The First Annual London to Haywards Heath Night Ride

While you were getting into your pyjamas last night, brushing your teeth and tucking in your teddy bear, James and I were hot footing it over to Clapham Common for the London to Brighton Night Ride.  I say hot-footing it, but I mean desperately calling a taxi as the trains were unexpectedly not running (I did check, before you say anything).

Things had not, therefore, started well.  We had also discovered earlier in the day that we'd been given different start times (I had 23:30 and James had 23:00) and that James didn't have a bus ticket.  We managed to sort all of these things out eventually and we lined up to set of at half past eleven with a load of pretty much identically dressed folks - black lycra bottoms and fluorescent yellow lycra tops were the order of the day (or, rather, night).  A lot of people had really gone to town on their lighting displays with many looking like they had mistaken it for a Christmas event.

The first several miles were through London suburbia, largely uneventful but punctuated by the "encouraging" shouts, chants and other vocal exuberances of the pub chucking out time crowd.  We went past one group of girls shouting "Tour de France, Tour de France" at the top of their voices, in the most un-French accents imaginable - we weren't sure if they were genuinely confused or trying to be funny, but it was definitely us laughing rather than them...

The route for the night ride is substantially different from that for the day ride.  The day ride has quite a lot of big hills, but they are spread out and mostly short, sharp shocks.  The night ride starts by giving you an enormously long, slow climb which somewhat takes the wind out of your sails and makes the next few miles arduous as you try to recover.  It seems never ending, but when you do reach the top, you are rewarded with the first rest stop.  We needed a cup of tea and a sit down by that point, so that's what we did.

After that rest stop, we had a bit of a down hill run, which was a blessed relief after the gruelling start.  About three or four miles further on, there was a sharp downhill under a railway bridge into a sharp right hand bend.  As I went under the railway bridge, holding my line on the road, a car decided to overtake me.  It had the stereo blaring and was going too fast for the road layout and the fact that there were so many other vehicles (bikes) on the road.  As it came past, it swang wide in preparation for the right turn and clipped my front wheel, not hard enough to do any damage to the Beeblemobile, but enough to slam my already ailing left shoulder (from my whiplash injury a few months ago) into the wall of the bridge - in some ways I'm thankful the bridge was there, though, as the result if it wasn't could have been far worse.  Because of the right turn, no-one got the car's licence plate and as I thought I was relatively unscathed and I had somewhere to be, I left it and carried on.

Just after that incident, the route surprised us with another hideous hill, a spike at the 20 mile mark.  We were still only a third of the way in and already most people, including myself, were walking up the hills.  When I eventually made it to the top, James was waiting for me.  We had a drink and a rest and then decided to set off again.  At this point, James realised that he had a flat tyre.  We had planned for such eventualities and had a spare inner tube.  We realised that the puncture had been caused by a shard of glass that had slashed the rubber and left a hole.  It took quite a while to change the tube, but James managed it and we limped the ten miles to the next rest stop - James found this hard going as although he'd done the best with the pumps we had with us, it transpired he'd only got the fixed tyre up to about a third of the recommended pressure.  The very helpful service man at the rest stop quickly rectified this and we were on our way again.

At this point the sky was starting to get a bit lighter and my shoulder was getting a lot sorer.  Just before the rest stop, I'd hit a pothole hard and it made me cry as the impact jarred the whole of my left side.  James suggested that it was perhaps inadvisable to continue, but I'm a stubborn being and we weren't even half way.  So, on we pressed, past the half way mark and up another bl**dy hill.  It was becoming apparent that I could no longer control my bike at low speed and the proximity of other cyclists and cars on the road was making things a bit hairy.  We came to a place called Balcombe which had a station and we were ready to call it quits.  However, the first train from Balcombe on a Sunday is at 7:30 a.m. and it was only six o'clock.  We took a look at our map and realised that our best option was to carry on another four miles and then take a left turn into Haywards Heath when everyone else was going right towards Devil's Dyke and, eventually, Brighton.  And so it was that at 6:58 a.m. we got on a train that would take us home (well, nearly home), and I was in bed by 9.

We made it to forty miles, two-thirds of the way.  The night time course is significantly harder than the day time course and I'm not sure if I want to give it another go next year - I may have to accept that I'm beaten on this one.  My shoulder is still very sore, but I have good painkillers and I'll be booking to see a specialist about it as soon as I can; I'm not sure they will be able to do anything other than tell me to rest it.  I'm glad we stopped when we did, although I'm sorely disappointed not to have made it the distance (and I don't have a medal).

James and I would like to thank everyone who sponsored us for this event and we're really sorry that we didn't complete it.  However, rest assured that the donations you made will be just as valuable to British Heart Foundation in continuing their excellent and much-needed work.

Ready for Round Two

We successfully completed the London to Brighton event, and eventful it was.  For some reason, the organisers had tried to fix something that wasn't broken and created all of the bottlenecks in the world on the route, meaning it took us three hours longer than it should have to get to Brighton, which was, shall we say, less than excellent.  All of that's quite a long time ago now and I stumbled off my bike and straight back into a seemingly never-ending work, eat, don't bother to sleep cos sleeping's for wimps cycle.

Things are a little better now and I'm looking forward to Round Two - yes, this weekend it is the London to Brighton Night Ride!  It's come around very, very quickly and I'm far more excited about it than I was about the daytime version.  I have discovered that I love riding my bike at night.  Not when it happens to be dark at rush hour time, you understand (although that isn't the case at the moment), but when I have to ride home at 1 am because that's when I'm going home from work at the end of the week and I don't want to leave my bike in the City over the weekend - that's when it's lovely.  The buses are less frequent, so are not in the way.  There are far fewer cars around.  There are far fewer pedestrians around (other than in Shoreditch, which is clearly where all of the pedestrians go after dark so that they can wander around in the middle of the road, drunk or otherwise incapacitated).  It is peaceful and you can hear individual vehicles coming from miles off so you know they are there in plenty of time.  Bliss.

So, if the Night Ride conforms to my idealistic view of riding at night, then it should be a beautiful experience.  We have already received our Night Ride souvenir t-shirts.  The logo thingy on the front is sparkly - we're wondering if it's glow in the dark.

We're hoping that because we're cycling to Brighton twice, because the Night Ride is longer than the daytime event (60 miles instead of 54) and because, well, WE'RE CYCLING TO BRIGHTON AT NIGHT, you lovely folks might be persuaded to dip your hand into your pocket one more time to make a donation to British Heart Foundation - you can find our sponsorship page here.

I'll report back after the event and let you know if it lives up to my expectations!

The Lazy Days of (Almost) Summer

Where have I been?  I've been here, I've just not been writing.  Or cycling.  You'd think that after two weeks off from both work and intensive cycling (if you can call a ride to work and back a few times a week "intensive") I'd have been back with a spring in my step, ready to take on the world.  Not so.

First of all, it took me nearly a week to get over my jet lag - getting out of bed in time to get the train to work was a minor miracle, so getting up in time to cycle just wasn't happening.  When you take into account the time it takes for me to walk to and from stations and wait for the train, it probably takes about the same time as it does to cycle door to door, but with cycling I have to factor in packing my clothes for the day, showering time when I get there and so on, so a good half an hour extra of my bleary-eyed morning is required.

Then, as soon as I'd got over the jet lag, I got into a massive firestorm of work, causing sleep deprivation, which has effects similar to - jetlag.  I've also had a few busy weekends, with a family 90th birthday party, James' birthday and a few church things going on, so there's been no time for nice long rides, either.  After a not terribly relaxing bank holiday weekend (although I did go on a steam train!) I think I'm sufficiently recovered to contemplate cycling to work tomorrow.  Yes, that's what I'm going to do.

I've actually just realised that there are only two and a bit weeks to go until the London to Brighton Bike Ride, so I'd better get my derriere in to gear and get on my bike.  There, that's decided.  Much more cycling from now on; and much more writing about it.

