competent and accomplished cyclists such as Flo are unable to cycle in our cities. (Of course, I am equally angry about both, because they are connected, symptoms of the same problem.)

I want to make clear what I mean here; I am not barring my children from cycling. I encourage them to cycle all the time, and they are both fantastically good cyclists, Flo much more so after three weeks of ‘fast-tracking’ in Bavaria. It is the conditions out there which bar them from using their bikes when they want and where they want. As adults and parents with a duty of care over them, Sue and I respond appropriately, by refusing them the freedom to cycle.

There is no choice here.

The language of choice, in which many people who say they are promoting cycling continue to engage, is poisoning cycling’s future. We must move away from it, because it is a lie – when it comes to children’s cycling, we have exterminated agency. Until we recognise and rectify this, we will have no democratic culture of everyday cycling, let alone children’s cycling, in Britain.

We are an extremely pro-cycling, and fairly adventurous family – unusually so, I’d say, without wanting to appear arrogant, proud or pious. If we don’t let our kids ride through streets which they know by bike, I don’t think anyone (in their right minds) will. But of course, as someone who loves cycling and wants his children to cycle, I am very unhappy about this situation – unhappy, frustrated, angry and sad.

How lovely it was to see my nine-year old daughter, at the end of our holiday, pedalling amongst Munich’s early morning commuters. For three weeks she’d participated in a mass culture of recreational cycling; now she was tasting an urban culture of mass utility cycling for the first time, and you could see the thrill and delight coursing through her cycling body.

So the moral to this tale is obvious, and it’s one which I’m pleased to hear being repeated regularly and in many places right now. If we’re serious about accomplishing a cycling culture, we must create environments in which people can accomplish cycling and become accomplished cyclists.

But I have come across this moral tale so often lately that I’m also beginning to find it a bit worrying. So many of us are saying the same thing, yet still so little is being done.

Bradley-based momentum and Olympic excitement can’t last forever; we need to take advantage of them, with actual gains – gains which extend beyond the backwards-facing incrementalism which we’ve all become so accustomed to; gains which reach towards that radical re-structuring which so many of us recognise is really needed – NOW.

At the end of a summer which has seen so much British women’s cycling success, the project of encouraging Flo to continue cycling goes on. For now she’s thriving on the new-found sense of herself as fit and feisty Flo. On Thursday evening down at our local cycling circuit, Salt Ayre, she lowered her two-mile time trial personal best.

But Sue and I know, even if Flo herself does not, that bigger forces are set against her. I don’t know how much longer Flo will pedal, but I do know that the answer is for now very largely out of her, or (as her parents) our, hands. The answer depends on what is done for cycling, by people who she’s never met and via processes which she doesn’t understand.

Her mobility future, her health and well-being – just like the mobility future, health and well-being of her entire generation – lie in their hands. It shouldn’t be the sole and it’s probably not the most sophisticated strategy, but at some level I trust that if only we can keep shouting, they might just start hearing.

Cycling in south-west Ireland

Earlier this month we had a great trip to County Cork, Ireland, to visit Sue’s brother, Mike, his wife, Helen, and daughter, Yola.

Mike, Helen and Yola live in Schull, a delightful village on the Mizen peninsula, one of south-west Ireland’s ‘fingers’, which stick out into the Atlantic ocean. The coastal scenery in their part of the world is  spectacular, and we were blessed with some fine weather in which to enjoy it.

Superb hosts in every possible way, Mike and Helen sorted bikes for us to ride whilst we were there; nothing flash, but good enough to get us around. Actually, although I jokingly referred to it as ‘a farmer’s bike’, the machine Mike had borrowed for me from his mate Matt was great.

And Bobby, who normally rides either his road bike or BMX, loved riding a mountain bike.

Without our usual cycling gear we rode in ordinary clothes and managed just fine, although on longer rides I sometimes wished I’d got a pannier in which to put my waterproof and/or jumper. I found it refreshing to be reminded, through the circumstances, how it’s perfectly OK to ride 25 or 30 miles in jeans, shirt and jumper. (In the past Sue and I have cycled thousands of miles, often through very hot places, wearing ‘ordinary clothes’ – including fully covered legs and arms, for both modesty and sun protection, in countries such as India and Nepal; but more recently this has given way to ‘lycra-as-normal’.)

One day Mike and I rode out to Mizen Head, where the Irish end-to-end either starts or finishes. On another, Mike, Sue and I rode up Mount Gabriel, at 407 metres the highest point on the peninsula.

And Bobby and I took bikes over to Ireland’s most southerly island, the very beautiful and rather romantic Cape Clear.

I’ve cycled in this part of the world a lot in the past, but not for a few years. And I was struck by how different it felt to cycle here, compared to England. The following observation is based only on nine days’ riding in which I covered only around 150 miles; nonetheless I noted it sufficiently often to feel confident it’s not groundless.

As someone on a bike in this part of Ireland, you clearly belong to the ‘road community’. Initially, I noticed this through the ways in which we were generally treated –  drivers stopped or slowed down when approaching us from the opposite direction; if they approached from behind us, they did not try to force their way past, but waited very patiently for an opportunity to pass courteously (or for us to pull off the road and out of their way, if that made sense). Such behaviour is quite unlike that which I have come to expect when riding in England, where drivers rarely either slow down and/or make any other obvious concessions for you; it is much more similar to behaviour which we have experienced in France and The Netherlands.

Only later did I start to notice how my presence as a cyclist on the road was actively acknowledged by most drivers. Typically this ‘salute’ takes the form of a raised finger from one hand, off the steering wheel. A small gesture, but I think a profoundly significant one. It’s active recognition of you as a person, and a validation of your presence on the road – as I said, a sign that you have a right to be there, that you belong to the community of road users.

In England I much more often feel like I’m an ‘outsider’ on the roads. This outsider experience stems mainly from the lack of respect which is often demonstrated towards me through the behaviour of other road users. Occasionally I am treated very well, and I tend to think to myself “they must be a cyclist too”. More occasionally I am treated so badly that I fear not only for myself, but for everyone else – though especially of course other cyclists – who has to share the roads with such behaviour. My most common experience, however, is not of hostility but of absolute indifference towards me, almost as though I am not there. This is close to, but not, the kind of civil inattention described by the sociologist Erving Goffman as required to live comfortably in close proximity among strangers; civil inattention is not cold and indifferent, but a deliberate inattention in the interests of living together anonymously yet respectfully.

