34. Building a cycling culture: grassroots activism in Manchester

The ride over, we head for Fallowfield and Platt Fields Park. Manchester has a bike polo team, the Mcr Dropouts, and this is where they practice. Tonight is an open-to-all session, and it provides the backdrop for the rest of us to hang around at the field’s edge, chatting and drinking.

 

As the light gradually fades on the bike polo game, and with the laughter and shouting of the players as accompaniment, I grab the chance to talk with Nes Brierley. I’d watched her riding Critical Mass on a 1970s ladies’ shopper; she was clearly a pivotal figure in the ride, and exudes urban cycling confidence and chic. In her late twenties, Nes is obviously very bright and has masses of energy. Her love of bikes just oozes out, and it’s highly contagious. She’s just organised a bicycle festival, I Bike Mcr, and she tells me about that.

“It basically started because I wanted to do a bike exhibition at the Basement, which is a social centre in Manchester. I wanted to do an exhibition about bicycles. From that I thought we should do loads of events as part of the exhibition. So then I organised it as a sort of festival. It became this I Bike Mcr festival. We had loads of different events. The opening night we had a roller race, which is like an indoor bike race. Loads of people came, maybe 150 people”.

One of the other Massers chips in, “That was one of the best nights the Basement’s ever had. It was really good”.

Nes continues, “Then, as well as that I made a film about cycling in Manchester, called I Bike Mcr. It’s about the different scenes of bikes in Manchester. So we talked to all kinds of people – school children and their mums, students, women and kids who’ve recently immigrated and are keen to cycle, all sorts – about getting around by bike. We did a bit about messengers. Then we did a bit about the velodrome, in which I interviewed Chris Hoy. A bit about my job”.

What do you do?

“Teach kids to cycle. We teach all the schools, youth centres. We teach adults as well, but mostly kids. In primary schools mostly, but we do high schools as well”.

“So I interviewed a few people from my work, and also Sustrans, and the Friends of the Fallowfield Loop. The Fallowfield Loop is basically an off-road cycle track around Manchester. So we talked to the different people and groups involved in promoting cycling in the city. And then we talked to people from the local bicycle industries, like Bicycle Doctor, cycle mechanics”.

“So a lot of people came to the exhibition, because I’d involved so many different groups with the film, that then they wanted to come along and get involved with the festival. So the film was quite a good tool to get people involved in the festival”.

“As part of the festival we had the exhibition. Then we had different things like bike polo, and alleycat, and alleykitten, which is like a crazy bike ride around the city on shoppers and kids’ bikes, which is fun! Then we had a Yo Fixie competition, which involved track stands, and devil takes the hindmost, and sprints and things like that”.

Alleycats, informal urban bike races which involve riding between checkpoints, are popular among messenger communities. I ask Nes whether one exists in Manchester.

“There’s only about a dozen messengers in Manchester. There’s not that many. I’m not a messenger. Everyone calls me a dissenger, because I did it, and I didn’t like it. I’m not a fakenger, because I don’t pretend to be one, I just don’t want to be one. I did it and it was shit. I couldn’t handle the shit pay, and also all the office stuff, being a girl going in all sweaty”.

Nes is clearly at the heart of Manchester’s cycling subculture, a subculture which is spreading fast across the world from its roots in north American cities. Within this world, bikes are intensely cool and central to a new way of living in and experiencing the city. It’s growing in the most car-centric and unlikely of places. In Los Angeles, for example, Midnight Riddaz see bikes as a sensory route to experiencing the city, as a way of being more fully alive in the city.

“Out of the festival”, Nes tells me, “has come quite a lot things. A lot more people seem to be interested in doing bike stuff. We did a pub bike ride, and now that’s turned into doing regular bike rides out into the countryside, stopping off at pubs, hanging out, having a social event. And Critical Mass has been quite big this month”.

People are drifting off. Nes invites them to come again next month, and makes sure they know there’s a bike ride on Sunday, leaving from Glossop train station at noon. Afterwards they’ll go to The Globe, a vegan pub. She tries to assuage some people’s fears that the ride will be too far, or too fast. There’s also going to be more bike polo here tomorrow afternoon.

I ask Nes what makes her organise all this bike stuff.

“I felt there was a lack of bike culture in Manchester, or at least a lack of people getting together and doing bike stuff together. There’s quite a few cyclists, but Manchester isn’t a massive cycling city. If you go to other cities like Oxford you see loads of cyclists all the time. Here, I think a lot of cyclists feel quite isolated, like that they’re the only person that they know who’s a cyclist. When I made the film, that became obvious. A lot of people were saying that the reason they were going on Critical Mass was to meet other cyclists, because they never met any”.

“So I thought it’d be good to have a festival that was just about cycling, to try and build some sort of cycling community. That’s why I wanted to do loads of different events, so we had a family treasure hunt, a bicycle treasure hunt around the city which is sort of a friendly version of the alleycat which was just nice and fun, and then things like bike polo that anyone could get involved in. I just wanted to create a cycling buzz in Manchester really”.

“But surely”, I say, “Manchester’s got a velodrome, loads of big racing clubs. It’s got traditional cycling clubs hasn’t it? Don’t they connect with the things you’re interested in?”

“It’s got roadie clubs, and track clubs. But if you’re not in those cliques, then you don’t really know those people. There’s no place to mix with those people, other than at the velodrome or on one of their rides. And I guess that’s just for hardened cyclists, whereas your everyday cyclist that commutes three miles up the road every day doesn’t get to meet any other cyclists really”.

“Is your enthusiasm for cycling maybe different from those club riders’ enthusiasms? Are you trying to do something different?”.

“Possibly. There is a political reason behind why I do what I do. The reason is because I’d like to see more people on bikes than in cars. I think of Critical Mass in loads of different ways. I think it’s a celebration of the bicycle. But I also think it shows there’s an environmentally friendly way to get around the city, and also a fun way. I just feel cycling’s really fun. I’m sure roadies have loads of fun, and people at the velodrome do as well. But some people might see those things less as fun than as serious sport”.

“How did you get into cycling? Where’s your passion come from?”.

“I’ve only been cycling for about five years, maybe less than that. I went out with a boy who was really massively into cycling. And then, after not very long of going out with each other, we cycled around Ireland together, and it was amazing. And then, I just loved bikes, I just thought they were amazing. So I guess it was that trip around Ireland that just made me realise it’s so liberating to ride a bike”.

I describe my experiences of riding through the middle of Birmingham yesterday, and say that Manchester seems leagues ahead. I saw lots of people riding bikes earlier on, people riding fixed and single speed. Cycling seems cool here.

“There is quite a lot going on. But it is a big city, and if you compare it to somewhere like Cambridge or Oxford, we don’t have that much. When I say bike culture I mean cyclists hanging out, and having bike events that are social events as well as bike events, as well as local clubs going on bike rides”.

I get this. Nes’s vision is broader than painting bike lanes on roads, broader than simply getting more people onto bikes. It’s about transforming social life at the same time as transforming the way we move around. It’s a much fuller, more radical vision of the way the world could be. Cycling is not simply good; it’s also a way of making the world as a whole a better, more humane place.

“I guess I was inspired by Portland in Oregon. They have so many bike events going on all the time, loads of things with loads of people. It’s a massive bike community. There are about five bike events going on there every day. It’s really beautiful, and I guess I felt a bit jealous of that culture, of that level of community really. Because I feel that’s what’s lacking with everyday cyclists, is that sense of community”.

Portland, Oregon feels like the epicentre of this urban cycling renaissance. In Portland, and increasingly elsewhere – although Manchester and London are perhaps the British cities showing the earliest and clearest signs – cycling is fast becoming synonymous with being young, cool, free, alive, alternative, even sexy. Personally I find it hugely seductive and it fills me with intense optimism for cycling’s future.

