This year I bought a road bike – my first ever. It took me a couple of years to psych myself up to it. I’ve become a reasonably competent cyclist since moving to Cambridge (I told myself when I moved here that if I couldn’t get used to riding a bicycle here, I’d never do it anywhere) but a road bike, I thought, would be lightweight and flighty and difficult to get on and off. But this year I got there.
Then I started riding it. We have a thing called the Guided Busway near us, and it has a cycleway/footpath running all the way alongside it to St Ives. I have been riding up and down that. Slowly, at first, getting the hang of it, getting the feel of it, working out which way to move the levers to change gear, cursing the toe clips, getting my shoelaces caught in the toe clips, not falling over, thinking that perhaps I might be able to manage cleated pedals one day… But not this day. Not quite yet. I haven’t got as far as St Ives yet (and haven’t met the man with seven wives, either…)
But there I am, sometime in June, somewhere between Cambridge and Impington, wearing sunglasses on a grey day, a bit flushed, not quite sure what angle I’m trying to be at, with concrete and cow parsley in the background, getting the hang of this thing.
Kathleen Jowitt 