It is perhaps closer to what another sociologist Georg Simmel characterised as ‘the blasé attitude’; a kind of de-civilising (or certainly anti-communitarian) process brought about by the scale, pace and density of metropolitan life (Simmel was writing at a time of rapidly industrialising and expanding cities across Europe). This results in a disregard for others who are seen as not belonging to your own community. Speed, scale and proximity definitely have an effect on levels of civility on our roads; on quiet country lanes you’re more likely (for most of the year, even in tourist areas) to be cycling among ‘locals’ in ‘a neighbourhood’, but as roads get bigger and busier you’re more likely to be riding amongst strangers who are moving faster, live further apart, and have less time and inclination to acknowledge one another. The shift from ‘familiar to strange’ is generally a distancing (and for the cyclist a dangerous) one.

Certainly, and loosely following the work of another sociologist, Norbert Elias, the delegitimisation of the cyclist as a figure on our roads during the last half-century of runaway and increasingly taken-for-granted automobility has on the UK’s roads led to a retreat in the ‘civilising process’, and a return of a repressed animosity towards ‘the other’, an animosity which needs now urgently to be re-civilised.

Why are motorists more civil towards cyclists in south-west Ireland than in north-west England? It’s possible that it has something to do with style of dress and style of cycling. When cycling the lanes of north-west England I am usually wearing lycra and helmet, riding a road bike, often with others, and going quite fast. In south-west Ireland I wore ‘normal’ clothes, no helmet, and rode an ‘ordinary-looking’ bike not very fast, and if I wasn’t riding alone I was riding with other people (Sue, Mike, Helen, Bobby and Flo) who also didn’t look like ‘proper cyclists’.

It’s also possible it has to do with the numbers of cyclists and profile of cycling in general. In north-west England cyclists are asserting their presence on rural roads, particularly on weekends in good weather. And some motorists, maybe, don’t like that – cycling’s presence antagonizes them. In rural Ireland my sense is that cycling remains for now much lower in profile and popularity, so that cycling hasn’t become constructed as adversarial to driving in the same way.

Those analyses would implicate (but not blame) the behaviour and/or dress of ‘road cyclists’ in their own (and cycling’s more generally?) marginality, and anyway, I’m not sure they’re quite right. (Although as I wrote in ‘Fear of Cycling’, I do think we’ll see more conflicts emerge around cycling as it becomes more significant a mode of mobility.) They certainly don’t tell the full story.

I think the answer has more to do with broader social and economic conditions. I think that motorists in south-west Ireland are less hurried, more accustomed to slower-moving vehicles (such as tractors) and delays on the roads, and more patient. I also think there’s a clear link (though not one which has to the best of my knowledge been proven by rigorous research) between the age and size of a car and its drivers subjective sense of ‘a right to the road’. Older cars make up a far greater proportion of all cars in south-west Ireland than they do in north-west England, and I think that the drivers of older cars tend to be more careful of cyclists than do the drivers of new, expensive cars. Finally, I think that in south-west Ireland the person hasn’t eclipsed the mode of transport as a source of identity and (mis)recognition, so whether you’re riding a bike or in a car you still belong to the broad community of persons, rather than fall into one or other smaller communities defined by transport mode (motorist or cyclist).

I am not saying south-west Ireland is cycling nirvana; far from it. I am saying I felt a qualitative difference in the way I was/we were treated by motorists there compared to back home in north-west England – especially on the smaller, quieter roads (what we often call ‘lanes’). And I think it’s important to wonder why this might be. As I’ve said, a partial potential explanation is how I/we looked – ‘ordinary people’ riding bikes. Here’s Mike and me at Mizen Head …

And Bobby riding on Cape Clear Island …

To reiterate, we look like ordinary people riding bikes, and are perhaps then seen as such – as belonging to the community of persons. In contrast, when I ride in lycra and helmet on a road bike, whether alone or with others, I wonder whether I/we ‘disappear into a category’ – ‘the cyclist’. As such, I/we stop being identifiable as fellow members of the road community, and it’s easier for us to be treated with impunity. I’m not condoning this treatment, but nor do I want to deny its plausibility out of some misplaced sense of political correctness. (I am attempting to establish the situation, not make judgements.)

But I think there’s a wider (albeit inter-connected) story here, too – about changing attitudes and behaviour towards others, about who counts, why and when. This story has more to do with broad, gradual and difficult-to-grasp changes in culture, and related norms of civility. It’s a story which recurs often in sociological literature; the version I know best (because it was influential during the process of my doctoral studies) is the story told by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, although a more poignant version is elaborated by Richard Sennett in The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. Basically, crudely and for the sake of my argument, as our lives become busier, more dictated by the needs of a global capitalist economy and more stressed, our identities become fractured and the long-term development of character becomes more difficult to accomplish. It is such character – and the civility towards others which it tends to nourish – which we need on our roads; and which can still in my experience be found on the back lanes of south-west Ireland, but less so on the (more commuter- and/or consumer-dominated?) lanes of north-west England.

Finally, then, how do we re-embed (or perhaps embed for the first time, because there is almost certainly no lost ‘golden-age’ here) a civility of the road?  How do we get motorists to show more care towards cyclists?

One ‘shallow’ answer (because it doesn’t deal with the deeper, historical, structural issues) might be awareness-raising campaigns – for example, TV adverts which attempt to inculcate greater understanding of cyclists’ experiences, and greater respect towards people riding bikes.

Absolutely. But a ‘deeper’ answer needs to recognise how discourteous treatment of cyclists by motorists is an outcome of motorists’ (more theoretical) sense of ‘a right to the roads’ (whether rural or urban) and (more practical) experience of having domination of those roads; so this deeper answer needs to challenge both theoretical and practical sense of entitlement to something (the space, time and rhythm of the road) which ought to be much more democratically, and sustainably, held.

If cyclists truly have a right to the road, we urgently need a whole range of practical initiatives (such as slower speeds, reallocation of road space away from motorised modes, and a general de-privileging of the car’s ‘right to roam’, as well as awareness campaigns) to demonstrate that fact. Otherwise, it’s bullshit.