We talk about Critical Mass. “About a year and a half to two years ago, Critical Mass was about ten people, if we were lucky”.

Nes realised Critical Mass had to be more than a bike ride. Why would someone come all the way into town, or hang around for an hour after finishing work, just to ride around for half an hour? She sensed people were seeking a community, and began to provide opportunities for them to hang out after rides, eating, drinking, watching films, playing bike polo, holding free parties in the woods.

She used to flyer about 400 bikes ahead of each Critical Mass, but that didn’t feel particularly effective, so she’s now done I Bike Mcr stickers, with details of Critical Mass, to put on cycle parking stands across the city. This method is less labour intensive, more visible, and seems to be more effective. She also promotes rides via My Space, “so even though it’s this horrible capitalist thing, owned by Rupert Murdoch, it’s doing us quite well”.

Nes becomes suddenly aware of how much she’s been talking. Her self-consciousness invites the remaining Massers to give her some gentle ribbing, but what’s clear to all of us, I think, is that Nes is a woman on a mission, and for now she’s carrying people with her.

Nes is a different kind of cycling entrepreneur to those I met at Sustrans’ Head Office in Bristol, or to Zsolt in Exeter, but no less a cycling entrepreneur for that. She’s busy creating, innovating and taking risks. She’s striving to build a movement, a culture, to create a new, cycling way of life for her city. What impresses me most about Nes is how she’s motivated by a different agenda to the people paid to promote cycling. Sure, she wants more cycling for solid ethical reasons – because it gets people out of cars and counters climate change. But her fundamental position – and in this she seems to be in tune with her generation –  is that cycling is fun, cool, sexy and revolutionary.

At home in the off-beat, Nes leads a different cycling life. She knows the best cycling documentaries, great films like Ted White’s Return of the Scorchers, which takes a global perspective in extolling the beauties and benefits of cycling. She knows many musicians are writing bike songs. She knows the bands playing music on bike parts, like the local Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra, as well as the bands who tour by bike. She knows all kinds of people living out their own bike dreams, on bikes. She’s living in perfect time with the global alternative bike scene, and it rocks.

Nes is currently trying to secure funding for a cycling hub. “A lot of the stuff we’ll have there, as well as facilities like showers, changing rooms and work spaces, will be based around people. So we’re going to run lots and lots of courses, like bike maintenance courses. I teach cycling, so we’ll do lots of stuff about trying to raise people’s confidence about riding on roads, adult and child classes, about riding in the city centre, because a lot of people find that quite scary”.

“It’s also going to be a social space as well. So we’re going to have band nights, and bike film nights, and bike rides – we’ll organise a cycle club, and do longer and shorter rides”.

Brilliant. It sounds fantastic, I say.

“It is, but it’s a bit scary. There’s not that many people want to be involved at this stage of the process. The funding bit, I guess people find a bit boring. A lot of people have said that when it’s up and running they’ll be up for helping out. We want to run it as a co-operative and get paid wages. I don’t really want to be cap-in-hand all the time. I want to make it sustainable”.

Nes is also one of The Spokes, Manchester’s all-woman all-bike-loving bicycle dance troupe. Again, the influence is west coast north American. Performing on kids’ bikes, The Spokes aim not only to promote cycling as the sane alternative for a viable planet, and to communicate a love for bikes, but also to challenge especially women’s concerns with appearance, something which stops many from ever giving cycling a go. The Spokes don’t care what they look like, and the irony or paradox is, of course, that this partly explains why they look so good.

So cycling in places like Manchester is being recaptured by youth. It’s very exciting to hear young people talking about bikes and cycling in reverential tones and terms. Sure, this has a lot to do with ‘cool’, with being hip, but that’s how practices get rejuvenated – from youth subcultures, from the ground up. Besides, living through a time of rapid climate change, people like Nes are canaries in the coalmine. With their fingers on the pulse, Nes and her friends are showing the rest of us the way, to a brighter, cycling future.

Nes and countless others like her deserve a standing ovation. In the years to come, we might with luck look back and give them one.

***

It’s much too dark for bike polo now, and almost everyone’s drifted off. Those remaining start talking about going to a club, catching a band. For them, the night is young. I’d really like to keep up. I feel like I’m somewhere between a Famous Five adventure and a Jack Kerouac road trip, and it’s fun. But I’m shattered. Besides, I’m on my own ride, heading in a different direction. Tomorrow I’m 40. I want to get home to see my family. So I say farewell, and leave them to their cycling adventures.

For the second time, but this time by night, I ride ‘the curry mile’ through Rusholme, past the universities, into the city centre, and then out past GMex to Castlefield and the youth hostel. It’s more fantastic than before, non-stop stimulation. One kind of adrenaline-fuelled urban cycling involves mixing it with heavy traffic, total concentration, gritting your teeth and riding hard, and occasional close encounters which come with doses of fear. Although there’s pleasure in that, as a cycling advocate I find it hard to recommend. But this, this is different – this kind of urban cycling is about cruising, sitting comfortably in the saddle which is your seat to the night-time urban spectacle unfolding as you move silently past, a ringside seat to the open-air theatre of metropolitan life.

***

I arrive just after two coachloads of Irish schoolchildren, and it’s chaos. Suddenly hungry, I sit outside, looking over the Bridgwater Canal and scoffing my emergency rations, dried fruit and nuts, until the chaos subsides. A lovely woman checks me in, and informs me (how can she tell?) that if I want beer I should get it now, as the bar’s about to close. I buy two bottles, and once I’ve identified my bunk, disturbing three chaps already sleeping, I find what looks like a quiet spot to unwind, drink, look over maps to figure out tomorrow’s route, and enjoy the last hour of not being 40.

Just then, the room’s invaded by the Irish schoolkids. They’re seriously wired. They’ve also clearly not eaten in ages, the logistics of their adventure have gone awry, and their adult minders are trying desperately to arrange for some takeaway food to be delivered. I’m entranced by the drama. Will the kids stay awake until the food arrives? Will the adults survive without trying to kill each another? But finally I can bear no more, and leave them to their fate.

I tumble, 40 and exhausted, into bed, and sleep.

33. Critical Mass

Outside, I head down Oxford Road, past the hospitals and universities, to the city centre.

Like many others across the globe, Manchester Critical Mass takes place on the last Friday of every month. That’s today.

Riders gather outside the city’s Central Library at 6 pm. I find the spot easily, just off St Peter’s Square. The Library is a magnificent round building. I’d quite like to go inside and check out the books, but I’m here to ride.

I arrive at the same time as a guy pulling a sound system in a trailer. I check I’m in the right place and we chat. More people gradually arrive as I eat food, watch, and exchange pleasantries. A week into my ride, a week spent making connections with other people passionate about cycling, and my usual shyness has gone. Of course, social interaction is made easier when you’re confident that everyone here is happy to talk, and loves cycling.

Critical Mass reclaims cycling’s right to the city. It appeals to people trying to change the world. I’m handed a flyer advertising an upcoming carnival organised by the Campaign Against Climate Change. The UK Government, it says, is just not doing enough to cut carbon emissions and reduce the threat of climate catastrophe. Other people are promoting the camp for climate action taking place later in the year. Last year’s camp had shut down Drax power station, the UK’s single biggest carbon emitter. This summer’s camp would take place next to Heathrow, the world’s busiest airport, and campaign against air travel. A Manchester contingent would be there. Another flyer informs me that, as last year, people would be cycling to the climate camp. Group bike rides to high profile events have become common in the world of environmental campaigning for a better, fairer, safer world. The bike’s the right vehicle on which to make pilgrimages for the sake of humanity.