Till the Sun Comes Up Over Santa Monica Boulevard

Sheryl Crow's got a lot to answer for.  It's absolutely impossible to spend any time in LA without constantly singing her classic hit All I Wanna Do.  In fact, I have no idea how the Angelenos cope with the incessant earworm.

On my mint green steed near Santa Monica Pier

Once we had left San Diego, we were back on the train to LA.  I was very curious to see whether anyone at all cycles in LA and the surrounding area, given its reputation for being a sprawling city of the car.  I needn't have worried - well, not too much, anyway.  All of the buses in LA have the same type of cycle racks on the front as in San Diego, but they seem to be used less in LA.  We hadn't been in Pasadena (my Uncle Simon's adopted home town) for very long before we saw our first people actually cycling on the road, and they were serious about it.  They were in a pack of about 15, all dressed head to toe in matching Lycra kits which were undoubtedly replicas of those worn by their favourite tour cyclists.  They were most likely riding up into the San Gabriel mountains for a few tough hill climbs and scenic descents.

The elusive other side
of the marina

We had the opportunity to meet one of these cyclists, Uncle Simon's friend Gordon, who regularly cycles on a Sunday morning.  There was some talk of us going on one of his mountain jaunts, but the reasons why we shouldn't join him were so numerous (fitness levels - we're not used to climbing mountains, having to cycle on the "wrong" side of the road for most of the ride, the heat, and so on) that we decided that it would perhaps be better to hire bikes at the beach and ride there.  Gordon provided us with a recommendation for a cycle hire shop and Uncle Simon kindly dropped us at Santa Monica Beach.

James outside the restaurant we had lunch at

This time, I knew what I wanted - a cruiser with hand brakes - and James opted for the same.  There is clearly some colour coding going on in Southern California, because I scored another mint green beauty.  James had a black "Pantero", which sounded far more aggressive than it was.  We set off south and soon found the cycle path.  The distance from where we started to Venice Beach can't be more than a mile or two, but the path was so winding (to avoid playgrounds, car parks, showers and other amenities) that it could easily have been more like five miles long.  At Venice Beach, the beach cycle path disappeared and we were signposted down a street.  We followed the signs a short way, but ended up unconvinced that we could get around the marina we came across, so turned back and got some lunch at a lovely restaurant in Venice.

One of the better skaters

After lunch, we made another attempt to get around the marina and got a bit further, but there were so many roadworks in the area (many of them causing the inside lane on dual carriageways to be closed, making it quite dangerous to cycle), that we decided it was a bad idea and turned back again - in any case, the whole point of the exercise was to watch the crazies on Venice Beach and our route was taking us further away from there.  We were slightly surprised not to find any mad Schwarzenegger-style body builders in this area, but there were plenty of places that would be willing to fulfil a medicinal "herb" prescription and the whole place was a bit like a very hot Camden-Market-on-Sea.

We came across a skate park and stopped for a few minutes to watch the skateboarders.  Some of them were very good and some were mediocre.  None was bad, but we soon realised that anyone who was a terrible skater wouldn't be skating at Venice Beach at a time when there would be a guaranteed audience.

These people are 47% upside down

We pootled (did I mention that I love that word?) back up to Santa Monica Beach and spent some time watching people messing about with the gym equipment.  We came to the conclusion that there must be a law in the city of Santa Monica (which is sometimes referred to in the local area as the People's Republic of Santa Monica) which prohibits people from spending more than 30 minutes on the beach unless they promise to spend at least 47% of the time upside down.

Greetings from SoCal!

So here I am in Southern California!  We made it, eventually.  We've just arrived in Pasadena to stay with Uncle Simon (of washing machine motorbike fame), having spent the last four days in San Diego.  If anyone tells you not to go to California if you can't/won't drive, then go anyway.  So far, we've managed perfectly well using public transport, including delightful train journeys to San Diego from LA and back again (think legroom in standard class, a decent selection of drinks and courteous staff - albeit with an approximate view of timetabling).  I understand that LA may be a different story (given that we're staying in Pasadena rather than downtown), but I'll reserve judgement until I've tried it.

Bike rack on the bus

I was speaking yesterday morning at breakfast with one of our new friends from the conference James was speaking at.  She lives in Albany, New York and was amazed at just how many cyclists there are in San Diego.  I mentioned last week that the buses in San Diego have racks for bikes, but what I hadn't appreciated was that these racks are fitted to the front of the bus - on the outside.  Each bus (and all of the urban buses have them) has a rack for two bicycles that folds up and away when not in use - there's even advertising space on the bottom of the rack that shows when it's stowed.

The Coronado Ferry

These racks appear to be reasonably well used and no-one seems particularly perturbed about having their bike affixed to the front of a large moving vehicle.  I was intrigued as to the circumstances in which one would want to use the racks rather than cycling, though - I know we're not all capable of cycling 20 miles at a time, so some older and less fit cyclists might use them, but I'm guessing that the primary use is freeway avoidance - people hopping on the bus with their bike to avoid a few busy stretches and a couple of nasty junctions.  I'm really not sure it will catch on in London any time soon.

Bike rack on the ferry

Another thing that might put me off cycling in the US (on a general level) is the trains.  Yes, that's right, the trains.  The railway tunnel/bridge/underpass does not seem to have found its way to this side of the Atlantic and every place that a train line and a road meet, there's a rail road crossing (a level crossing, to us Brits).  In downtown San Diego, there are a lot of train lines and trolley lines (light rail/tram), and so there are a lot of rail road crossings, which are really irritating.  In particular, there are coast-hugging train routes, so if you want to get to the beach on a bike, you may well have to wait at a crossing to do so.

One of the things I wanted to find out was why people cycle here - it seems that, like in the UK, it's a reasonable mixture of leisure cycling, commuting and other getting from one place to another and sport cycling.  There appears to be some kind of law here that if you indulge in sport cycling in any way, you must have head to toe matching Lycra.

View of the Coronado Bridge over the handlebars

As you might imagine, I couldn't resist having a go myself, so while James was at his conference, I got on the ferry to Coronado, a small almost-island that is half mansions, half naval base.  The ferry transports only people and bikes (and, apparently, Segways), and has a good bike rack on the lower deck.  After a spot of lunch, I rented a bike from a shop near the ferry landing and went on a little tour of the island.  At the shop, I was asked whether I'd prefer a "cruiser" or a "comfort bike".  I opted for the cruiser, which can only be described as the love child of a Pashley and a Harley Davidson.  I was then offered the choice from among the cruisers of a 7-speed bike with hand-brakes or a fixie with Dutch brakes (pedal brakes).  I decided now was not the moment to try a whole new different mechanism, so I opted for the former, and was presented with a shiny, mint green bicycle with a very convenient basket on the front.

Coronado Ferry Landing

I took my first tentative "steps" on the bike and felt a bit wobbly - it's a very strange sensation as it sits you so far back that you may as well be lying down, and your hands are more than shoulder width apart.  This was my first time on a bike other than mine or James' (which is very much like mine), so I was understandably a bit cautious.

Hotel del Coronado

Coronado is blessed with a coastal mixed-use path with no motor vehicles, so my plan was to follow that as far as I could and then see how much time I had left.  I was whizzing along the seafront with an enormous grin on my face, past restaurants and homes and families having picnics.  I passed the Coronado Bridge and went up the side of a golf course and then reached...The Road.  Now I had to work out whether I was going to address the large, probably red question mark that was hanging over my excursion.  Would I ride on the road, given that it would have to be on the "wrong" side?  I got off the bike and observed the traffic for a couple of minutes and then made my decision in an instant.  I did it.  I just went.  The big grin returned and I had an uninterrupted journey all the way to Hotel del Coronado, reportedly where Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson first met, 15 years before they were officially together.  It was noticeable that the cars that passed me gave me a very, very wide berth.  It helped that it was a very wide road, but I couldn't be sure whether they were giving me so much room just because that's what they do here, because they could see that I was on a rental bike so were approaching me with caution or I just happened upon a train of 5 or 6 nice drivers.