In praise of … the cafe

What would we do were not the countryside dotted with welcoming places full of food and drink? For the cyclist, the cafe is a crucial resource. The cafe enables us to ride. The cafe makes our rides. The cafe is cyclists’ treasure. All hail the cafe!

Whenever I’m in a cafe during a ride, I observe that the cafe has today become for many people – people who arrive by car – a destination, a place to which they travel in order to go there. This is not so for the cyclist, who goes to a cafe in order to go for a ride; for the cyclist the cafe is a resource, not a destination.

And doesn’t that make the cafe so much better! The cafe matters so much more to us. The cafe enables us to ride.

At this time of year, building the miles and my legs, I would not make some of the rides I make were it not for the cafe. Yesterday, for example, I set out from Lancaster, over Jubilee Tower and through the Trough of Bowland. At Dunsop Bridge I knew that a decision had to be made – either turn right to struggle into the wind to Chipping and then fly north to home, or else a longer, harder route – fly left with the wind to Slaidburn, climb up over Bowland Knotts towards Clapham, and finish with a 15 mile push west into the still strengthening wind.

I took the  harder option, thanks to the cafe.

A few months from now, when I aim to be fitter, stronger and leaner, I’ll not depend on them in quite the same way, though still they will have their uses. But for now, the cafe acts as both insurance and hospice. Confidence in making my rides gradually longer and harder comes from knowing there are cafes en route. I might not use them, but should I want to or need to, they’ll be there.

The cafe also breaks up these pre-season rides into more manageable chunks. My mileage dropped quite dramatically in the tail-end of last year, with the snow and ice meaning I did no long rides at all through December. But a couple of weeks ago I learned that I’d got a place in this year’s Fred Whitton Challenge. So over the next three months I must teach my body to ride more-or-less non-stop for 112 miles over all the Lakeland passes, the double-whammy of Hardknott and Wrynose Passes coming when I’ll already have in my legs 100 hard miles.

Last week I followed a 78 mile route along which I’d identified four potential cafe stops, at Ingleton (18 miles), Hawes (36 miles), Sedbergh (51 miles) and Kirkby Lonsdale (62 miles). Two months from now I’ll aim to use none of them, but last week I used two; after 36 miles into an icy head-wind I was ready for beans on toast at the Penny Garth Cafe in Hawes, and partly because it’s such a quick and easy stop I sank a mug of tea whilst eating my flapjack outside the caravan-cafe on Devil’s Bridge at Kirkby Lonsdale – both those places have stronger cultural allegiances with motorcycling, but they are supremely useful and welcoming to the tired and/or hungry cyclist too.

Yesterday I almost rode on at Slaidburn, twenty miles in, but with the climb to Bowland Knotts at 422 metres just ahead, I decided instead to be cautious and to replenish myself with a mug of coffee and a couple of slices of toast at the Riverbank Tea Rooms. What joy to sit outside in the sunshine, on 3rd February in the north of England! And what privilege to make such places meaningful to both ourselves and to cycling, by enrolling them into our rides, into our biographies, into the history of cycling itself.

A few times recently, and again yesterday, I’ve found myself approaching Wray – about 10 miles east of Lancaster – at lunchtime. And I seem to have struck a deal with myself – I stop for a quick lunch (the soup is always quick, and delicious) at Bridge House Farm, so long as afterwards I ride back to Lancaster the harder and longer way, on the north side of the River Lune.

The cafe is a building block in our cycling lives. We use the cafe in different ways at different times. But cyclists don’t just go to the cafe, cyclists have need for the cafe. The cafe is central to the cycling experience, and for that I think it ought to be praised.

Family cycling in France

Very belatedly, and especially for my mate Tom Cahill, here are some pictures – and a few thoughts – from our 2010 summer holiday in south-west France. Almost four months ago now, and as I sit in my office at Lancaster University, having just pedalled the four miles from home in sub-zero temperatures, all that warmth and sunshine is a very fuzzy memory.

We had a superb holiday. Three weeks of cycle-camping, starting and finishing in Bordeaux, and taking in the Dordogne, Entre-deux-Mers, the Arcachon basin and the Atlantic coast. It was our first cycle-touring holiday with Bobby on his own machine. Now nine years old, he is too big and heavy for the trailer bike, and anyway, he has too much strength, independence, competence and confidence to be so restricted any longer. It was time to set him free! And how he thrived.

He did have a baptism of fire, though, riding from Bordeaux’s airport (yes, we flew …) into the city centre along very busy rush-hour roads full of fast-moving cars. Such times represented the stressful moments of the holiday; but they were few and far between, Bobby coped brilliantly, and when it comes to interacting with and respecting people on bikes, the French drivers are in a completely different league to those in the UK; almost invariably drivers were patient and gave us plenty of room. The only exception, ironically given that of all the areas we visited it is the one which advertises itself as ‘cycle-friendly’, were the roads around the Arcachon basin which were pretty horrible and on which we experienced some fairly dreadful driving.

But as I say, those were ‘moments’. The durations which they only occasionally punctuated involved a variety of really top quality cycling infrastructure. We made good use of off-road cycling facilities, starting out by heading east from Bordeaux along the Roger Lapebie cycle route, which follows a disused railway through gorgeous scenery.

Later in the holiday we headed to the beach, and rode west, across the Gironde’s flat pine-forested floor, along some very quiet cycle routes. Indeed, so quiet that stopping for an occasional game of pine-cone boules on the track was no problem …

Probably the favourite stretch of the holiday for all of us, however, was the quiet country roads along and around the Dordogne. Sue and I were initially apprehensive because we didn’t know how Bobby would cope – particularly in terms of concentration – with riding for long spells on the road, and because we weren’t sure how French drivers would treat us. On both counts we needn’t have worried. Of course kids can concentrate when they need to, and Bobby coped just fine; in fact, having to concentrate – particularly on the climbs and descents – seemed massively to increase his level of enjoyment. And on the back roads there were very few cars, and the quality of driving was excellent – drivers exercising lots of patience, and then slowing right down and giving us lots of space as they went past. As I said, a world away from the kind of treatment we’re used to in the UK.