To a cacophony of whistles, bells and yelps, we pull out onto the ride. I’ve no idea where we’re going, and it feels great. I’m ecstatic to be here, and to be following someone else’s route for a change. For the first time on my ride, I belong to a big group of cyclists, riding together, in solidarity.

Two guys ride unicycles. They look the part, but tell me that it’s their first time. They’ve a friend on a regular bike. Whenever there’s a need to stop, they ride up either side of him, maintaining their balance by placing a hand on his shoulders. His presence means they don’t need to dismount and remount within the confines of the bunch. One of them plans to ride the End to End in September, aiming for 60 miles a day. He’ll carry his gear in a rucksack.

Quite a few people are riding fixed or single-speeds. I chat to a doctor on a fixie. His gear, 48×16, seems a bit big to me, but he’s lean, looks fit, and Manchester – perhaps surprisingly – is really quite flat. He’s lived in Manchester ten years, but it’s his first time on Critical Mass too. He found out about it via the Web. Someone’s been working hard, promoting this ride.

I talk to a guy about Love Your Bike. Organised by Manchester Friends of the Earth with the support of the City Council, this campaign has come up with some fantastic marketing to promote cycling in the city. Transport for London is spending huge amounts on cycling in the capital, but here in the north enthusiastic volunteers on a shoestring budget are taking the lead.

My favourite Love Your Bike image is of a (sub)standard cycle lane at the road edge, but the ordinary bike symbol is replaced with the words ‘Fast Lane’, and the adjacent carriageway carries the words ‘Fat Lane’. I recall the fat cooling towers of the coal-fired power station at Rugeley this morning. Cars too are driven by fossil fuels, and squat on – whilst using up and wearing out – our precious planet. We know the quick, skinny bike is perfectly geared to today’s urban conditions, but we need to find new ways of getting that message across, if we’re to break entrenched but misguided notions about the relative merits of cars and bikes. Love Your Bike does that. Bikes are slim. Like wind turbines. Spinning, circular motion, natural – the way ahead.

Critical Mass is an assertion of our right to ride. It asserts, perfectly reasonably, ‘we’re not stopping traffic. We ARE traffic!’. At one point during the ride, I find myself right at the back of the Mass. We’re being closely followed by a police car. Its driver is maintaining a relatively respectful distance from us, and is I assume seeking to protect rather than threaten the ride. Nonetheless, it feels slightly unnerving. The guy riding alongside me looks anxious. I try to reassure him.

‘Have you heard about that guy who got done for riding on the road?’ he asks.

‘Sure, you mean Daniel Cadden?’.

‘That’s me’, says Daniel.

I hope my surprise doesn’t show. Reading about Daniel’s case in the press, I’d assumed him to be a feisty, perhaps even ferocious, figure. I’d certainly not imagined the slightly nervous looking, mild-mannered young man beside me now. He seems unassuming, almost timid. Yet like Rosa Parks on a Montgomery bus in December 1955, this man refused to move from a place he knew he had a right to be.

In 2006, Daniel was cycling fast downhill, on a single-lane carriageway. He was stopped by police because cars overtaking him where crossing a solid white line in the middle of the road. Rather than stop the drivers of those cars for breaking the law, the police charged Daniel for inconsiderate cycling.

In order to reduce the risk of being squeezed, and in keeping with his high speed, Daniel had sensibly positioned himself away from the kerb, and in full view of drivers. Such positioning is advocated by anyone who knows about cycling, and is consistent with UK cycle training guidance. But it clearly signals a confident cyclist who believes her of himself to have a right to be on the road.

Daniel’s case was complicated by the provision of a cycle track running adjacent to the road on which he was riding. To someone ignorant of the needs and rights of the cyclist, Daniel should have crossed three lanes of busy traffic and dislocated his journey in order to use it.

Because he considered Daniel to be holding up the traffic, and because he considered there to be an alternative to riding on that stretch of road, the judge found Daniel guilty of the charge of ‘inconsiderate cycling’.

With the unequivocal backing of the UK’s national cyclists’ organisation, CTC, and with financial and moral support from across the cycling community, Daniel appealed, and won. Cyclists are not, thank goodness, legally obliged to use cycle tracks. As I have seen too many times since leaving Land’s End a week ago, many are neither good nor useful, some are dangerous and potentially lethal.

The judge at Daniel’s re-trial ruled that causing a short delay to other road users does not constitute ‘inconsiderate cycling’ (imagine the charge of ‘inconsiderate driving’ being applied to all those motorists whose behaviour caused short delays to others!).

Daniel is not meek. He is a cycling hero. After what must have been a harrowing experience, going to court, being found guilty, and finding himself at the centre of cyclists’ fight to defend their rights to the road, here he is on Manchester Critical Mass, again affirming his right, as a cyclist, to space. I’m struck by how Daniel was criminalised for his refusal to budge, and how Critical Mass is a collective refusal to budge, and has been similarly criminalised in various cities across the world since its emergence in San Francisco in 1992.

Daniel tells me it’s been an exhausting year, and he’s glad the experience is behind him. He obviously didn’t appreciate all the attention, but he’s been overwhelmed by the support he received from CTC, the Cyclists’ Defence Fund, and cyclists everywhere.

Cyclists were on the road before motorists, and will be on the road long after the car’s extinct, motoring disappeared into the historical records. So I’m with Daniel 100%. Across Britain, you don’t have to travel far to find some seriously deficient infrastructure which people who never cycle expect people who do cycle to use, and who get riled when we don’t. But we shall not, we shall not be moved; on Critical Mass we sing this together with the countless others who’ve struggled for and won greater social justice in the past.

The ride is very chilled. We’re having fun, smiling, mingling. This event feels right for the city. For most people the working week has finished, the pleasures of the weekend lie ahead. It’s transition time, and a bunch of cyclists pedal through the city’s streets, laughing, talking, having fun, feeling free. Around 100 people have taken to the streets of central Manchester tonight, because they love cycling and want to join with others to feel safe cycling in their city, a city made more convivial, civilised through the shared act of cycling. It feels like urban regeneration, and I find it amazing, really, how few urban authorities actively promote Critical Mass as good for the life and soul of their city, as not a liability but an asset. Critical Mass is not something the authorities need to police, it’s something the authorities need to promote.

The only sour point of the ride comes when a police officer on a mountain bike – who’d joined the ride half-way through – cuts dangerously through the mass, and almost brings a young woman down. Those of us who see the incident are astonished, but he seems completely unconcerned about the consequences of his actions. It really underlines the responsibility exercised by those of us within the Mass – we’re riding sensibly, carefully and respectfully. Other than the cop with attitude, there’s a complete lack of aggressiveness. We’re a very chilled bunch, and we don’t need him messing it up. It’s great to see police riding bikes, I’m all in favour of that, but loons like him shouldn’t be let loose on the public.

As the ride unfurls, I also get a sense of who’s who. No one organises or leads Critical Mass, but clearly some people understand how it works better than others, have more of a stake in how it goes, exert a little more control over its flows and fluctuations.

It’s gone all too soon. But for me it’s been a real boost. I’m loving my solitary ride from one end of Britain to the other, but it also makes me very happy to know I’ll never ride absolutely alone.

32. Into Manchester

Buxton hits me like a bad dream. If today’s conditions are anything to go by, it’s a town which is far from ideal for cycling. It’s full of trucks and oversized people in oversized cars. Squashed into a dip in the landscape, with steep hills on all sides, there’s an absence of the kind of quiet escape routes on which cyclists depend. I grab a chip butty, wolf it down, and move on.