Cyclist windmill sculpture

After a quick look around, I set off on my return journey, hampered somewhat by the presence of a cycle tour group on the cycle path - they didn't seem to understand that riding five abreast very slowly wasn't going to work for anyone but them, and then they parked up, blocking the entire path.

Once back, I relinquished my steed and got the rentals lady to take a picture of me with it, before hopping back on the ferry to San Diego, full of excitement to tell James all about my day.

Unscathed and excited!

Holibobs

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm off on holibobs tomorrow, so this will be my last daily post for a while - I'll try to post a bit from the other side of the world, but it could be a bit sporadic.

I've been doing a bit more digging on where I'm going, and it seems that LA has plans for something like 1,500 miles of bikeways in the next few years and even the buses have bike racks on them.  Maybe it's not the Netherlands' model we should be aspiring to.

It has also occurred to me that if I do any cycling while I'm away, I'm going to have to deal with yet another new concept - they drive on the wrong side of the road.  James and I discussed this earlier, and we reckon there's a chance that I might actually deal with this better than he will, as I've only been riding on the road in the UK for a very short time, whereas he has been riding on the left since the beginning of time.  Only time will tell, and I'm not entirely convinced that either of us riding on the wrong side of the road in a different country is a great idea.

Anyhow, ta ta for now - think of us on our enormously long flight tomorrow, and also think of my friend (who I wrote about the other day) who has her first cycling class at 9 a.m.

California Dreamin'

I've mentioned a few times in the last couple of weeks that I'm about to go on a trip.  Well, it's true.  I'm about to go on a trip.  On Monday, James and I will be travelling halfway around the world (or thereabouts) to Los Angeles on a mixed business and pleasure trip.  We'll actually be spending the first few days in San Diego, as we're flying into LAX but then immediately taking the Pacific Surfliner train down the coast, almost all the way to Mexico.  James is speaking at a conference in San Diego and I'm going to be doing some business development and having some precious R&R time.  Then we're back to LA to stay with my Uncle Simon (he of washing machine motorbike fame) while James attends another conference and I spend some time with my colleagues in our LA office, potentially interspersed with a little Disney magic.

One of the things I want to do while I'm in Southern California is see how many people cycle and also how they cycle - I'm anticipating that they're not going to be commuting along the 6-lane highways of LA in rush hour, but do people just see cycling as a leisure activity, or do they actually use bikes to get around?  While the cities themselves are as frantic as any others, they are also very close to some of the most beautiful national and state parks around - which are also reasonably mountainous, which I guess might put some people off!

I've equipped myself with a couple of guide books for the trip and grew slightly concerned when my Eyewitness Travel "Top 10 San Diego" didn't have cycling in its top ten ways to get around San Diego.  However, on a closer inspection, it transpires that cycling is the number one outdoor activity, largely on the grounds that there are over 300 miles of bikeways and the city is described as "very cycle-friendly".  In fact, the book has details of a bike ride in the district of Coronado, and the ferry to Coronado is only for people and bicycles.

The other book, Lonely Planet's "Coastal California" reinforces San Diego's cycle-friendliness with a listing for a cycle tour company and, to my surprise, goes even further, with references to several other cycle routes, including the 22 mile South Bay Bicycle Trail in LA, which parallels the famous Santa Monica and Venice beaches, and listings for cycle hire shops and a section on the rules of the road for cyclists (i.e. you can cycle pretty much anywhere except where it says you can't, even on freeways).

It's a good job, if I am going to do any cycling in the US, that I know where the hire shops are, of course, as I won't be taking the Beeblemobile with me.  I could, though.  I was very surprised to learn that Virgin Atlantic permit passengers to transport sports equipment for free, in addition to normal baggage allowances, so long as the equipment doesn't weigh more than 23kg.  I could also take the bike on the Surfliner in a special cycle rack they have on the train.

All in all, it sounds like where I'm going could be great for a cyclist - will the land of the car prove to also be the land of the bike?

The Caped Crusader

Yes, that's me!  The Caped Crusader!  Last night I set off for home before it got dark, but I realised it would be dusky before I made it back, so I needed to wear my lovely fluorescent orange jacket.  The problem was, it was too warm to do it up, which meant that it flowed out behind me like a superhero cape.  It was all I could do not to take off and fly home (although that would have been more like E.T. than Wonder Woman, given the presence of the bike).

In my superhero state of mind, I still had to learn some important cycling life skills on the way home.  Number one was that on a Thursday night there are nearly as many people roaming around the streets of Shoreditch as on a Friday night (OK, so I knew this already, but the weather was so nice, they were spilling out of the pubs a little more than usual, mostly into the middle of the road).  Number two was that on a Thursday night at about 7.30 p.m., all of the cars in London sneak into side roads (in particular the ones I pass on my route home) ready to jump out at unsuspecting cyclists - you think I'm joking, but one of the cars that I passed in such a manner did appear to actually be lying in wait for someone to come past so that it could knock them down or run them over.  Number three was "beware the fire engine".

There was an episode of Family Guy on BBC3 the other night that had a ferocious fire engine beating up Peter Griffin with its ladder.  The fire engine I encountered last night immediately made me think of this episode.  I had seen the blue lights and heard the sirens of an ambulance and a fire engine from some way down the road.  By the time I was approaching the area they had been in, they had moved on and I presumed that they were long gone.  I was coming up towards a crossroads between two major roads (one of which I was on), and just before the crossroads, there is a junction where a small side street joins the main road from the left.  Just as my front wheel passed the point of no return (i.e. I couldn't stop as there wouldn't be room for anything to turn out of the junction), the fire engine - I presume it was the same one - suddenly appeared with its sirens blaring, wanting to turn right onto the main road, across my lane, to go the opposite way from me.  It wasn't stopping.

This was a do or die moment for me.  James had been on at me for a while to learn to ride standing up so that I could get more power into hill climbing.  Frankly, it's all I can do to cycle along with my derriere on my siege, so the idea of standing up horrifies me.  However, the circumstances were dire - if I didn't get a shift on, I was going to be flattened by an angry fire engine so, without thinking about it (because if I had, it wouldn't have happened) I suddenly and majestically rose from my seat and pedalled like a lunatic until I'd got past the junction.  It is likely that this will never happen again unless there are similar circumstances.

Why I Won't Be Extreme Ironing Anytime Soon

I'm a bit late writing today, partly because what I'm writing about didn't happen until this afternoon and partly because I've been trying to think of a title for this post which wouldn't, shall we say, make it come up in search results for people who are definitely not looking for a blog about novice cyclists.

As you'll recall, nearly two weeks ago I had my first ever fall off my bike and, as a result, this afternoon I had my first ever cycling-related doctor's appointment.  I am fortunate enough not to have to wait nearly two weeks for a doctor's appointment, it is rather that until now I hadn't realised that the particular injury I saw the doctor about was quite as bad (or would be as long-lasting) as it is.

When I fell off my bike, I had a number of minor scrapes and bruises (the one on my left knee was a particularly pretty colour, and I still have a visible imprint of my gears just above my right ankle), but the thing which actually hurt was my shoulder.  At the time, I assumed that I would eventually get a mammoth bruise, which would go through a rainbow of colours and then fade, along with the pain.  Not so.  The bruise never came, and although the pain did subside slightly, over the last few days it has actually got worse.  It isn't debilitating in any way - it hasn't stopped me from doing anything I'd normally do (including, crucially, cycling) - but it's there, all the time.  So, reluctantly, I booked an appointment with a GP as I had come to the conclusion from a bit of internet self-diagnosis that I might have a whiplash injury.  Yes, that's right, whiplash (now you can see why the title was tricky!)

