Barriers: This Time, It’s Personal.

Commuting with Betty is not the first time I have had the pleasure (and it is a pleasure, mainly) to cycle to work every day. I used to do a 30-35 minute commute to a different place of work. This journey was all bike – no public transport at all.

I’d wanted to commute to this place for about two years and I’d purchased a bike (I paid £7 for an old 10-speed Marlbro, and a lot more for a Brooks saddle to go with it; which is now on Betty, of course).

Where I live, and where the journey to work would take me, is a good sized hill to start the trip and get the blood flowing (it’s not called Fiery Hill, for nothing). However, getting to the point where I actually got in the saddle and cycled to work took rather longer than originally anticipated.

I teach for a living. At that time 16+ education at a local FE college, these days 18+ at a local university. The problem with teaching, or really the problem with cycling to work when teaching, is that arriving late is both unprofessional (because you are expected to be in the class before the students) and shoddy.

So I needed to find a time when it wouldn’t matter too much if I was late and I also needed to build up to the full trip. June is good for this. Much of the teaching is over and if anything happened to delay me, the consequences (i.e. a class of students without a teacher) would be reduced. Also, the weather makes the journey more pleasant.

It actually took me three weeks to finally get on the Malbro. I needed to overcome the psychology of the challenge. You have to understand that I hadn’t been in the saddle for nearly thirty years, and I was quite nervous about being able to ride again (it’s like breathing, though – you never forget).

The first day was hard. Very hard. I managed to get up to the Fiery Hill junction (a short hill climb in itself) and it was here that I had to get off and walk. Still, I was pleased with the initial result and at the top of Fiery Hill, I was able to get back on the bike and ride to work – mainly because it was down hill the rest of the way. Great.

What this meant, as you’ll have guessed, is that the return journey to home, was up hill much of the way. And, even though the hill wasn’t very steep, it was quite long. So Shanks’s Pony worked miracles and got me to the top of the hill, ready for the down hill ride to home.

Over the course of the next three weeks, I set myself a challenge – each day I would keep going a little further up Fiery Hill. A curb-stone to reach here, a tree to reach there, a mark in the road, until finally I got to the top and sat down on the saddle ready for the down hill ride. After that, it became a daily occurrence.

I did this for about two years and it was good. I became fitter during that time, than I had been for a number of years. There were more challenges though – psychological ones. Especially in the winter with snow on the ground. This posed two problems. The first was to remain warm – I’ll refer back to Ranulph Fiennes. The second was to be very aware of anything that was in the least bit slippery and to ride with caution.

These days, cycling with Betty seems almost a dream...