I haven’t even begun to consider how I’m going to get from Buxton to Manchester. I’ve looked at the maps a few times, and finding a route seems just too difficult. Now I’ve no choice but to make one. As in life, so in cycling, if you’re not sure what to do, put yourself in a position where you have to do something, and you will.

I climb out on the A5004, and just out of town turn off to follow National Cycle Network route 68. Without warning, I find myself bumping, and then walking, along a very rough track. On a good mountain bike, this might be fun. On a road bike, it’s a cruel joke. ‘This a cycling route? You’re having a laugh, at my expense’.

The surface improves, and my mood with it. It becomes an excellent, more direct, alternative to the main road. I skirt deftly around Horwich End and Whaley Bridge.

By Buxworth I’m tired of skirting and flirting with places, and want actually to ride through a few of them. So I stop faffing about and head for the A6. Into Furness Vale and it’s not feeling at all bad; quick, flat, and on this April Friday afternoon, reasonably quiet.

I’d expected getting into Manchester to be stressful whichever way I chose to do it. I hadn’t anticipated how exhilarating the direct, downhill route would be. I just fly off the Pennines, reaching speeds which give me the confidence to mix it with the buses, trucks and cars. I barely notice Stockport and crossing the M62.

The terrain flattens. Bus and bike lanes offer respite from the stop-start, speeding A6 traffic. But I’ve got the bit between my teeth. With a week’s hard cycling in my legs, riding on these straight, fast urban roads is a breeze. A sense of elation rises up in me. I set my sights on cyclists up ahead, and reel them in, one by one. I try to check my feelings of self-satisfaction and move past apologetically, but I can’t prevent my speed making theirs seem slow.

In Manchester now. Levenshulme, then Rusholme. Suddenly there are people on bikes everywhere. I feel the buzz of urban cycling.

The streets are full of people. The traffic moves more slowly. The world goes into slow motion. Kids on BMXs cruise in all directions. They seem completely at home. They ride tight circles on the pavements, hop up and down the kerbs, and pull wheelies across the road.

There’s a market at the junction of Dickenson Road. The streets swell with smells from the Indian subcontinent. I breathe deeply, completely intoxicated. If urban cycling was always accompanied by the sights and smells of Rusholme, wouldn’t everyone go by bike? If urban cycling was this good, the cars would go and our cities and their people would breathe once more.

Mass urban cycle-touring is a movement waiting to happen. Like most big cities, Manchester’s streets are brimful of meanings, from Marx and Engels to Joy Division and The Smiths. They’re calling out to be explored, experienced – by bike, the only vehicle which does not cut you off from, but opens you up to, these wonderful worlds. Open-top bus tours just can’t compete. Right now, I feel like I’m on an olfactory tour of this vibrant, multicultural city, I feel like I could cruise for hours, dwelling in and absorbing the multi-sensory urban experience.

I turn left into Dickenson Road and almost at its end, there’s Bicycle Doctor, a bike shop with a difference. I lock my bike in the cycle parking outside and go in, slightly uncomfortable to be entering a bike shop with no intention of buying anything, not even sure what I want to find out.

But the people who work here are great. They’ve not learned how to sneer. We need more bike shops like this. I potter around, and get talking to one of the workers. I say I wanted to visit because they’re a co-op, and also they advertise in some of my favourite bike magazines, Velo Vision and A to B. Cranky cycling, perhaps.

“Yeah, there are only 2 bike shop co-ops”.

“What, the other one being Edinburgh?”, I ask.

“No, they’re not a co-op. The other one’s Brixton Cycles, down in London”. For reasons I don’t fully understand, something to do with recent changes to their organisation, Edinburgh Bicycle Co-operative isn’t, at least here, considered a proper co-op. I ask how Edinburgh Bicycle (not a) Co-op’s recent arrival in Manchester has affected Bicycle Doctor’s trade. Not too badly, apparently; they’re catering for different markets.

“Go take a look at their store, it’s only just around the corner”.

So out I go, turn right at the lights, and head down Oxford Road. This stretch is known locally as ‘the curry mile’. I catch sight of a spanking new store on the right, see it’s the new bike shop, and pull over. I’m wondering where best to leave my bike, when a guy leaving the shop tells me to take it inside with me. No problem, apparently. I ask one of the staff, who signals me to one of the bike stands sprinkled about the massive shop, and helps me park my bike in it. That’s service. This is a different kind of bike store. It’s as big as Bridgtown Bikes, but has much less stock crowding the space, so it feels immense. Not long ago, Bicycle Doctor would’ve felt like a really big bike shop, but it’s small in comparison to this.

Part of me mourns the potential loss of old-style bike shops. Part of me wonders if this is the future which cycle retailing needs desperately to embrace. Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op knows its market goes well beyond male club racing cyclists and mountain bikers. It understands cycling’s diversity, and the importance of catering to it. It stocks stuff for women, commuters, families, and children. It runs cycle maintenance courses, including women-only ones. Its trail skills classes teach people how to ride a mountain bike. I’m particularly taken with its organisation of century rides; during summer, for a very reasonable fee, it takes small groups out of Edinburgh to tackle one hundred miles in a day, providing people with the extra push needed to complete the challenge of a lifetime.

Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op began in 1977. Thirty years on, it’s moved well beyond its Scottish home, and runs the biggest bike shops in Leeds and Newcastle, as well as Manchester. It’s a twenty-first century bike shop. But I’ve nothing to buy, so simply stand and gawp.

31. … to the car-free Tissington Trail

If the Ashbourne to Buxton railway was still here, those big trucks full of stone might not be needed, and Ashbourne might breathe free. But it’s been converted into a leisure route for walking and, most especially, cycling. It’s become the Tissington Trail, Britain’s oldest, and among its most popular, off-road cycle routes.

Next to Sainsbury, a pub sits at the start of the trail. ‘The Station Hotel’ is carved in stone above its door. But it’s been renamed ‘The Beresford Arms’. Perhaps one day it’ll be ‘The Cyclist’s Legs’. A signpost in the car park opposite tells me it’s 24 miles to Buxton, if you’re following the Tissington Trail, which cars of course cannot. I’m aiming to get there for lunch.

The first part of the trail is cool, literally. The long, damp Ashbourne tunnel takes me out of town, to the cycle centre. It’s one of three run by the Peak District National Park Authority. You can hire cycles to suit most needs, not just mountain bikes, but also kids’ bikes, trailers and trailer-bikes, child seats, tandems, trikes and hand-cranked trikes. They also do bike repairs, and for a quid they’ll even wash your bike.

The centres are open daily from March to October. The guys at Ashbourne reckon it’s shaping up to be a good year. They had a “cracking two weeks over Easter, one hundred bikes a day hired out”. And they’re looking forward to a really busy May Day Bank Holiday weekend.

Who comes to ride the trail?

“Families, older people, all sorts. Out of school holidays, we get lots of school groups. June’s a good month for school groups. It’s cheaper for them, they get preferential deals”.

The trail is a real hit with the kids, especially those from inner-city schools. “They’re wowed out by how close they get to nature, the cows and sheep”.

“But you’re lucky today”, one of the guys tells me, “it’s nice and quiet. There won’t be lots of kids falling off bikes and dogs darting around, getting in your way, holding you up”.

The trail climbs steadily, almost imperceptibly, from Ashbourne. At Parsley Hay, 13 miles to the north, you’re 200 or so metres higher. On a day like today, after battling the wind and gradient to Parsley Hey, someone hiring a bike and returning to Ashbourne could probably pretty much freewheel the wind-assisted downhill return leg of the journey.