As I fell off the bike (I say that, but I actually stayed on the bike, more or less astride it like one should be; it was really the bike that fell over, not me!) sideways, my neck will have been jolted sideways towards the floor.  I'm not sure if my head hit the floor or not, but regardless of that, my reaction will have been to pull my neck back up to centre again immediately, causing alternately hyper-extension and hyper-contraction of all the muscles and other bits and pieces (ligaments, tendons, etc.) in my neck, particularly on my left side - the side I went down on.  Since my fall, I've gradually been able to narrow down and now pinpoint the focus of the pain to a small area on the back left hand side of my neck, just above the junction with the shoulder, but I've been getting all manner of weird tingling, discomfort and aches in my shoulder, head and arm.

I explained the accident and the resultant pain to the doctor and he said yes, you've probably got whiplash.  A few years ago, the immediate response to such an injury would have been to put a cervical (neck) collar on and hope it got better.  Things have moved on, especially when the patient presents with the injury 13 days after sustaining it!  I've got a referral for physiotherapy, but I won't be able to take advantage of it straight away as I'll be away for the next two weeks (more on that in a day or two) - in the meantime, it's more ibuprofen, no extreme sports (I was going to do some extreme ironing while I'm away, but I won't be able to now) and hoping that a bit of a break will mean I don't need to use the referral on my return.

Don't worry though, I'm still cycling (with doctoral consent).  Cycling doesn't seem to exacerbate it and, in fact, because I have to concentrate so hard on what I'm doing, it actually takes my mind off the injury for a while.

The Cycle of Cycling

Today, I want to tell you about a friend of mine.  She's just a few years older than me and she's vivacious, kind, funny, a talented singer and mother and she enjoys life to the full.  She's what I would call a "normal person" (or, rather, above average!) The only thing is, just like me a year ago, she can't ride a bike.  Just like me, she never learnt how as a child and spent a long time wishing she could but never quite found the time, energy or necessity to do it.  She's been talking about it for a while, so I was incredibly pleased to hear the other day that she has signed up for her very first cycling lesson.

On Monday morning at 9 o'clock (far too early, if you ask me), my lovely friend will arrive at a local park to participate in a class which will hopefully help her to find the same freedom that I have found through cycling.  The even better news is that, since she announced that she's going to take this class, one of her friends has said that she will also do the cycling course that she signed up for but never quite got around to doing - yet another lady taking up cycling.

My friend (she's going to remain nameless for the moment because she doesn't know I'm writing this, but I may change it later!) is probably going to be quite a different cyclist from me.  Whereas I have a Dahon hybrid full size folding bike (quite a sporty number, really), I think she will be going for something a little more elegant, like a Pashley.  I also have a feeling that she's not going to be racing around London in fluorescent Lycra, but I could be wrong.  However, the point is that she's doing it - she's just getting on with it.  It's too easy for us all to just sit and dream and ponder and procrastinate and never quite do all the things we want to.

Every now and then (especially now, in fact, given that I have this time last year to compare to) I do a bit of a reality check.  I was cycling home last night, on my own (no James to hold my hand - figuratively, of course; literally would be dangerous) in the dark, when it struck me how far I had come in just a year - and even that isn't really a full year, given my various set-backs.  Even after I had taken the plunge and got on my bike for the first time, I would not have believed you if you'd told me that in a year I would be cycling to work every other day, going on long bike rides to different towns at weekends and preparing to cycle to Brighton in the dark.  I'm not showboating here, I'm not trying to say "I'm so wonderful because I've achieved all this stuff in cycling in a year."  I'm just saying that a normal person like me can do it - it's not fun all the time and it's not easy all the time - it requires some perseverance and a little pain, but boy is it worth it in the end.

So, I wish my friend the best of luck in her endeavours, and I hope that she will also shout about how she gets on in the hope that some other people who never learnt to ride a bike will be inspired to join the ranks of the cyclists before too long.  We will conquer the world!

The Measure of Success

As promised yesterday, today started with thinking about Claire Lomas' challenge to cycle 400 miles around the country.  My second thought was something about "warm bed, duvet, cat," as I drifted back into my slumbers.  To say I didn't feel like cycling to work this morning would be the understatement of the year and I was quite happy to stay in bed all day, never mind the consequences.  Then James put Ozzy the cat on me and Ozzy dutifully purred in my ear until I eventually hauled myself (and the cat) out of bed and down the stairs.

Ozzy, the feline alarm clock

Even though the sun was shining, I really wasn't interested, but I thought of Claire's drive and told myself to just get on with it.  I made the mistake of asking James to put my panniers on the Beeblemobile for me as I was having difficulty - the result was that I had to redo it once we'd got outside because he'd only done up about half of the straps ("It'll stay on, won't it?") and had put them on lopsided ("I put it on where I could get it on!"), which would cause them to foul the pedals.

Yet again, the traffic was particularly heavy on Wightman Road, which I've now decided is my second least favourite part of the journey, but we made it onto the list-topping Endymion Road and I made it up the hill without keeling over or having to stop at the top.  Once we were through the park, we went through the usual rigmarole of James just making it across the pedestrian crossing (on foot, of course) with the green man, and me having to wait for the next cycle of the lights to get across.

We overtook a bus and, in my excitement, I forgot that immediately after the bus there was a hill.  Having overtaken the bus, I had to then carry on going pretty quickly to keep in front of it.  James was very impressed with my hill climb.  So was I.  Newington Green was also busy today, and full of buses.  Once we'd got through, we carried on down towards the City and about two-thirds of the way to the turn off for Shoreditch Park, I had a bit of an incident.  I had taken the whole of the Newington Green area in second gear (of three) on my front ring and needed to change into third for the faster, straighter stretch we had joined.  As it was downhill, I had no problem in changing, but I must have done so just as I went over a blip in the road and not one, but both of my feet came off the pedals.  Bizarrely, I didn't particularly panic, partly because I knew that to do so would be suicide and partly because I knew that the driver behind me knew I was there as we'd been overtaking each other fairly consistently for about half a mile in the heavy traffic.

I was teetering on the edge.  I was balancing precariously with my feet away from the pedals (to prevent them from getting caught and causing me to be hurled over the handlebars).  I had choices - I could swerve off to the side and hope I didn't fall off as I braked (but this depended on there being a space on my left, which there wasn't, and on me having enough control over which direction I was going in, which I wasn't convinced about) or I could carry on, hope I didn't either fall off or get hit by the car behind and try to get my feet back on the pedals.  I chose the latter and it worked.  I raised my hand in apology to the driver, and then I panicked and felt the tears pricking my eyes.  "Don't bl**dy cry, you sap," I uttered under my breath.

James, blissfully unaware that I had had this experience, was ahead of me and slowed down as he arrived in Shoreditch Park so that I could catch him up.  As I drew alongside him he said, "You're doing well today!"  I don't think he expected the mildly hysterical response he got.  "No I'm bl**dy not, my feet came off and there were cars and I nearly fell off and I couldn't find the pedals and I nearly fell off and there were cars and things and stuff" (or something along those lines).  "But did you fall off?"  "No."  "So you did well, didn't you?"

My office mate and I have had a couple of discussions in the last couple of weeks, not all cycling related, about how success is only measured by the parameters one sets for it.  We've come to the conclusion that all of the things we've done to date (and, touch wood, will do) are successful if the measure of success is that no-one died as a result.  Therefore, I can conclude, wholeheartedly, that in spite of nearly falling off, my journey to work was entirely successful.

The Bionic Woman

No, not me - although I do feel like I could do with playing swapsies on a few bits today.  The bionic woman I'm talking about is Claire Lomas, a former equestrian eventer who suffered terrible injuries in a fall from a horse back in 2007.  While most of those injuries healed well, a broken vertebra left her paralysed from the chest down.  Claire is absolutely determined that she will walk again, under her own steam, but in the meantime, she has been finding other ways to get about.

