Bikes

I used to go everywhere on my bike, from being a very little girl. Even before I had my own two-wheeler, and from being a baby, I would ride around on my parents  bikes  They had a little device attached to the frame which a seat with two prongs would fit into; we would sit between their knees looking over the handle bars as they cycled us to wherever we were going. We didn’t have crash helmets, or straps, or belts, we just sat on the blue shiny seats as mum and dad peddled furiously.This was before we had a car, and on pleasant weekend afternoons we would be taken out to nearby villages on our parents bikes. My dad Donald, used to come home for lunch, and I would take my little seat to the end of the road and stick it into a pile of sand which was there, and sit and wait for him… I would have been about tree or four, I guess.

I soon graduated from a trike (tricycle) to a two wheeler, and once I started at secondary school I would cycle there and back every day, four miles in each direction. I would also cycle to the swimming pool several times a week, and to visit friends or cousins, I just went everywhere on my bike! My sister, Andy  and I would cycle home from swimming in the evenings  and if for some reason our lights didn’t work we would push our bikes along, never dreaming of riding them without lights – how times change!

Everyone in Cambridge had a bike, the undergrads from the University would ride along, their gowns streaming out behind them like so many crows. Aunty Gladys who lived upstairs and was very elderly, bought an adult trike when she was too unstable on her two-wheeler. We moved to Weston-super-Mare and we lived on a hill, and suddenly cycling became difficult… and there was no proper bike culture here, already cars had taken over the streets, endangering any hardy cyclists.

And so… I bike no more… I did have a bike a couple of years ago, but on-shore winds, traffic, and rain discouraged me… no longer as hardy as I was when a child!