I’m aware that recent posts have centred much more on Bobby than on Flo. What’s interesting is that Bobby doesn’t have massively more enthusiasm for cycling than Flo. They both belong to a cycling family in which cycling is normal, expected, unquestioned. The reason Bobby’s getting more of my attention is that he’s at a stage where new ways of cycling, and so new cycling possibilities, are opening up. Two years ahead of Flo, he’s finding his cycling independence. Much of the time Flo’s still ‘stuck’ on the trailer bike; she’s still seeing an awful lot of my backside. For Bobby the cycling view has expanded and diversified. It’s marvellous to see him taking in the world. Here he is riding through the French vineyards.

Given the French love for cycling, their cities are an absolute disaster. There are signs that they are now, finally, beginning to try, so hopefully things will change. Bordeaux has a public bike scheme and bits and pieces of relatively pro-cycling infrastructure. But really, this is France! Were it not for a deep but I think vestigial respect for people who ride bikes the situation would be close to catastrophic. Bordeaux is flat, warm and remarkably beautiful. It should be a cycling city, a city full of cyclists. If Copenhagen can do it, Bordeaux certainly can. But it hasn’t; it’s firmly in the grip of the car. Anywhere else in the world, it’d be an urban planning disaster; in France, it’s a tragedy.

It had been more than twenty years since I last cycled in France, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. My verdict? I loved the people; polite, respectful, reserved and above all ‘civilised’ or ‘cultured’ in a way which I hadn’t quite expected. And our cycling experience was in the main exquisite. Using the best cycling infrastructure we were permanently tripping over a rural France which charmed and enchanted. As Bobby and Flo get bigger and stronger, able to tackle longer distances and more demanding terrain, then more cycle-touring options will open up to us – my plan, then, will be to identify a region with a really good, dense network of roads (not hard, in France) and to steer a course through the back ones, the ones which drivers of motorised vehicles are unlikely to use, to be furtive in France.

It’s too long ago, and I’ve been dreaming and scheming about our next one ever since (actually, if I’m honest, I start daydreaming about the next one, and begin discussing it with Sue, whilst we’re still enjoying the present one – conditions are somehow conducive to doing so). I can’t imagine a year without a few weeks of bike-centred nomadism. Being almost permanently outdoors, almost permanently with my family, almost permanently experiencing and having to negotiate places you’ve never seen before – it’s refreshing and rejuvenating, but it’s also indulgent and therapeutic, and then it’s stretching and bonding too. What other kind of holiday can give so much?

Finally, it’s a bit cheesy, but also true – that a few weeks cycle-camping, mucking in together, living together intensely, but with a different kind of intimacy, powerfully re-makes us as a family. And every year, each time, it’s different – finding a balance, but a new balance, because the balance is always shifting … (next year Flo will be heavier, and maybe I’ll have lost some weight!)

Autumnal cycling in north-west England

I love the weather in north-west England, and the last two weekends I’ve been lucky enough to experience it in all its magnificent diversity.

Last Saturday, following the brilliant (he says immodestly) Bicycle Politics workshop, I rode across to Kettlewell in the Yorkshire Dales, to join up with Colin, Jim and John, who’d been there since Thursday, getting lots of quality miles in. They’d enjoyed a couple of dry and sunny days, but on Saturday the weather changed, so that when I met up with them outside the youth hostel at 6pm, we were all pretty soggy. Sunday was forecast to be wet, and indeed it was – it started damp and drizzly, and got wetter, and wetter, and wetter from there …

But not once during that long wet day did I feel miserable. It helped that it was relatively warm; it’s when wet combines with cold that I sometimes really start to question the wisdom of being out on the road. And it helped that I was in such fine company; riding roads with people who also love to ride those roads, and who recognise themselves as similarly privileged in being able to do so – that’s real privilege!  Although there is banter and piss-taking in other regards, when during one or other of our rides one or other of us pauses to reflect on our intensely good fortune, he is never met with macho scorn and ridicule, but always with a shared sense that we must indeed be the luckiest men in the world … there is no price for what we experience out there on our region’s roads …

Last Sunday we rode from Wharfedale over to Bishopdale and then west through Wensleydale for coffee in Bainbridge. We crossed the valley to Askrigg and climbed over Cross Top to Muker in Swaledale. North-west from there, over Birkdale Common and then the long descent into Nateby, for a generous welcome and lunch at the Black Bull Inn, where Jim showed me how to dry your track mitts by treading them into a carpet, and where I hope no one had to sit where we sat for a good few hours after … South up the ever-beautiful Mallerstang, then fast west down the always-pleasureable Garsdale into Sedbergh, where, having checked the cafe’s seats were wooden and immune to saturation by our sodden clothes, we enjoyed afternoon tea. Down Garsdale the rain had become much heavier, and it continued as we rode south along the west side of our Lune towards Kirkby Lonsdale, and on for tea at the Bridge Inn. There the four of us squeezed into the gents’ toilets, and emerged in dry clothes like new men to devour our tea and drink our beer before, late into the night, setting off again to get one final drenching along flooded roads on our way back home to our beds. 90 miles, a couple of thousand metres of climbing, huge amounts of rain – the kind of day which makes me glad to be alive and able to enjoy that kind of day.

If I’d been at home last Sunday, I’d have probably on several occasions looked out the window and failed to find the motivation to get outside. No matter how exhilarating cycling through difficult conditions can be, it’s still hard to force yourself out there to do it. Comfort too often, too easily, wins out over the potential to feel exhilarated.

This weekend was different. The forecast was dry for Saturday, and – with Bobby and Flo happily off with Sue, Paddy, Ben and Rachel for the weekend – Sue and I pedalled north through the Yealands, over the River Kent, around Whitbarrow and up the gorgeous Winster valley, to drop down to Bowness-on-Windermere a few very happy hours later.

Yesterday we took the ferry across Windermere and rode up through the Sawreys and down to Esthwaite Water, before riding south into another little south lakeland gem of a valley, the Rusland. The sun continued to shine, and we arrived home after 2 days and 100 miles pedalling through north-west September England as dry as we had left. The dryness of the weekend was all the more enjoyable because of the previous weekend’s damp, and the dampness of that weekend stands out because such dampness is not entirely typical. Here in autumnal north-west England there is no typical, and the uneven climate combines with the uneven topography to produce an extra-special slice of the cycling universe.

So here’s my little thought for the next time you’re thinking about making a cycling journey, and you check the forecast or look outside, and you realise that if you go by bike then you’re in for a soaking – go for it anyway. Experiences do not stand alone; they speak to, and so importantly make, each other. And of course, in making each other, they are also making us …

Cycling champion!