Some of you may remember Claire from last year's London Marathon.  She completed the course (a feat in itself under normal circumstances) in 17 days using a "bionic" walking suit that enabled her to do the marathon on foot.  She came in last, and because she was outside the organiser's cut-off time (usually about eight or nine hours) she was initially denied the reward of a finisher's medal, but Sir Richard Branson stepped in to award a medal to her personally when she finished.  In her marathon challenge, she raised over £80,000 for Spinal Research, a charity which funds medical research around the world to develop treatments for paralysis caused by a broken back or neck.

If all that wasn't inspiring enough, Claire fancied a new challenge this year, so she took up cycling.  Or, rather, she continued training on a static bike she already had before transitioning onto a hand-bike.  Claire aims to cycle 400 miles around the country with a few stops along the way to raise awareness for spinal injury charities and to talk to schoolchildren about how they can achieve anything if they put their minds to it. If anyone can inspire children in that way, it has to be Claire Lomas.

When I look back on my achievements over the last year (and even further back to when I completed the London Marathon in 2010), they seem enormous to me, but when I compare them to the achievements of someone like Claire, I am in complete awe.  Claire is just a year younger than me, and I am fortunate enough to have the use of all of my limbs, so the least I can do is, well, use them.  I'll be cycling to work tomorrow and thinking about Claire's challenge.  If I see her on her travels, I'll be stopping to cheer her on.

You can sponsor Claire's cycle here (though don't you dare forget about mine, here!)

Paradise Regained

This morning after church, the vicar's wife said to me, "How are you feeling after all that pedalling around like a bl**dy lunatic?"  As it happens, I'm not feeling too bad, although my knees are a bit rickety, and an impromptu massage from the lay reader helped my shoulders immensely.

Last year, we attempted to cycle to Welwyn Garden City.  We got as far as Hertford and then failed miserably and ended up getting the train back from there, just a few miles short of our goal.  So this year we had an itch to scratch, some unfinished business, and we decided to give it another go.

Things, as is often the case, did not start well.  For a start, we were taking a massive gamble - the plan was to cycle to Welwyn and get the train home but we checked on the trains and discovered that if we failed at the same point as last year and only made it to Hertford, there would be no trains back to Harringay due to engineering works.  Welwyn is on a different branch of the line and would be unaffected, so we had to make it to Welwyn. (I should probably mention here that we could probably get a train back into London from a different station in Hertford or one of the other places we would pass through, but it would entail us then having to find our way home from somewhere altogether different, which would not be ideal having cycled so far.)

Then, when we were setting off, my gears wouldn't do what I wanted them to and in trying to put myself in a gear in which I could actually cycle, I managed to twist my dodgy ankle - not too badly, but enough to bring a tear to my eye and warrant a sit down on someone's front wall less than 200m from home.  Eventually, we got going and went along our normal route towards the River Lea, through the usual Saturday morning Synagogue crowds.  When we got to the river, London Youth Rowing were running one of their sessions.  LYR is a charity that I have supported (through work) by participating in an indoor rowing relay race in the last couple of years, so it was great to see them out in their boats.

There are a couple of places in the first few miles along the river that have what James calls "bobbly bits" - they are bits of the towpath which have raised bumpy bits to enable the ponies and donkeys to get a better foothold, mostly where there's a bridge that goes over a joining tributary.  Hitherto, I have not managed to get over these bobbly bits without having to dismount.  They may be designed for the chassis of a donkey, but that is not the same length as a bike, and I just couldn't work out how James was managing to get across.  The first of these is (apart from the bobbles) flat, and this time I managed to get across, with a resounding cheer at the far side.  The second is a bridge with bobbles on it, followed by a bobbly upward slope.  I made it across both for the first time and couldn't resist screaming "F*** you, bridge", to the obvious amusement of the other cyclists who were around. 

When we got to the fantastic bit of resurfaced towpath I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, we realised that all was not as it should be - the powers that be had covered that beautiful, smooth, fast surface with gravel, making it clunky and horrible; it was such a shame as they had such a great opportunity to make it lovely and they've now ruined it all.

The Crown at Broxbourne

We carried on past the bus garage and the North Circular and we kept being overtaken by and the overtaking another couple who were trying to get to Hertford.  We eventually got to Not London and the cafe that had been our turning point last time out.  We stopped for a cup of tea and a piece of cake and watched a couple of other cyclists, kitted out with posh bikes and lurid Lycra, slipping off to one side of the seating area for a sly cigarette.

Bikes at the Crown

As we carried on out into Hertfordshire, we went through a few clouds of gnats.  They were, well, gnatty and got everywhere.  It wasn't long before we came to Broxbourne, where we stopped for lunch.  Last time, we hadn't quite made it to the pub that Everyone goes to when cycling this way, but this time we were wise to it and so we locked up the bikes and went into the Crown for some food.  There were bikes everywhere outside, chained to everything that looked as though it wouldn't move.

James, bee-magnet

After a very nice meal, we set off again and we hadn't been going too long before we reached a large weir and a split in the towpath.  As we came off the bridge over the weir, James came to a screeching halt (I'm still not sure if it was him or the bike screeching), ripped off his helmet and started flapping his hands around his head.  I asked him what was wrong and he said he thought there was a wasp in his helmet.  It turned out to be a baby honey bee that must have thought the helmet was his hive.  He survived, as did James.  Eventually, we made it to Ware, at which point a livid goose thought it would have a go at James until it realised that he was significantly bigger and faster (on land, in any case) than the goose was.  Shortly after that, I had to stop because of ducks on the path - apparently they don't respond to cycle bells.

 On the way into Hertford, we saw some aerial combat take place - a large bird of prey (perhaps a kite or a buzzard) was having a right old ding dong with a pair of smaller birds of prey (maybe sparrowhawks).

Cherry blossom in Hertford

Once we got to Hertford, we had to get the maps out.  James had printed out a map of the centre of Hertford and detailed directions, with Google Streetview pictures, of how to get from Ware to Welwyn.  We found how to get off the river, and went down a lovely cherry blossom-lined street toward the centre of town and then finally got to the point where the trail had gone cold last year.  Suddenly, we saw the sign that either we had missed or wasn't there last time around and we followed it (and our maps and pictures) until we reached the place where the route went off the roads.

Hertford Town F.C.

At this point, we were less than convinced that we were going the right way.  The only thing we could hear was the cheering of a load of football fans, and the only signposts we could see were signs to Hertford Town F.C.'s "fan day".  The maps and pictures said to go that way, so we did, and we found ourselves in the car park of said football club's stadium and popped in to see what was going on.  In the far corner of the car park, there was a sign for the cycle route (along with a riding stable) so we followed the sign and started along an off-road trail.  Now, either we were being stupid or the next sign was in a really silly place, because before long we were trying to cycle up a mud path on a steep hill - neither my bike nor I is designed for such terrain.  Before long, we came to a dead end and the conclusion that we had taken a wrong turn.  James suddenly remembered that the path we were supposed to take was on a disused railway line, so it would be pretty unlikely to be going up steep hills.  I was left wondering why he couldn't have remembered this before we went up the hill, while he turned back to find the right path.  Once we'd found the right path (it was signposted, just not very well), we set out between the trees, with the sunlight pouring between them.