After three and a half miles I reach Tissington. Whether travelling by train or bike, this has always been a popular stop, not least because of Tissington’s well dressing fame. Beginning on Ascension Day, people decorate wells and springs with flowers, seeds and leaves. It’s in celebration of water, which is often scarce on this limestone plateau. I get a cup of tea at the refreshment kiosk.

I have another cuppa at the beautifully restored signal box at Hartington, eight miles further up the track. Through the first half of the twentieth century this was one of the busiest stations on the line. It made a good starting point for a day’s walk. I can see why people came, and still come, here. It’s beautiful. Real joy comes with getting away from roads and the noisy, grimy world of motorised traffic.

Along sheltered stretches, the trees are close. Not yet fully in leaf, their greens are spring vivid. Wildflowers throng the verges. The air is filled with birdsong. Emerging out onto exposed sections of track, I’m hit by wind and views. White dry limestone walls, farmhouses scattered across the hillsides. The compensation of the strong headwind is the great views last longer. I pass a field chock-a-block with dandelions, a sea of countless dancing yellow heads. There are lambs and new-born calves in the fields. A weak sun glimmers through the haze. Above the noise of the wind rushing past my ears, I can hear skylarks sing as they hang high in the air above. A few walkers and cyclists are out on the track, but not many.

A red post office van wends its stop-start way along meandering lanes, the agreeable face of rural motoring. To the cyclist, it’s a familiar and reassuring presence in the countryside, an indicator that you’ve reached the back lanes, and that the motorised madness which reigns elsewhere has been, if only for a while, left behind. I’m at my happiest when riding a bike along roads where post office vans, farm tractors and quad bikes together outnumber all other vehicles.

The post van’s journey stitches the separate farmhouses into a rural community. That’s something which cycling has the capacity to do, bringing places scattered across a city together, producing compact urban form, rekindling urban community; rekindling that warm glow which, despite the car’s best efforts, is not extinguished yet.

In dribs and drabs a group of kids riding specialist cycles sail past the other way, down hill and the wind behind them. Some of them are riding trikes. If they have problems balancing a bike, they look very happy on these machines. There are maybe 20 riders in all. A great day out. It looks easy, fun. I hope they cope with the tougher return journey.

The junction of two rail lines, Parsley Hay played its part in Britain’s industrial and transport history. The Ashbourne to Buxton line closed in 1963, the Cromford High Peak Line in 1967. It’s now a junction of two cycle routes. Just south of here, the High Peak and Tissington trails merge. From Parsley Hay you can ride to the end of one of the trails, then cut across country to join the end of the other trail, by which to return. There’s another cycle centre here, and a big car park. There’s also a shop stocked with cycling bits and bobs, and a café. It feels more of a proper visitor centre than the smaller Ashbourne outpost.

The two guys who work here are having lunch. They’re happy to chat. How, I wonder, did this cycle centre, quite remote in the Derbyshire hills, come about?

“It was about ‘74. They got the railways after Beeching shut them in ’67, and it was what to do with them, ‘cos they already had the car parks and the old stations. So the idea was to get people to walk and cycle on the old railway lines. The state they’re in now is much better than what they were originally. I think they were pretty rough”.

“The National Park decided to put them to good use. They were quite forward thinking”.

“There are more people using them now than ever did when the trains were running”.

“We do 13,000 hires a year, and Ashbourne does the same. In the summer holidays we’re putting 100-plus bikes a day out onto the trails. And we averaged a hundred a day at Easter. On a really good day it can be 150, 160, 170-plus”

I ask their capacity.

“We’ve a hundred bikes, plus a few of last years, about 15 of last years. And then we’ve got kids’ bikes and specials”.

“I suppose the biggest number we’ll get, we’ve got a school group coming in, in a bit, and they’re going to have 90 bikes in the morning and 90 in the afternoon, so you’re clocking 180 bikes on a day”.

That’s a lot of work for them, I say.

“You can only check them briefly when they come in. Then we stack them up ready for them to go back out again. It’s quite quick”.

Many people bring their own bikes. Bike-laden cars converge here from all directions, clogging the local lanes and filling the car parks.

“On busy days in summer, we have people parking down the lane, and we have to use the camping field as overspill sometimes”.

Where do people ride to?

“Tissington is the main destination, because it’s a nice little village and there are refreshments down there. Then they turn round and come back again, usually late, because it’s uphill, and you can have a strong wind against you”.

I ask their impressions of people’s experiences of going for a bike ride along the trails. There’s a gentle and understandable humour to be had in talking about people who don’t normally ride bikes giving cycling a go, inevitable talk of sore bums and aching legs. But the guys are adamant that the bulk of people coming here have a fantastic time.

“Have a look at the Visitors’ Book”.

“I mean, initially they’ll say their bum hurts!”.

“They’ll come in and say ‘I’ve not ridden a bike for 15 years’, and then they’ll go all the way down to Ashbourne and back, that’s 27 miles, and they’ll get a headwind coming back, uphill”.

I wonder whether hiring bikes to people who don’t often ride bikes causes problems? Watching people wobble off, do they worry for their safety?’

“A lot of kids struggle with the gears; they can’t figure them out. Punctures I suppose are the most common thing, odd bits and bobs, but not that much, kids and gears mainly”.

But with so many novice cyclists on a relatively narrow track, there are risks in taking to the trail.

“I wouldn’t go out there on a bank holiday”.

“We tell people to take a helmet. They say ‘oh, I don’t want one, I’m not going on any roads’. But they’re far more likely to get knocked off by a child or a dog than they are on the roads”.

Do people ever come back vowing never to touch a bike again, they’ve had such a rubbish experience?

“Occasionally, but it’s rare. Most of the time they’ve enjoyed themselves. Sometimes they’ll say ‘never again’, but they’ll probably come back the following year, do it again the following year. Most people enjoy themselves.”

The cycle centres don’t make money. They aim just to break even. These days more people have their own bikes, which they bring on their cars. While the bike hire side of the enterprise is pretty steady, it’s the shop at Parsley Hay, selling a basic range of cycling gear, which makes any money. “People arrive, get on their bike for the first time in ages, and find something wrong. They don’t realise how bad their bikes are; new tyres and tubes, that kind of thing”.

We talk about my trip. One of the guys has ridden the End to End, three weeks cycle camping. Did he enjoy it?

“Yeah, I can’t wait to do it again, but I can’t get the time off during the summer. I could do it in the winter, but I don’t fancy camping in the winter”.

He fancies riding from Land’s End, across the bottom of Wales to Fishguard and the ferry to southern Ireland, up to Northern Ireland, across to Scotland and up to John O’Groats. That adds another country. The End to End via Ireland.

This is how cycle-touring works. A serendipitous conversation with a stranger fires the imagination, starts the dreams, motivates a stretch for the maps. Another adventure born.

I take their advice and flick at the Visitors’ Book on my way out.

“Great, but my legs ache, 10 out of 10”.

“It makes you feel very pleased with yourself since you’ve just done 20 miles. Thanks”.

“Sore bottoms but happy”.

“Bum sore but heart happy”.

“Rode bike today for first time in 30 years. Brill, but very sore bum”.

A sore bum, it seems, is widely recognised as a small price to pay for the rewards of a day spent cycling.

Outside, I chat to a couple out for a ride on their beautiful, shiny, high-spec Airnimal folding bikes. The woman doesn’t seem to consider herself a particularly strong or committed cyclist. Yet she’s certainly had some adventures. They’ve ridden in Mongolia and Vietnam, where, to her own amazement, on one day she rode 100 miles.

