A year in the saddle

By Glynis from Equality and Human Rights Commission in Manchester

For Christmas 2009 Santa brought me a bicycle. I had been threatening to take up cycling to work for many months but always talked myself out of doing so due to concerns such as where to leave it during the day, it is a lot to spend on something that is likely to get stolen, and what if it rains?

Once I had a bike it became more difficult to come up with excuses. My bike is a “Rodeo Drive”, a make not well renowned and not likely to be stolen - especially as the saddle has £10 written on it in indelible marker. I am assured that Santa paid more for it, but not much more, thus allaying my fears of grave financial loss should it be stolen. I also made enquiries and found that I could chain it up in the basement of the Manchester office where it would stay dry and safe all day.

So after the January thaw I started cycling to work and was surprised to find how much I enjoyed it, although I did feel intimidated by the other traffic and did my best to keep out of the way. I avoided cycling when there was poor visibility e.g. when it rained!

After several months intermittent cycling I received an email saying that an organisation called BikeRight! were offering free cycling safety training to staff in my Manchester office as part of their CarbonCycle project.  I signed up.

The training took place for 2 hours over lunchtime. There was a small group of cyclists with 2 trainers. Before even starting off on our circuit around Manchester city centre I had learned how to lean my bike against a post so that it doesn’t keep falling over, how to make my cycle helmet fit, and that the constant rattling noise was due to the fact that my rear mud guard was not actually attached to the bike. I sure had a lot to learn.

Within the first half hour I had mastered changing gears – after almost falling off with the wobbly exertion of going up one of those massive Manchester city centre hills in fifth gear.

More importantly I had a chance at practising road positioning to maximise my safety, especially doing left turns which apparently are more risky than right turns.

At the end of the two hours our bikes were fitted with a mini computer – free of charge - which records miles cycled, average speed, time etc. This is used to report online to thecarboncycle.co.uk which calculates the green savings in cycling to work rather than taking the car or bus. It was a great fun session and I got to meet other colleagues who had previously only been known to me as email addresses.

I benefitted enormously from the training. No more sticking to the gutter out of traffic’s way for me. I am confident in making sure that I am always in a position in the road where I can always been seen by other road users. I am now cycling to and from work almost every day. I do not think that I would have done this without the training – I had intended to give up in the dark winter months. 

I would encourage anyone who is considering biking it to give it a go. If a 46 year old mother of four like me who hadn’t been on a bike for over 30 years can do it I am sure you can – and after all this is a good  time for new year resolutions!

If you are not already persuaded these are the top 5 benefits I have achieved:

  1. I am doing my bit for the environment by cutting carbon emissions.
  2. I save money – my bus fare used to be £11.00 per week. That’s about £48 per month.
  3. I get to spend more time with my children. The bus takes 40 minutes to and from work. I can cycle this in 20 minutes so with the extra time I can walk my children to school before work and be home earlier in the evenings.
  4. I am fitter. I cycle 6 miles a day which I think is amazing and gives me great pride. It is also a good way to get in shape. I can probably do lyrca better now than I did in the 80s.
  5. When I am on my bike I feel like I am 8 years old again, going out to play on my first bike and that is a pretty good frame of mind for starting work each day.

Finally I have also worked out what happens when it rains – I get wet, just like I used to do walking to and from the bus stop.