We were coming around a long bend and I was feeling quite relaxed in the saddle when I had sudden cause for a moment of utter panic.  We came across something that I had never yet had to deal with while cycling - HORSES.  There were two of them, right there in front of me, going in the same direction as us, and they were enormous, one level shy of a shire horse.  Presumably they came from the riding stable we had passed in the corner of the football stadium car park, and their riders were just walking them along gently.  I knew, of course, that the last thing I ought to be doing was pinging my bell at them, but beyond that, I really didn't know what to do.  Just as I was trying to make a plan, I heard a bell pinging behind me - I had slowed down for the horses, but the cyclists behind had not, and they had not yet seen the horses.  This could have been disastrous, but I think the horses were far enough ahead that they didn't hear (or at least get spooked by) the bell.  The two cyclists slowed down and asked the riders if it was OK to pass and, as they passed, I told the riders there were two more of us behind and rode by slowly.  We thanked the riders, they thanked us and everyone lived happily ever after.

A little while later, the trail turned into a paved pathway, which in turn turned into an enormous hill.  By this time, I was seriously running out of steam.  Two of the last three signposts we had passed had told us it was three and a half miles to Welwyn (and they must have been at least half a mile apart) and the most recent one said two and a half miles, and it must have been about two miles from the previous one.  A little while later, we saw a signpost in the other direction saying Hertford was 4 miles (at which point we were supposedly less than three and a half miles away from Hertford on the grounds that we weren't yet in Welwyn).  Finally, we came to the end of the off-road path, only to find another signpost which said "Town Centre - 3 miles".   The seeds of doubt were starting to germinate in our minds, as we wondered if Welwyn was a fictitious place after all, but we kept to National Cycle Route 61 (or "The Yellow Brick Road" as it had become known, following last year's reference to Welwyn as the Emerald City of Hertfordshire), as planned, although we struggled a bit as some oik or other had turned one of the signposts around, and eventually made it to the shopping centre in which is situated Welwyn Garden City train station.

The Yellow Brick Road

You'd think, at this point, that our troubles would be over and our quest had been fulfilled.  Oh no, not so.  The aforementioned shopping centre is the only apparent means of gaining access to the train station.  The door to the shopping centre has a sign on it saying "no cycles" - not "no cycling" (which would be entirely reasonable, of course), but "no cycles".  We asked some people waiting at a bus stop how we could get into the station with our bikes and they told us to go through the shopping centre.  We decided to go in and see if we could find a security person who could show us the correct way to get to the station with bikes, but we couldn't see anyone and figured that once we were in we may as well try to find the station entrance.  We squeezed into a lift with our bikes and made it to the first floor and along to the station just as a security guard, who was probably going to try to eject us from the shopping centre, was catching up with us.  He realised that all we were trying to do was catch a train and let us be.  And so it was that we completed our quest and finished the leftover business from last year - we caught the train back to Finsbury Park, which took about half an hour, and then cycled home from there, still none the wiser as to the proper way to get a bike into Welwyn Garden City train station.

The Seven Day Itch

Throughout the past week I have been recovering very well from the fairly minor injuries sustained when I had my first fall off the bike.  It took my shoulder most of that week to feel normal again, but a massage on Thursday more or less sorted it out and now it just feels slightly uncomfortable - it turned out the issue was really in my neck muscles, kind of a mild sideways whiplash derived from falling over onto my left side.  During this period the enormous bruise and several grazes on my legs haven't hurt at all.  Not one bit.  OK, so if I prod them and poke them, they hurt, but I've managed to avoid doing that most of the time.  Yesterday, however, all this changed and I spent the entire day with an enormous problem - all the grazes started itching furiously and when you are sitting in a shared office and wearing tights, there really isn't much you can do about it other than grimace and spend the entire day in a slightly hysterical delirium.  On the plus side, I did consider myself to be the most hilarious person in the world - there was no stopping me, the jokes were coming thick and fast and I pity my poor office mate, who had to put up with it all day.

Today, the grazes are still itchy, but it's a beautiful day for cycling and I'm not going to let it spoil my mood (and I won't be wearing tights, which helps).  We're going on a big adventure today.  We're going to try to tick something off the list that we didn't quite manage last year.  It's going to be tough and it's going to require significant navigational skills and emotional determination, but we think we're up for the challenge - we're going to try to find Welwyn Garden City.  If you remember, last year we made an attempt to chart this new territory, but failed miserably when we got stuck in Hertford for far longer than anyone ought to be stuck in Hertford on a bike.  So now we're preparing for our journey, looking at maps and making sure the trains back are actually running and then we'll be on our way.

Food, Glorious Food

This week marked the first time that I had cycled to work and back on two consecutive days.  It is amazing to me how four journeys of five and a half miles each with approximately 12 hour gaps in between can be so much more exhausting than cycling the same total distance, 22 miles, all on one day (which is what we did a couple of weekends ago when we went to Waltham Abbey and back).  Last night, the last mile or so was torture - my legs were aching and I was tired, but the worst thing was the hunger.  I was sooooo hungry.  See, the thing is, I see cycling to and from work as just that - commuting.  I don't really see it as exercise, even though my body clearly recognises it as such, which is part of the reason I like it so much.  However, the downside of this is that I'm really rubbish at making sure I'm eating enough of the right things to sustain the extra exercise I'm doing without completely overdoing it at the wrong times.

At this point, there will be quite a few seasoned sports people reading this and saying "you don't need extra food for pootling about for a few miles on a bike" - well, let me tell you that, actually, when you're not used to a particular type of exercise and you suddenly start doing rather a lot of it as well as working a few too many hours, you do need more food.  Because I'm so rubbish at sorting this out, I end up deciding to eat my evening meal at home, even though I'm not leaving the office until 9 or 10 p.m., having had a normal-sized lunch at my normal lunchtime and only a small (usually healthy) snack at about 4 or 5 p.m., so by the time I get home I'm so blimmin' hungry that I end up eating all sorts of wrong things like chocolate and cake and pizza and not nearly enough right things because, frankly, at that point all of the food in the world is not enough.

My cycle commuting journeys have now, happily, settled into a routine of uneventfulness, which pleases me greatly.  Over the last couple of days, they have only been punctuated by the aforementioned hunger and a very obnoxious man with two (loose) dogs in the park at whom James rang his bell as we approached very slowly from behind, in order to let him know we were there and ensure we didn't hurt the dogs - the man called James a stupid idiot for no apparent reason, although it eventually transpired that "you're all stupid idiots"; we presume he didn't mean all people, all men, all people under 35, or all software developers, so we concluded that it could only be all people in Lycra, all people in fluorescent raincoats or all people on bikes.  James tried, very calmly, to explain that he was actually trying to assist the man and his dogs in not being run over by bikes, but the guy was having none of it.

I had a long discussion with a colleague on Wednesday on how to deal with passing That Place (where I had my fall last week) on the way home.  I wasn't sure whether to pull off the road at the same place to prove that I could, or to carry on and go across the junction now that I had sussed the lanes out.  We came to the conclusion that I should go across the junction so that I could advance rather than getting hung up about the accident.  I did just that, but when I got to the junction, I realised just how steep a hill start it was and I nearly didn't make it away from the lights.  However, last night, I managed to leave work at a slightly more reasonable time and it was light enough to cycle through the park (and down Endymion Road), so I did pull off at That Place and discovered what it was that had been my undoing the previous time - a drain cover, which would have been wet.

It was great to get home and be rewarded by an enormous bowl of spaghetti bolognese thanks to James, who was also extremely hungry.  Today I didn't cycle to work, partly because I'm tired and partly because I want to be fresh for a trip out tomorrow, and I have consequently spent a large amount of the day eating.  Popcorn next.  Yum!

The Magic Road

There is a road very close to my house called Endymion Road.  It isn't named (directly) after the extremely sleepy Greek mythological shepherd, hunter or king, nor is it named after the poem by Keats (which I confess I haven't read, but which is presumably about said shepherd/hunter/king chap).  It's actually named, as are a number of other roads in the area, after a novel by Benjamin Disraeli, who was British prime minister in 1868 and again from 1874 to 1880, the same year that Endymion was published.  Disraeli died in 1881, which was just about the same time that Endymion Road and its near neighbours Alroy Road, Tancred Road, Coningsby Road and Lothair Roads North and South were laid out and built, all named after the later works of Disraeli - it is interesting to note that at least one or two of those novels were very much politically motivated, and he died shortly after losing power in a general election, so I can imagine that someone who agreed with his politics might have named the roads in protest at the new government.