Just as I’m leaving, a girl, perhaps 5 or 6 years old, pedals up ahead of her family. She’s ecstatic, exclaiming to no-one in particular ‘I made it! I made it!’. That’s some sense of achievement. I hope I’ll be as pleased with myself if I reach John O’Groats.

It’s not difficult to understand why people come here, people who would don’t normally ride a bike – no cars, gorgeous scenery, picnic spots, birds, physical activity, fresh air, sharing an adventure with others. Especially if the sun’s shining, I can’t imagine a more idyllic day out.

On the Tissington Trail, you traverse one of England’s hilliest and most scenic areas without really climbing a hill. The steady incline from Ashbourne to Parsley Hay was designed for nineteenth century steam trains, and is barely discernible to a cyclist, even a novice. Now for me, this feels a bit like cheating, riding through the hills without riding those hills. The trail holds a contour along the valley side as fields rise on one side and fall away on the other. But then I can, if I choose, take to the hilly lanes, with their ups, downs and swooping bends, where I’ll need to be vigilant of fast approaching vehicles. It’s horses for courses.

Being off-road is the route’s big appeal, yet most of life is of course on roads. So the trail misses things like pubs, cafés and villages. Unless freedom from cars is your overriding aim, the Tissington trail could feel slightly dull. The guys at the cycle centre told me that most people travel to Parsley Hay because they want to ride car-free trails, but some of them quickly recognise the limitations of the experience, and broaden their horizons. “They get a bit bored, want to do a bit more, go a bit further afield”.

The Tissington and High Peak Trails get thousands of young and old, novice and returning bums on saddles every year. These slithers of land snaking their way through the Peak District National Park pioneered off-road leisure cycling in the UK.

But the paradox of leisure facilities such as the Tissington Trail, it strikes me, is that they make cycling accessible to some whilst making it inaccessible to many. Every day at weekends and during the school holidays in the warmer months, hundreds of people give cycling a go along this route. The absence of cars, the beautiful surroundings, and the provision of cafés, toilets and, crucially, car parks lure people onto bikes and the discovery of cycling’s pleasures.

Yet this is a sequestered cycling corridor. It’s idyllic partly because it’s hard to reach, inaccessible to most people. It’s unlikely to form part of anyone’s commuter route. To get here, people drive, in their droves. In the peak season, the car parks and the country lanes leading to them suffocate under cars. Yes, it’s good for the local economy, and yes it gets people onto bikes who might otherwise never get on a bike. But environmentally, you might see it as a bit of a disaster. The National Park Authority could operate a bike bus, but for now driving is simply too easy for people to bother looking for more sustainable alternatives to using the car.

Riding the Tissington Trail has warmed me to Sustrans’ vision. I imagine the trailblazers here inspired John Grimshaw, and the other people behind what later became Sustrans. I’d always seen Sustrans as a pioneer, but like everything, it of course has predecessors.

But it strikes me that what Sustrans is doing is striving to render the Peak District model more accessible, to bring it to people’s doorsteps. People embrace off-road cycling, but out here in the Derbyshire dales it’s unlikely to transform people’s everyday lives. Sustrans saw the need to take this kind of cycling experience to where people live. Sustrans is not satisfied with getting people onto bikes once a year, on their holidays; it wants to transform society, to give cycling pride of place all day, every day. And people like it. The popularity of Sustrans’ vision is evident by its winning £50 million from the People’s Lottery at the end of 2007. So there should soon be a bit more of this sort of thing, coming to a place near you.

Before the end of the trail I catch myself yawning. Lack of stimulation? Back on the roads, I move north, hungry for lunch.

30. Cycling’s contrasts – from fast roads and huge roundabouts …

Breakfast is at 8. I share the farmhouse dining table with a guy who’s just come off nightshift at Rugeley power station. He’s ready for bed. Having cooked our breakfast, hostess Helen prepares to drive her daughter to school. I’m off to Manchester.

It’s a cold morning, with a stiff northerly wind. I’ll be riding into it all day. The B5013 takes me over Blithfield reservoir and on towards Uttoxeter, which I skirt around. On its northern edge I spot a cycle track running next to the road. I ignore it for a while, happy where I am. But – and maybe it’s because I know the track is there – the overtaking traffic starts to feel a bit too fast and close for comfort. I’m feeling squeezed.

So the next chance I get, I hop onto the track. My shoulders relax, my breathing eases. I can sit up, look round, see where I’m going.

There’s a roundabout up ahead. I’ll be turning right, north up the B5030. The carriageway’s dividing into two approach lanes. I need to get back onto the carriageway so I can move into position in the outside lane. But there’s no way off the track. Between me and the road is a monster kerb. Its message is clear – ‘don’t mess with me, I’ll eat your wheels’. I’m stuck.

I have one of those ‘can’t quite believe it, but I’m in the process of discovering it to be true’ moments which any regular British cyclist will no doubt recognise. The cycle track is taking me right up to the roundabout, and promptly ending. It’s throwing me back onto the road, at a right angle, immediately before the roundabout.

The road planners and engineers responsible for this ‘facility’ should be forced to ride it. Viewed from a bicycle, they’re guilty of professional misconduct (the problem is that, sat in office chairs, they can get away with it). A sane world would prosecute them; I’d happily send them down. Yet cyclists across Britain confront this kind of planned and callous disregard for their safety all the time. Each shocking experience eclipses the last, but they assemble and breed at the back of our minds, where – for me at least – they form into a blur of simmering resentment.

Meanwhile, the bureaucrats and politicians wonder why people are so reluctant to get on bikes, and set aside a tiny fraction of transport budgets, to provide a few more such farce-ilities.

How to take a stand? An irate letter? Today I opt for weary resignation and a mental note, ‘approach designated cycling infrastructure with extreme caution, if at all’. Little do I know that later on I’ll meet a man who has taken a brave stand against the outrageous contempt for cyclists which continues to be designed and built into our road systems.

I check behind, see a gap, and push hard, accelerating as fast as I can to get into position and onto the roundabout at a speed sufficient to give me a fighting chance of getting round in one piece.

I survive, to find myself on a long, flat straight road with cars and trucks hurtling past at 70 miles an hour. I don’t feel especially threatened, but it’s no fun. According to my map this road goes to a small place called Rocester, but otherwise nowhere in particular, so where’s everyone going? I put my head down and dig into the fierce wind, battling to maintain 15mph, to get this stretch over and done.

The B5031 veers north west towards Denstone, Alton Towers and Cheadle, and suddenly the traffic’s gone. A fleeting moment of relief and relaxation, before I settle into a more leisurely mood. I’m going north east, into the Derbyshire dales. The country road rolls through green hills. This area became Britain’s first national park, the Peak District, in 1951. Outstandingly beautiful and close to the urban industrial sprawls of the English midlands and north, the area warranted protection in the interests of rural leisure and recreation. I follow the river Dove upstream, riding through Ellastone and Mayfield, and into the market town of Ashbourne.

On this Friday morning, a market town in need of a prefix, ‘blighted’. Certainly neither ‘quaint’ nor ‘genteel’, though those adjectives might be restored with a reduction in the size of the vehicles allowed on its roads and a spot of enlightened traffic management.

I weave my way through nose-to-tail traffic, at a standstill in the town’s centre. A quarry lorry too big for these streets, too big for a civilised society, struggles to make a sharp turn. Its temporary inertia quickly turns the town into a traffic jam. Watching this paralysed behemoth, I feel like I’m witnessing the sacrifice of Ashbourne, its residents and visitors, to the power of business and its outdated mantra of economic competitiveness. It’s horrible.

The town fails to capture my tourist cash. I want no part in its smelly emasculation, and escape along signs to the Tissington Trail.