Warning, this post is written by a proud Dad – if you’re prone to nausea at parents singing the praises of their kids and/or dwelling in the thrill of parenthood, you might just want to skip it ….

I love being a parent. It happened by accident, to be honest. It’s ten years ago now, when we found out Bobby was on his way (Sue had been feeling a bit strange on and off through our fortnight’s cycle-tour of the Pyrenees, and especially on the long ascent of Tourmalet …), and back then I felt completely unable to predict how I would find it. It’s still an open-ended adventure, of course; but wow, on a day-to-day level it’s great, and then – just occasionally – it’s absolutely sublime. And this weekend was absolutely sublime.

The opening stage of the Tour of Britain was due to pass through the Trough of Bowland and over Jubilee Tower on Saturday. That’s our cycling backyard, but it’s a backyard that our kids – because we don’t own a car and very rarely travel in one - have barely seen. I ride beyond the city limits regularly, and Sue fairly often, so Bobby and Flo hear about places like the Trough of Bowland and Jubilee Tower, but those names don’t mean that much to them – or so I thought. Actually, I know now that those names are lodged into my son Bobby’s nine-year old imagination, and that the thrill he felt at actually being able to ride and experience them for himself was just immense …

After our recent holiday in France, Bobby had 300 touring miles in his legs. Out there, he’d also proven himself a very adept rider; he handled his bike well, was able to concentrate for relatively long periods in the saddle, and road calmly and competently when occasionally we encountered busy roads, full of fast-moving motorised traffic. This gave us confidence that he was ready to ride more seriously on our local roads. Perhaps our biggest reservation was the severity of the climbs around Lancaster – it’d be impossible to go anywhere Bobby hadn’t already been without tackling some pretty fierce gradients. Although he’d coped with some hills around the Dordogne, they were nowhere near as relentless and steep as those found in our local cycling country.

There’s a buzz about watching professional bike riders on your own roads, and we’re lucky in that in recent years the Tour of Britain has passed regularly along ours. The last couple of years it’s come through on a school day, and Sue and I have ridden out without the kids to catch it. But this year it was coming on a Saturday, which meant that Bobby could come along too. We considered how best to turn the experience into a little adventure, and I booked Bobby and myself into Slaidburn youth hostel on Friday night. Straight after school we’d ride the 24 miles out there, through the Trough, have dinner at the super village pub, The Hark to Bounty, stay overnight, then ride back to the Trough to watch the pro peloton ride through on Saturday, before continuing back home over Jubilee Tower. I was a bit apprehensive about how Bobby would cope with the hills, and the absence of child-friendly distractions along the way, but I also figured that even if we had to walk all of the tougher sections, we could still make it before nightfall.

You just don’t know until you give things a go, do you? But I know now that I needn’t have worried, and that Bobby is a stronger and more feisty little fella than either Sue or I had ever imagined.

We got lucky with the weather; it stopped raining as we left home and started again as we tucked our bikes into the youth hostel’s cycle shed at Slaidburn three hours later. But Bobby moved through the hill country of north Lancashire with such ease and grace that I wonder if those first two weeks of his pre-natal life spent cycling the high Pyrenean cols haven’t somehow found their way into his legs and lungs, and given him a cycling soul (though I take nothing-for-granted here, and for now his love of football seems stronger than his love for cycling). The first four miles we followed the route of my commute, to Lancaster University. Then we traced the back road through Ellel to Galgate; only there do you really start to feel like you’re on the lanes; my lanes; our lanes …

The riding gets more hilly as you move towards the dark bulk of the Forest of Bowland, but Bob rose out of his saddle with the land – he can stand on the pedals for minutes at a time; he never seems to tire of doing so. He wasn’t at all fazed by the wall of tarmac which greets you on what – following our friend Tom Cahill - we call ‘The Duke’s Road’ to Marshaw; it’s short, but the gradient must exceed 1 in 4. And he danced his way up the easy side of the Trough, where I showed him the memorial plaque to Bill Bradley, winner of the Tour of Britain in 1959 and 1960. Here he is at the top …

But if Bobby excelled at the cycling, his interests and priorities seemed elsewhere. The highlight of his trip was rescuing a frog off the road which runs over the River Wyre at Street. When we got to Slaidburn he wanted to call Mum and list the creatures we’d spotted along the way – not just the frog, but a sparrowhawk, a hare, countless rabbits and a black cat. All along the way he was keeping a list of the things he’d seen. Initially I thought this odd, but when I quizzed him he told me he was relaxed about the cycling, and confident about tackling the climbs, because Sue and I believed that he could do it, so he believed he could do it too. The big deal for Bobby was not the cycling, but the world which cycling was opening up to him. At times I watched him riding in front of me, getting blown by the wind as he made his way across the moors, and it almost blew my head away – the vicarious sense of what he must be experiencing; how he was encountering with all his senses this magnificent world by bike which I tend so often to take for granted. The adventure for Bob was less in the turning of the pedals, than in the world which his pedalling was bringing about.

The biggest test of the trip would undoubtedly be the following day, tackling the Trough from the south-east, the hard side. We rode out of Slaidburn on the back road to Newton, a road I’d never taken before and which will forever now be for me ‘Bobby’s road’, and then onto Dunsop Bridge, where we stopped for coffee, hot chocolate and to feed the ducks. Sue and I have ridden past the Dunsop Bridge ducks so many times and said to one another how much Bobby and Flo would enjoy them – often they waddle their ways across the road, or simply sit in it, holding up the cars – so that drivers must emerge and ‘shooo’ them out of their way. And here, finally, was Bobby’s introduction to the Dunsop ducks; we bought a bag of duck food from Puddleducks and out on the village green, and much to his delight, he was quickly surrounded; the pure and simple joys of childhood ….