I know, I know, what's all this got to do with cycling?  Well, Endymion Road is quite long and on a very, very slight hill, which goes up from east to west (more or less, it's not an entirely straight road).  This is the hill I've mentioned before, yesterday in fact, which I struggle with every time.  However, I only have to cycle up half of the road to get to the park - we come out onto Endymion Road halfway along and the park gate is at the western end.  Although this causes me frustration every time I ride to work, on the occasions when I get to ride home in daylight, I at least have the pleasure of coasting down the hill at the end of the day on the way home.  When I ride home in the dark, though, I don't really fancy riding through the park and effectively reversing my workward journey, so I carry on with the main road past the park and end up turning onto Endymion Road at its eastern extremity and cycling uphill again to halfway and the point where I turn off towards home.  So, at the moment, I get the dubious pleasure of cycling only uphill on this blasted road, which I find to be an absolute killer both at the beginning and the end of the day.

Some of you might recall an episode of "Father Ted" called Hell, in which the three priests go on holiday to some other priest's caravan.  On arriving (after a small misunderstanding, involving some naked people, about which is the correct caravan), Fathers Ted and Dougal look at a leaflet of all the things to do in the area.  There are two of them, St. Kevin's Stump (which turns out just to be a tree stump) and The Magic Road.  The Magic Road is a very special road on a hill.  It is special because if you put something at the bottom of the hill, it will roll up it - in fact, Father Jack's wheelchair is put at the bottom of the hill and it rolls backwards up the hill with the result being Father Jack falling off a cliff (after which he ends up on a yacht, surrounded by beautiful women).

Now, I think Endymion Road is kind of "The Anti-Magic Road" - it seems to me that it is twice as hard to cycle up it as it is any other hill in the world, even though it isn't very steep.  I think my life would be complete if someone came along and turned Endymion Road into The Magic Road, so that every morning and evening all I would have to do is turn onto the road and I would roll up the hill with very little inconvenience to myself.  I'm happy to leave out the cliffs, the yacht and the women, though.

The Iron Lady's Legacy

Don't worry, I'm not going to get all political on you and explain the myriad ways in which Baroness Thatcher did or did not impact cycling in this country during her not insignificant career.  I am, however, going to explain the not insignificant impact she's had on my day. (As an aside, I've just realised that, coincidentally, I've written those two sentences just like John Major would have in Private Eye's "The Secret Diary of John Major Aged 47 and Three Quarters".)

This morning, I needed to cycle.  The shoulder of doom was feeling much better, if not perfect, and the weather was greyer than expected, but still passable.  It was to be my first outing since my accident (not counting cycling home on a slightly rickety bike that night) and I woke up this morning with The Fear.  On a rational level, it is abundantly clear that the mere fact of having fallen off my bicycle last week is not going to have affected my overall knowledge of how to ride a bicycle.  In my irrational state this morning, I was convinced I wouldn't have a clue what to do and even more convinced that I would simply fall off again.

As we walked up to the end of our street to commence the journey, I could see the traffic was particularly heavy.  Not a good start.  I also had no idea whether, following the tinkering we'd done at the weekend, my gears would work at all.  Or what gear I was actually in, regardless of what the dials were showing me.  I took a giant leap of faith and set off in a gap in the traffic.  All was going well until I tried to change up to third on my front ring.  The grinding sound was horrendous but, all of a sudden, some magic happened and I found the gear - and in third I stayed for the rest of the journey.

Following this major breakthrough, I had another.  I've been having difficulty cycling up the long, not very steep hill to get into the park.  I've just not had the puff to get up it.  I think it's partly a lack of cycling fitness, partly because I'm not sufficiently warmed up by the time I get there and partly because my saddle was too low, making it much more effort to pedal.  The saddle got altered last week, which helped generally, but this morning I managed to cycle up that hill without having to stop just inside the park to catch my breath.  It felt great.

Shortly after leaving the park, we had to pass That Place: the place where I fell off on Friday.  In the dry daylight, it looked so insignificant that I couldn't believe I'd actually fallen off there, of all places.  As we came up to Newington Green, the traffic started to get really bad and we'd been stuck behind a number 341 bus for quite a while.  We managed to get past the bus and had a stroke of luck when a dumper truck driver kindly let us go through in front of him to get in the right hand lane.  As we came out of Shoreditch Park and went down towards Old Street, it started to drizzle, which was miserable.

When we hit Old Street the traffic was so bad that we had to dismount to get across the road.  The cars were stopped across the mixed pedestrian and cycle crossing (along with a chap with his daughter in a pushchair who decided to stop in the middle of the crossing to chat to his mate coming the other way - not ideal).  It seems that some clever bod at the traffic control centre has actually planned the light sequences in this corner of London quite well.  Normally when we cross over that road and carry on on a different road, there are no cars coming as we come off the crossing and onto the other road.  Today, because of having to dismount and weave through the cars on the crossing, I didn't get across until the red man was standing in his light box again and, lo and behold, there were loads of cars coming up the street I was trying to get onto - the lights must have changed somewhere at the other end of the street; someone likes cyclists.

Soon after I left James at his office, I got my first view of the traffic in the City itself.  I carried on down the deserted street I was on, but soon realised that there was no point in carrying on by bike, as it would be much quicker (and safer) to walk, so I got off and walked the rest of the way to the office, and still made it in reasonable time.

The reason for all this traffic?  Lady Thatcher's funeral meant that lots of the main (and not so main) roads in the City were closed this morning.  Clearly a lot of drivers hadn't bothered to check whether there would be an impact on driving.  I had, and I knew I'd probably have to walk from London Wall (two minutes maximum) if the police weren't letting cyclists through, but I (stupidly) hadn't reckoned on no-one else checking.  At least the roads will be back to normal on the way home.

The Liberty of the Long-Distance Runner (or Cyclist)

Whoever it was who woke up yesterday and thought "I know, I'll blow up Boston" really picked on the wrong people, didn't they?  The scenes of so many people coming together to help other humans in their hour of need were heartwarming in spite of the circumstances - runners donating blood and people opening their homes to give hospitality.

I ummed and aahed about whether to write on this unsavoury topic, partly because it's just such a horrible thing, and partly because it isn't directly about cycling.  However, what happened in Boston yesterday affects all sports men and women and, in particular, those who are "participators", those who are never going to be Mo Farah or Paula Radcliffe, Chris Hoy or Laura Trott, the people who make mass participation events the wonderful days they are, people who raise millions of pounds for good causes each year.  People like you and me.  The timing of the blasts to go off several hours into the race, just as the keen (but never going to be elite) runners were coming through the finish line shows that they were intended to cause the maximum damage possible.

Although there are people from all walks of life who are into all sorts of different sports, runners strike me, on the whole, as a pretty benign bunch (much more so than cyclists).  Yes, they are competitive, they talk a good talk when they want to, but they don't seem to be that aggressive among themselves - I speak from experience having dabbled in running for many years before taking up cycling.  There are some mass participation races that have a political (or politically motivated) cause at the heart of them, but the majority of the major events are great levellers, in terms of politics, race, religion, gender, age, wealth and background - to attack such an event is to attack community itself, to attack the idea of human unity, a coming together in the name of sport and overcoming personal challenges, and often raising money and awareness for a spectrum of different worthy causes.