15. Reflecting on the Cycling Demonstration Towns

In the fading daylight, we retire to a quayside pub for a well-earned beer. I feel knackered. When Zsolt traces the route we’ve taken on a copy of the Exeter Cycle Map I see why – we’ve basically done a complete circumnavigation of the city, along with lots and lots of twiddly bits. Zsolt looks like he could carry on forever, which he probably will. I’m glad about that; cycling needs him.

There’s a growing sense of solidarity between us. After all, we’re soldiering on the same side, even if we’re playing different roles. Zsolt gets things done, I think and criticise. He’s the goodie, I’m the baddie. He’s the pragmatist, I’m the idealist. I know that I’d be crap at his job, whereas he’s clearly exceptionally good at it. But whatever else we may or may not be, we’re both cyclists, and in this together, doing the best we can. Maybe it’s that increased familiarity, maybe the sociologist in me brings out the muse in him, maybe it’s the late hour, fatigue or beer – whatever it is, we shift to a more reflective mood.

Reflection, for Zsolt, is a rare luxury. With just three years in which to make a difference, everything’s happening really fast, so fast there’s no time to think. Cycle Exeter is just doing, getting on with the job. He hopes that thought has already happened, somewhere else. Of course, he’d like more time to reflect, but he recognises that’s not what the demo town project is about. He’s conscious mistakes could, quite possible will, be made. But he seems reasonably relaxed about that. Confidence must come from knowing that Exeter’s widely regarded as doing well, from knowing you’re leading the leader of the pack.

What, I ask Zsolt, are the biggest challenges?

“I think it’s sustaining the commitment and investment once the project’s finished”.

I ask whether they’re seeking follow-on funding. Zsolt’s answer is more sophisticated. He sees building on Exeter’s time as a demo town as about more than money. It’s about entrenching a pro-cycling culture into the city. Here’s Zsolt’s real strength. He’s not like me, always looking for the ‘radical’ option. He’s much more interested in assembling a pro-cycling city, bit-by-bit.

“There’s lots we can do”, he says. “There’s planning guidance, stuff to do with securing developer  contributions. We can make sure that at the end of the project, that’s the best it can be. So in years to come, if we don’t get additional funding, we can be sure our engineers know how to design best practice.

“Then, last year we had an event in Bike Week called Cycle Sunday. This year we’re getting it sponsored by a solicitor’s company. Next year they want to take over the organisation. So that should be sustained.”

I’m impressed.

“Then, there’s a big mountain bike park up towards Dartmoor, Haldon Forest Park. One of the local bike shops ran an event up there. We helped with publicity, making posters. That’s what we want to do really, get projects off the ground, start making it a virtuous cycle. So eventually, we won’t have to do anything”.

“As long as you get people cycling. At the end of the project if I found out that nobody knew about the cycling demonstration town project, but there were more people cycling, then it’s a success. It’s not about ‘have you heard of Cycle Exeter?’, or anything like that”.

And what’s Zsolt’s vision? What does he want Exeter to look like ten years from now?

These questions throw him slightly, as though they’re not the kinds of things he spends his time thinking about. He suddenly seems younger, less sure of himself, less the consummate professional.

Off his usual turf, Zsolt improvises a response. “I think that cycling helps engender a culture of vitality and vibrancy … It’s just about people realising that, you know, basically cycling can make your life a bit better, really”.

I’d applaud this response from a man-in-the-street. I’d accept it from most city or county councillors. But coming from the Project Manager of the most highly regarded of the cycling demonstration towns, it strikes me as a bit, well, illiterate I suppose. So I persist. These questions are important, to me anyway.

“So what proportion of all journeys do you think, potentially, could be made by bike in Exeter?”

“I haven’t got a clue!”

I try again. Government talks of increasing cycling by 20%, that’s seen as ambitious. We need to start talking about increasing cycling to 20% of all journeys, which would be a start.

“Could it be 20%? Could it be Copenhagen levels, 30%?”

“I don’t know really”.

Zsolt tells me that one area of Exeter already has 8% of journeys by bike, which, considering it also has the biggest concentration of car dealerships in Europe, “is pretty good”.

“I don’t know about Copenhagen levels”, he goes on. “If there was ten years of investment, you know. But in three years, you can’t expect that. And Cycling England is already lobbying the Government, to say that three years isn’t enough. We can start to see growth, but …”.

I prompt him in what I think’s the right direction. “The context  has changed, hasn’t it, since the demonstration town project was launched? Climate change is now there on the political agenda, in a big way”.

“Exactly”, he says, sounding relieved. “Sitting behind me in my office is one of, I think, only two Climate Change Officers for local authorities in the country. There’s a big push, there’s an advert on telly at the moment, about ‘Doing it for Devon’, this campaign to make Devon the greenest authority. So I got pulled into the advert to make sure there was a good cycling element in there. Probably as an authority, we’re three or four years ahead of a few of the others”.

Local authorities are tuning into climate change. Yet they’re still not tackling the causes of climate change. A recent Government report on cycling notes how 56% of all car journeys are under five miles. Imagine wiping out those car journeys at a stroke – over half of all car movements suddenly gone, our towns and cities suddenly full of cycling silence, except for the sound of tinkling bells.

If you’re less idealistic, imagine the one quarter of all car journeys which are under two miles disappearing, overnight, into cycling. Such imagining isn’t insane – it’s what’s led the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Germany to change course. So why isn’t Britain following? Why are we still so far behind? Talk about a future of mass cycling here and people tend to respond with obstacles – rain, hills, fear, bagfuls of shopping, children, complicated journeys. Perhaps elsewhere people are better at seeing not obstacles, but opportunities – safe, sane, quiet streets, fresh air, exercise, a renewal of their town and their relationships with it.

To genuinely promote cycling, there has to be enlightened visions of how mass cycling can produce much better lives, streets, communities, cities – a much better society and a viable planet – coming from the highest level of government. I’ll say it again, we need the Prime Minister to move by bike. Such leadership must influence discussion, debate and ‘buy-in’, all the way through to the child whose parents, their confidence boosted that they really are doing ‘the right thing’, now let her ride to school.

The Netherlands and Denmark are getting there, it’s even looking a little like London might be getting there, but on the whole it feels to me like Exeter has not got there, yet.

Exeter’s project is a pragmatic one. It’s very unrevolutionary aim is simply ‘to make Exeter a cycle friendly city’. Given the limited funding available, that’s understandable. Given Zsolt’s workload, it’s understandable. Above all, given the lack of vision from on high, pushing our cities in a dramatically more sustainable direction, it’s understandable.

Cycling England is doing the best it can. Cycle Exeter is doing the best it can. Zsolt is doing the best he can. I’m certainly not knocking him – he works for the Government and he’s following the Government line, doing the very best he can within the situation he finds himself. But I fear it’s not good enough. If the best of the cycling demo towns isn’t aiming for at least half of all local journeys by bike, what hope is there?

Actually, to be honest, I’m angry. The demo towns are being dressed up as pioneering ‘best practice’, as setting examples worth following. Yet they’re trying to promote cycling without disturbing a single car driver. Not only does that not wash, it’s an outrage – because it’s a betrayal of cycling’s potential. We should be moving beyond the car. We must move beyond the car. We have some good intentions, but it’s time to start changing our behaviours. It’s time for politicians, policy-makers, engineers and planners to facilitate that behaviour change, by changing theirs. They should be leading the way, not be feeling paralysed by fears of being seen to be blocking people’s inalienable right to drive.

This is no trifle. Our children’s futures, their lives, are at stake. It’s life and death stuff, for people, for communities, for cities and for the planet. So we need to be bold. Time is not on our side. If we want to change the faces of our cities and towns, which after all form the world which we all must continually confront, for the better, then we must be hard. We must reappraise priorities, reschedule commitments, make tough decisions, create better futures.