At Dunsop Bridge we began to feel ourselves to be participating in ‘an event’. People were converging, many by bike, and moving towards the Trough. We moved with them. As we approached the beginnings of the climb Sue appeared from the other direction; she’d ridden out from Lancaster to meet us. Together then, we headed onto the hill. We were careful to keep Bobby’s expectations in check – this is one tough climb; it reduces many people to pushing their machines. People already lined the road, and as they saw Bobby approach many of them began to cheer him on. I saw his resolve set in. We’d intended to stop half-way up, to find a spot from which to watch the pros, but I could see that Bob wanted to do the climb. How I loved that – to see in my own son that pure appetite to ride a hill, to rise to its challenge so that the world falls away and it becomes just you and the road, with as the only end the point at which the up becomes down. As the road ramped up he rose to it. I burbled the inanities I burble to myself when I’m in that fight – “keep it going”, “focus on your front wheel, don’t look up just yet”, “stay calm, keep your breathing under control”; but I don’t think he needed them – he was in his own zone. And he just kept on and on, and I was as astonished as many of those standing at the side of the road seemed to be, that this slight nine year old lad, on such a little bike, was successfully climbing the hard side of the Trough …

We returned to the steepest section of the climb to watch the riders come through. Friends were among the many people continuing to arrive – first Jules and his daughters Anya and Mia, and then Hayden, Jim and Reuben - and together we shared the very specific and very intense enjoyment which comes from anticipating the peloton about to pass you by. Then, suddenly they were upon us – first a breakaway of three riders, Richie Port and Wout Poels, with Jack Bauer struggling on the gradient to stay in touch with them. We cheered them on. A few minutes passed and someone shouted that the peloton was at the foot of the climb. I looked down to the valley’s bottom, and there – what a feeling!

Not a view but a feeling … I could call it a religious experience … If filled me with awe. The peloton filled the valley – our valley, one we know well, was suddenly full of men who ride bikes for a living. From where we stood, high above them, they looked almost static, though we knew they were moving faster across that ground than we ever will. To witness such a thing provokes a very special sensation in me … I suppose other people feel that way when they see a cathedral, or a work of art, but I never have been so moved by those things. But a bunch of cyclists – it’s less than a moment, but it etches deep into my being. Sacred …

Then they were upon us, point blank, moving so fast it took our collective breath away.

And in an instant they were gone. The event had moved up the road, leaving us behind, with our little moments, tiny fragments of sensations and memories. The bike race had punctured our everyday cycling lives, which are different now, as are the roads on which we will continue to ride.

We set off home via Jubilee Tower, another place about which Bobby had heard us talk but to which he had never before been. He wanted to cycle up Jubilee Tower. We approached from the moor side, the easy way. One day soon, now we know what he can do, we’ll tackle it the hard way, from Lancaster. He was chuffed to bits to reach the top of the climb, and then to climb up the Tower itself. Through his cycling he had won views, of the bay and of the hills, which he hadn’t known existed; he could see his home from another perspective.

Whatever the conclusion, another chapter in Bobby’s cycling journey has begun. I’m not so sure about Bobby, but Sue and I are thrilled.

Cycling on Colonsay

It already seems ages ago, but earlier this month we spent a wonderful week on the wee Scottish isle of Colonsay. It was a bit of a Lancaster invasion to be honest, with somewhere between 60 and 70 of us travelling up, and scattering ourselves across various holiday cottages on the island, which felt to me like Scotland in miniature – a bit of everything, including simply superb beaches, all within a very tight – and remarkably cycle-friendly – space.

You never really know quite what to expect – in terms of cycling – when you’re going to a place for the first time, do you? We were hoping the island would be cycle-friendly, but we didn’t know for sure that it would be. So was it? Mainly ‘yes’, with a little bit of ‘no’.

‘Yes’ in that there’s basically only one single-track road which forms a circular route of perhaps eight miles, and which has a couple of short spurs – to north and south – off it. These roads are very narrow, and drivers of motorised vehicles almost invariably go relatively slowly (rarely exceeding 20 or perhaps 25 mph), and take considerable care. And there aren’t that many motorised vehicles anyway (although probably a lot fewer than normal the week that us lot were there – one of the ferry workers commented that he’d never seen so many cyclists boarding the ferry .. it was great, I think we really did resemble a carnival procession!).

And the little bit ‘no’? Only, really, that – via an otherwise sensible and glossy leaflet explaining how to conduct oneself properly whilst moving around the island – someone (and how representative or not they are of a wider mood I cannot say) is spreading the suggestion that people on bikes should dismount whenever a car approaches. Thankfully most people sensibly ignore this piece of nonsense, but I suspect there’s a small minority of ‘locals’ who want to institute a hierarchy of road users on the island with cars placed uncritically at the top, and that these people therefore feel that they have some kind of right – even duty – to push past and very mildly intimidate the beautiful people riding bikes. But I must stress, this seemed – in our experiences there – to be only a very minor tendency, and almost always when we encountered people in cars, they reduced their speed or stopped completely, pulled over and gave us space, smiled and waved cheerily, and seemed perfectly happy that we chose to stay on our bikes and continue to cycle in their presence! (Although of course, we did also ourselves pull over to let cars past when it was polite and/or sensible to do so …)

With the hope that conditions would be good for children’s cycling, we decided that Bobby and Flo should have their own bikes there, so that they could really experience and enjoy riding independently on the roads. To reduce our usual mild anxieties about getting our bikes on the trains (Lancaster to Glasgow Central, then a walk to Glasgow Queen Street and another train to Oban), and so that we only needed to book two bike places, Sue and I decided to take folding bikes (Bromptons, borrowed for the week from work).

(For non-British readers, there are lots of issues around booking bikes and taking bikes on trains in Britain, which I’ll maybe talk more about at some point – though, for the record, we always take our bikes on trains in the UK and have never had a major problem in doing so, although that doesn’t stop us worrying – and indeed worrying – and taking appropriate action – could be one of the reasons we’ve never had a major problem …  That said however, our friends Anne, Martin and William took their bikes on train following the one we took from Lancaster to Glasgow – somehow or other there were five bikes booked onto this train, one more than is officially permissable; rather unbelievably, this ’problem’ resulted in the whole train being delayed for 40 minutes, lots of heated discussions between the train’s manager and driver, and finally, a stressed-out Anne, Martin and William being upgraded to first class and receiving complimentary breakfasts.)

So, cycling proved a great way to move around Colonsay. And how wonderful to see all our mates doing likewise. Unless someone out there knows better, I’d say that it’s perhaps as close as we get in the UK to somewhere like the glorious, almost utopian Dutch island of Vlieland, which we went to a few year’s back, on which bikes absolutely rule.