When a terrorist performs some act of terror at a political or religious building or event linked to their cause, it is not right.  It is still horrific and wrong.  However, I can at least see their motivation for doing it - attacking the direct cause of their beef with the world.  Attacking innocent people who don't fall into any particular identifiable class other than "runners and their supporters" which, as mentioned above, is by its very nature an extremely diverse group of people, does absolutely nothing to aid me in determining what the person or people who did this want.  Maybe they are crazy, and want to kill people because their particular mental health issue is causing that feeling, but if it were motivated by some belief, then none of us is any the wiser now than we were before it happened.

As a result of this incident (that seems such a trivial word to employ in the circumstances), security at next weekend's London Marathon will be reviewed and, undoubtedly, tightened.  Likewise, all the other spring marathons and similar sporting events will be looked at again.  We know from experience that no sporting event can be completely immune from the threat of interference, from swimmers at the Boat Race to the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics, but while the safety and security of those participating and spectating has to be ensured as far as it possibly can be, it should not be to the extent that what is, for me, a key element of sport and the mass participation events I can comfortably "compete" in (even if it's only against myself) gets lost - freedom.  As Nathalie put it yesterday, it's the freedom of "the wind in your face, the speed in your hair."

There is only so much we can and, in my opinion, should do to stop horrific acts.  My feeling today, as it was after both 9/11 in the US and 7/7 in the UK, is one of defiance.  I felt so strongly about it last night, that I actually just wanted to get on my bike and ride it (although my injuries from Friday are still preventing me).  I noticed in watching the footage of the Boston blasts on the news that many of the runners coming up to the finishing line had, unwittingly, begun their stance of defiance immediately.  I saw several competitors turn their heads to see where the noise had come from just as they crossed the line - and then they stopped their watches.  An auto-pilot reaction drummed in from years of training and trying to set new personal bests, no doubt, but no-one was going to stop them from finishing and accurately recording their race.

It is vitally important that we do not let these people drive us into a state of fear or deprive us of our liberty to walk, run and cycle whenever we choose.  Some people don't have that liberty in the countries in which they live.  We have our precious freedom - let's keep it that way.

Guest Post by "La Petite Reine", Nathalie Cabrier

Today I am extremely lucky to be able to present a post by a guest writer, my dear friend Nathalie Cabrier, who shares with us all her very French cycling career!

La Petite Reine

Yep,  the French call the bike, the cycling world, "La petite Reine" - the little queen! Surprising isn't it?   We don't have a reputation for loving the royals (except for tourism!) but apparently the expression comes from Wilhelmine D'Orange-Nassau, queen of Holland (1890-1948) who at the age of 10 still apparently rode her bike in the capital.  The other explanation is that the expression maybe comes from a book written by Pierre Giffard (writer and reporter, one
of the first sports journalists) called La Reine Bicyclette (The Bicyle Queen) which talked about the Little Queen and of which the cover was a lady and a bicycle. Well whatever the origin... La reine est morte... Vive "la petite reine"!

And re-yep the French, my little chumps, love the bicycle. They love it so much that they created the biggest (or one of the biggest) bicycle race in the world  Le Tour de France. This is an institution, a proper institution. This race is the quintessential of France. If you want to visit, understand France, speak French, then take your sleeping bag and tent and join "la grande boucle" (the "big loop", the nickname of Le Tour).  Go for the mountain bits, they are truly incredible.  It got bigger after the war, people on the roads picnicking, camping, kissing... Yvette Horner standing up on an open van playing the accordion... La France, la belle France. It's an amazing event and I mean it. 

Years ago I did a short report for BBC about Le Tour, choosing a specific angle; we followed the mobile weather station, which is basically a van with special equipment available for the riders/coaches/press - the weather is also part of the Tour, and this was one of the most exciting experiences I ever had.  The van has to open before the departure and be at the arrival before the riders... and to be ahead avoiding the Caravane (the followers - crew/teams/sponsors/medical/security/promotions/animation/TV) which is thousands of people on the move), it's a real challenge! The van needs to take small roads, short cuts, delicious, side roads... la France, la belle France in summer - sleepy villages, beautiful churches facing town halls,  lost boulangeries, an old farmer on his old bike with a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth. With this report I discovered  my country with different eyes and I saw bikes in all forms, the competitive ones, the small ones used by coaches to go from the press point to the crew/team slot - an ocean of bikes! 

Yep my little chumps French love their bikes. As a child I think I probably have the same memories as an English child.   My first bike was for Christmas at 10 years old, a present from Santa obviously, but helped by my godfather! A Mini Vélo as we called it at the beginning of 70s, the first bike which could be folded! A white mini vélo for a small "queen", a photo next to the Xmas tree, a big smile... probably just like millions of the other children in the world. But to me as a French person, something major was about to happen. This was a very special French moment, a moment where I was about to touch, to experience what I had learnt for years at school and indirectly at home. At the first ride, my first pedal push, I understood what my History teacher was trying to explain to us. I suddenly understood what  Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (Liberty, equality, fraternity) meant.

Yes, indeed, the Republican principles could certainly be applied to the bike.  I understood in a flash what my grandfather was talking about his youth, about the first "congés payés" (paid holidays where people were riding on the coast and camping for the first time), what my father, a simple worker in a factory, was trying to give me as a moral conduct.  I understood how my mother felt when she was coming back from work (from the same factory as my father) on her bike; big smile, beautiful legs, rosy cheeks!  Yes, at the first pedal push I understood what Liberté (liberty) means... Liberté chérie!  I could touch it, I could feel it!  Freedom to fly, freedom of independence, freedom to "travel" on my own, probably 500m from home!

I always used my bike to see my friends, my grandmother, to go to the conservatoire (music school) - that was the best.  Singing loudly the piece I was practicing, waltzing graciously (well I like to think!!) or turning in cadence! That feeling of the wind on my face, the speed in my hair, this lightness which takes you over when you are riding. You can't beat that moment where you can almost touch life itself! Liberté!

Equality - almost everybody can ride a bike (although for some disabled people might be very difficult or even impossible).  Fraternity - well, the cycling world is a wonderful way to get together, to fight the social barriers, a wonderful bridge for friendship! No need to prove it, this fantastic blog and my relation with "cette incroyable Bethany" (this incredible Bethany) speak for themselves. And this feeling of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité never, ever vanishes. This is a rare direct link with our childhood.I still ride a bike ... no not my mini vélo! My first UK Bike was a blue Raleigh, bought second hand for £10!  I loved it -  it was slightly too high and I needed to be on my extreme tiptoes, but who cares?  I was riding through the park, to go to my English school, to do my shopping, to visit my new "home". And then to take my son to his school on foggy mornings, Antoine at the back describing what he could see while we were riding - "walking heads" in the mist, leaves suspended in the air, squirrels racing with us and... deer popping from bushes. I didn't know that in my park lived such creatures -  well, it's amazing what you can see riding a bike!  And years later nothing has changed, I'm still riding my bike for my "daily" life. I like to feel the seasons on my bike and even though I didn't use it for the last few weeks, I look forward to jumping back on my saddle.

But my little chumps, attention... I must confess, I'm a terrible rider... not like Bethany... even thought I did improve hugely.  I don't anymore ride on the pavement, I use lights, proper lights, at the front, back, on my arms, I stop where I'm supposed to stop, I use my arms to indicate my turns, I use my bell to be seen... Oh! I know you maybe puzzled why I'm so proud of such banal common sense. But don't forget my little chumps not only am I French - I'm from the South, meaning that discipline and security are not an issue. Well, on my list above one thing is cruelly missing... I know... I know... the helmet... Well it's hard to fight with your nationality and even if France also made huge progress in terms of security, some points are still... euh... almost taboo.  Come on, everybody knows that a helmet "Ca fait tête d'oeuf" (it makes you look like an egg) and it will be a disaster for my hairdo, even I don't have a particular haircut, just long hair! Yes I agree it's pathetic, but do you think I will still feel this freedom on my face as much as feel it without a helmet? What do you reckon?

Allez my little chumps... Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité... Pédalez!