It is very unlike me to be in the fashion. I am either a late adopter or, more often, a non-adopter of trends. But my new hobby, which is really a rediscovery of an old one, is very zeitgeisty right now. Like millions of other locked-down people, I have taken to two wheels.
For me, it’s not about finding a healthier, non-germ-ridden alternative to public transport: living in rural Northern Ireland, public transport isn’t much of an option at the best of times. Nor is it really for exercise – I’ve always walked miles every day and for the last year I’ve been running too.
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| my first trusty steed, circa 1977 |
No, I’m cycling for fun. Just for the craic. After not having been on a bike for almost thirty years, I am rekindling a joy in speed and freedom which I haven’t known for years. I remember going on rides as a child on my trusty Raleigh Amber with Vicky, my friend, on her Dawes Kingpin. There was something transgressive about taking these bikes out of our estate, sometimes even out of Belfast. Our mothers never knew how far we went and we never told them. Often my bike was a pony, sometimes a motorbike, sometimes a flying carpet – for a child, having two wheels as well as an imagination made the world a much bigger place.
My partner is a ‘real’ cyclist and for the first few weeks I was content to puff along behind on his son’s mountain bike – for the loan of which I was very grateful. I was surprised at how easily I got used to being back in the saddle. In lockdown, we’ve been able to get much further on two wheels than on two legs and I’ve been able to get to know the countryside around his home, where I’ve been staying, more thoroughly than when I was only walking the dog or running the very local roads. And it wasn’t long before I started to covet the sleek lines of a road bike, and so my new trusty steed came into my life.
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| my new trusty steed |
The heroine of my (adult) work in progress, Stella, has also just bought a bike. It’s 1933 so her bike is heavy, and black, and she is wondering if she can get used to these new-fangled gears – three of them! Like me, she's part of a boom: cycling for leisure, as well as transport, was very trendy in the thirties. Like me she hasn’t cycled since she was young, though at 30 she’s much younger than I am, but it’s been fun imagining that we’re sharing the same joy in an old hobby rediscovered.
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| Stella's trusty steed would have looked something like this |
Has anyone else used lockdown to rediscover an old passion?