It was of course particularly wonderful to see all the kids experiencing such freedom by bike. Watching them cycling around so happily really forced the unhappy realisation of how constrained are their independent mobilities back home in and around Lancaster.

One of our Lancaster mates, Jon Mills, had arranged a football match earlier in the week. On Easter Monday perhaps 50 of us took to the island’s golf course, next to the little air field, split into two teams, and frantically kicked a ball around in storm force winds for an hour or so, with a final score of 3-2, golden boy Steve Archer scoring the winner (I hope to hear about that for years to come, over countless pints in countless places, Steve!). It was an absolute hoot! So, taking Jon’s lead and nicking the kids’ felt-tip pens, I created and put up a colourful poster on the noticeboard of the island’s store. It announced the ‘Tour de Colonsay’, one lap of the island’s road circuit, with a prize for all children who managed to complete it. After all, for little legs on little bikes with little wheels, eight miles is quite a long way, and the circuit involves quite a few rises and one pretty tough climb.

I had no idea whether anyone would show up, but it felt like doing my little bit for cycling promotion on the island. Fortunately, at 2 o’clock on Thursday afternoon the weather was fine. A few Lancaster friends came out, perhaps in solidarity more than anything, but it was also lovely to see many other people come along to take part, and we had a very enjoyable, convivial and relaxed ride.

So all up, Colonsay is a great place for cycling. Probably not if you’re a roadie, keen on getting in the miles; the opportunities for cycling on this little island are definitely limited, on the road anyway (there’s considerably more potential for MTBing). But for kids it’s really, really great. Meanwhile one of the tasks for those of us keen to boost cycling is to go to such places and not only to enjoy them as a break from the norm, but to use them as opportunities for reflecting on – and then working towards – making them the norm.

Barriers to cycling: wind

 

I spent a long weekend with some of the Monday nighters, doing some hard riding around the north of England. On Friday we rode from Lancaster to Nenthead, high in the Pennines, via Kirkby Lonsdale, Sedbergh, Appleby-in-Westmorland and Hartside. On Sunday we rode from Brompton-in-Swale, just to the east of Richmond, back home to Lancaster, via Redmire, Coverdale, Littondale and our usual last resting post, The Bridge Inn near Wennington.

 

The sun shone on us, mainly, on Sunday. Here’s a stretch of road which runs along the south-east base of Pen-y-ghent, connecting Halton Gill and Stainforth. As you can see, we’ve got some pretty good cycling infrastructure in the Yorkshire Dales.

 

 

And here’s Colin and me consulting the map, with Pen-y-ghent looming behind.

 

So we had plenty of hills. But it’s Saturday’s ride, when we also had the wind to contend with, on which I want to concentrate, briefly, here. We began the day riding north through Allendale, towards Hadrian’s Wall. Then Jules turned west, to Brampton and into the teeth of a strengthening gale, whilst Colin, John and I flew east past Hexham before veering south to Blanchland. I nipped into the village shop for flapjack there, and asked the storekeeper if she knew what the wind would be doing. “Getting stronger this afternoon”, she told me, “you’re not going up are you?” We were, over the moors to Stanhope.

As we began the climb we had some shelter. But as we climbed higher there was no escape from the wind. Towards the top, out on the moor, we were riding on the right-hand side of the road, so that when the wind took us, we had the road’s width in which to steady ourselves and remain upright. There was so little traffic, this was a sensible strategy.

Over the top and down the other side we accelerated into trouble. I could feel the wind lifting my wheels from the ground. It kept pushing me off the road, into the verge. John came past me, his body and bike tilted towards the wind, so he was riding at about 70 degrees to the tarmac. I entered a space of complete concentration. Not flow, I felt far too inept and clumsy for that. But I became completely preoccupied with battling the wind, and somehow making it through.

The next time I left the road I looked behind to see a car stopped alongside Colin, who was on the ground. I saw him struggling to his feet, then getting knocked back down again. From where I was, it looked like some kind of surreal comedy, so insanely slapstick that I could imagine it being a Laurel and Hardy sketch. Not silent of course, the wind roared. The wind, it has to be said, was just magnificent.

I tried walking back up the hill with my bike. Impossible. I dumped it in the ditch, and struggled back up to him. If we stood close and shouted, we could just about make ourselves heard before the wind ripped our voices away. He’d pulled over to let the car pass, which had left him with no room for manoeuvre. He’d gone head first over the handlebars, and the bike had landed on top of him. The couple in the car were concerned that he was OK. He was, but I think the incident had completed dented what little faith he may have had remaining in his ability to get down to the valley by bike.

I continued down, and reached the junction with the Edmundbyers-Stanhope road. There was more car traffic along here. Some of the drivers were very good – they were able to see, and respond appropriately to, the difficulties we were having. Others drove atrociously. Later Colin told me how one driver passing him blared his horn, gesticulated wildly, and mouthed obscenities. I guess, from where he sat, and without an ounce of empathy or solidarity with the cyclist’s condition,  it looked like we were holding him up. I guess, in a bizarre and rather ineffective way, we were trying particularly hard to assert our right to the road.

I developed a riding style (using that term loosely) that seemed to work. It involved desperately clinging onto my bike, with one foot clipped in and the other dangling near the ground, so I was ready to dismount every time I left the road.

A little further down, John was waiting. I told him that Colin had crashed, but was OK. John went back up to look for him. By now it had become a very weird drama, three men (as well as two mountain bikers, who I saw briefly, storm-blown statues frozen into the landscape, looking for all the world as though they were completely unable to proceed) stumbling slowly down off a mountain, seeking sanctuary in the valley below, a valley which seemed almost impossible to reach. But finally I got down to a cattle-grid, where I sheltered in the lee of a farm-house, and waited for the others to arrive.

Maybe five minutes passed. A car pulled up. The woman inside told me she’d taken Colin down to Stanhope, and had come back to see if either John or I needed help. A good samaritan! Suddenly the drivers who had passed too close and too fast, seemingly oblivious to our predicament, were trumped in my mind by a single person who’d been willing to help. Colin told me later that she stopped when she saw him lying beside the road, completely exhausted and devoid of a strategy for how to continue. He’d tried to stand up with his bike, his bike had been flipped into the air, he’d been knocked over and his bike had landed on top of him … This lightweight gear’s not all it’s cracked up to be, eh?

John and I had survived the hard bit, so were happy to ride the rest of the way down to Stanhope. What a contrast there! Stanhope’s a lovely little town, full of fine stone buildings. At lunchtime on Saturday it seemed outrageously calm, dignified, impervious to the elements.

Entering the cafe on Stanhope high street was even more surreal. Everything, everybody seemed normal, as if nothing had happened, which of course, for them, it hadn’t. It was like one of those non-stop adventure films where the action suddenly, rudely enters into other people’s everyday lives, destabilising business-as-usual and producing comedy out of the contrast between the intense pace of the action and the stillness of everything else. Couples were sitting quietly, sipping tea from old-fashioned cups which sat elegantly on their saucers. The civility of the tea-room forced us to compose ourselves, but still we must have seemed raucous, rowdy and ever-so-slightly wild.

I wouldn’t swap my place on a bike for the world, even on a day like Saturday. I was a bit scared, I was on the edge of my capacity to keep upright on a bike, and I was exhausted, but I was also exhilarated. The wind breathes life into you. The wind revives. It makes you feel alive …

Wind is seen as a barrier to cycling. But it is also massively constitutive of our cycling experiences. What we cannot avoid, we encounter, experience and embody. The wind makes us, as cyclists, as people who experience the world differently because we ride bikes.

If you ride a bike you know how powerful the wind can be. You sit on a bike. On a bike you’re exposed. In contrast, you inhabit a car, you’re enclosed, sheltered, including from the elements, including from the wind. I think we should celebrate this difference. Admittedly, our experience up in the Pennines on Saturday was a bit extreme, but in general I struggle to understand why we should see the way cycling exposes you to the elements, including the wind, as a problem. Riding in the wind can be hard. But it can also be inspiring. It’s also inevitable. We should see cycling as a way of making ourselves stronger, better people, and thus of making stronger, better cultures.

As with wind, so with some of the other so-called ‘barriers to cycling’, such as hills and rain. People who want to eliminate these ‘barriers to cycling’ want to fit cycling into the world-as-it-is, they want to bend cycling into an imperfect world, they want to make cycling ‘perfect’ so it can sustain imperfection. That’s so wrong. I’d rather people deal with, experience and perhaps learn the pleasures of these ‘barriers to cycling’, so that by cycling they contribute to the world-as-it-ought-to-be.

Ride: a journey through cycling

A couple of years ago I rode from Land’s End to John O’Groats. It’s a ride which is both very ordinary, because so many people do it, and yet quite extraordinary, because behind each and every one of those rides lie magnificent stories – simply in order to cycle around a thousand miles from one end of mainland Britain to the other, you’ve got to be very committed; you need to plan and negotiate time out from the rest of your life, and then whoever you are, the ride is a challenge which you’re doing for your own unique set of reasons.

I had lots of reasons for doing the ride. Some were personal. My Dad had recently died. The previous few years had been marked by the intensities of bringing two young children into the world, and the stresses which that had perhaps inevitably induced in my relationship with Sue. I was fast approaching 40. I wanted time out. I wanted to think about the kind of man I was becoming, and the one I’d rather be.

Some of my reasons were less personal, perhaps more sociological (though check out the work of the great sociologist, C. Wright Mills, especially his The Sociological Imagination, if you want to think about how the two are connected). I was, still am, deeply interested in what’s happening to cycling. Cycling is always in transition, moving away from being some things and towards being others. I wanted to make a journey through cycling, and to get a feel for the state of cycling in the UK at the start of the twenty-first century. Riding this legendary journey would give me the opportunity to visit people and places of significance to cycling, to hear people’s stories, and to use them to create my own.

I rode with members of the Penzance Wheelers down to Land’s End, with Critical Massers through Manchester, on a recumbent around Edinburgh, and on a mountain bike at Glentress Forest. I visited the British Cycle Museum in Camelford, Sustrans HQ in Bristol, the Pashley cycle factory in Stratford-upon-Avon. I rode through big cities and national parks, and on as many different kinds of cycling infrastructure as I could – along off-road routes, dual carriageways and, obviously, miles and miles of quiet country lanes. All along my way, I met people who love, and live, cycling.

I wanted to tell a story about cycling, my own story about cycling, but one built out of many other cycling stories. I wanted to weave many cycling stories into a bigger cycling story.

I planned to write a book about my ride, this journey through cycling. So I became a madman, talking incessantly into my digital recorder, whether on or off the bike. I recorded my thoughts, and my many conversations with the people I encountered along my way. I made notes, I assembled my – in sociology speak – documentary evidence. Then I came home, impatient to convert my wealth of quite wonderful experiences into a book, and …., and began slowly to realise that writing a book is tough, surprisingly tough … Everything seemed to get in the way, and to be frank I was often absolutely rubbish at staying motivated in the absence of external deadlines. So although my book proceeded, it did so in fits and starts. And then, disaster … I went and took a full-time job!

Some chapters are written, most are more than half-written, and all are well on the way (to where, and whether it’s worth going to, I must leave others to judge). So I’m unhappy with the possibility that the book might simply stall, and then disappear without trace. If only for myself, it feels that there’s merit in continuing the process, in – however imperfectly – getting it done. So, as a recent convert to this blogging business and with the enthusiasm of the recent convert, I’ve decided to renew my writing efforts and to post excerpts, bit-by-bit, on a blog.

Today I’ve set up a sister-blog to this one, Ride: a journey through cycling, where – if you’re so inclined – you’ll be able to see bits of the ‘book’ gradually appear. The excerpts won’t seamlessly follow on from one another, they’ll be more fragmented than that – the point is to get me to finish the whole book, without giving the whole story away. My intention is to get a publisher interested in that …

As here, the writing will be a bit rough in parts, but as I say, doing it this way is a device designed to make me write. And anyone who might be interested at least has the opportunity to read my work-in-progress. Hopefully one or two of those people might even give me a little feedback, so I get a bit more of a clue as to whether what I’m writing has any merit beyond the pleasure it gives me. I’ll also be fulfilling my obligation to my Dad, in whose memory the story is written, and to all the people who talked to me, helped me along my way, and in so many ways and so significantly contributed to it.

Anyhow, if you’d like to know more, just click onto my other blog – Ride: a journey through cycling.