I love feeling the beauty of encroaching darkness from the saddle of a bicycle. I feel it now, as I pedal the day’s last couple of miles down river to the youth hostel. The outlines of the trees grow dimmer against the darkening sky, the jibbering hubbub of the estuary’s birds fades down to the occasional twitterings of those last few home to roost. The wind of the day has dropped to the stillness of dusk.

There’s no one about. It’s almost eerie. Perhaps the atmosphere is accentuated by my sense of disquiet – about what I’ve seen happening to cycling in Exeter, which is demonstrating what could happen across the country. It’s nagging at me now. I like Zsolt very much. He’s a good man doing a job he believes in, to the very best of his ability. Perhaps we’re very similar, Zsolt and me – we both want more for cycling than we’re individually able to deliver. Love of cycling, I decide, through my hunger and tiredness, is about recognising its unfulfilled potential, to make our own lives – and the lives of others – almost perfect.

14. Shared use

I feel confused by the urge to put cyclists onto old pavements. I know that – technically speaking – they stop being pavements, once they’ve been widened and formally converted to shared use, with lines clearly demarcating walking and cycling space. But still, this change in the appropriate space for cycling does my head in. This might simply show how inflexible I am; I was taught to ride on roads, have spent thirty-odd years doing so, and now my head’s struggling to get around the fact that things change.

I also understand the rationale. Most people are scared to ride on busy roads. Many parents won’t let their kids ride on busy roads. People want to feel protected from the menace of cars. So put cycling elsewhere. Easy.

The demo towns have also been issued a mandate to experiment, to demonstrate. I respect Cycle Exeter, particularly Zsolt, for trying to do things differently, for taking risks. But as we move around the city, sometimes on ‘the pavement’, sometimes on the road, sometimes manoeuvring around people walking, sometimes mixing with cars, hopping up and down kerbs, I start to feel confused – just where, these days, is cycling supposed to be?

Exeter’s answer, it feels to me, is ‘all over the place’. Part of me welcomes this. As the mode of mobility most clearly compatible with the creation of a sustainable society, people should be able to ride anywhere and everywhere. Cycling should be privileged above every other mode of transport. So long as people ride sensibly, with courtesy, where’s the problem?

As I’d sat drinking my coffee on Exeter’s pedestrian-friendly Quay, I’d watched the dance of sustainability produced by cyclists moving among time-rich strollers. Though they have different gaits, pace and rhythm, these modes look good together. The narrow bridges looked like they might generate conflict between cyclists and walkers, but I saw none.

So maybe my unease about putting cycling on ‘the pavement’ stems from a suspicion that it’s a strategy which allows motoring-as-usual. No doubt it has to do with the route Zsolt takes me, but as we pedal around Exeter, cars often seem to be thundering past. Cyclists, I start to think, are being moved out of their way. Of course, this can be easily justified as being for cyclists’ own good. Why, after all, would anyone want to share the road with trucks and cars travelling at 40, 50 or 60 mph? Why indeed. So slow the cars to a much more civilised 20 mph, and reclaim the streets, and the city, for everyone.

Zsolt’s team have some awareness of the politics of cycling space. The city has a ‘Road Code’, which explains that the new shared-use routes have been designed to help less confident cyclists, particularly school children, move around safely. The Code also advises motorists that “some cyclists feel safer on cycle routes but some will stick to the roads – we are all traffic and have a right to be there”.

According to Zsolt, “the road culture here is pretty tolerant. We get the occasional ranting email, saying cyclists should be on the cycle paths if they’re there. We’ve done radio campaigns, we’re doing adverts on the backs of buses, to say that cyclists have a right to be on the roads, they don’t have to use the paths. It’s quite hard to get to all the motorists, but ..”. They’re trying. Devon County Council, meanwhile, has launched a Give Cyclists Space campaign.

All well and good. But how many motorists read and register the intended messages of road codes and campaigns? And what, I wonder, will they think when they notice how kids are riding to school off the road, and then they encounter a local cycle commuter, with perhaps ten miles to cover, on the road? ‘She’s doing her bit, and has every right to be there’, or ‘road hog’? In the Netherlands, cyclists are often obliged to use cycle paths, but those paths are invariably good and continuous, giving the cyclist priority over motorised traffic. If we’re serious about transferring many, many more car journeys to bike, that’s the sort of provision we need here.

Zsolt knows that they’re prioritising some things over others.

“We’ll do the shared-use paths to schools, so that less confident people can go first. Then we’ll work on things like advanced stop lines, sunken drains, pot holes, things like that”.

There is also, he says, good stuff happening on the roads.

“We’ve got a big policy for 20 mph zones in residential areas. There’s quite a lot of them all around the city already. Generally, when I go around other towns, it seems like we’ve got a 30 mph limit where they’ve got a 40 mph limit”.

“One of the points we want to get to is where motorists expect to see cyclists around the corner. Like Oxford, Cambridge, York, you expect to see cyclists. Whereas here, we’re not quite there yet. And that’s when you’ll see the accident rate go down, as the numbers go up”.

I hope so much that Exeter gets there. Cycling needs this city, as the best of the first crop of demonstration towns, to get people on bikes. Cycling is depending on Exeter to light the way ahead. And in Zsolt, we have a passionate, tireless, committed soldier for cycling. I just worry about his officers, the lack of leadership from on high. Most of all, I worry that promoting cycling without deterring driving leads to an insipid message, confusion on the ground, an almighty fudge.

13. Cycle Exeter

Zsolt Schuller is Cycle Exeter’s Project Manager. I’m meeting him at 4 o’clock, on the Quay. That’s less than an hour away, not enough time to get out to the youth hostel, washed and back. So I decide to hang around town. I pop on trousers and a t-shirt to blend in, and zip the arms onto my Endura jacket. I’ve worn this all day, as an arms-free gilet, and it’s just fab. It’s probably the closest I’ve come to bike culture chic, and it’s quickly become my favourite piece of kit.

With its car-free space and laid-back, at-your-leisure vibe, the Quay feels like the place to be. I get a coffee from the Riverside Café, which shares a great old warehouse premises with an antiques store, and sit outside among the time-rich pensioners. It’s overcast; dry, but a threat of rain; mild, but not enough for t-shirts. Seagulls screech as they swoop onto a slice of white bread, chucked nonchalantly into the water for the amusement of a grandchild.

I head over to Saddles and Paddles, to get a replacement bottle cage and more importantly have a nose. Right on the Quay, the shop’s perfectly located for its business of hiring and selling bikes and boats. From here you can rent a canoe and paddle down the Exeter Ship Canal which runs parallel to the River Exe. Or you can hire a bike and pedal beside the estuary. There are some great pubs down there, including the Turf Locks Hotel, a mile from the nearest road and accessible only by boat, bike or boot. Later, Zsolt tells me they’re creating a 26 mile off-road Exe Estuary Trail, from Exeter down to the sea at Dawlish on the western side and Exmouth on the eastern side. Using the ferry at the coastal end, this will make a great circular ride. More importantly for Cycle Exeter, it’s a key bit of utility cycling infrastructure. 80,000 people live along the estuary and Exmouth, with 35,000 inhabitants, is Devon’s second biggest settlement.

I emerge from the shop to loiter on the Quay. Zsolt turns up, on his bike of course, and suggests a coffee. Straightaway I’m massively impressed by his energy. Near the end of a busy day, he’s made time to meet me. He’s come equipped with maps and promotional literature, clearly wearing his cap of the man who sells cycling in Exeter. He’s young – 29 he tells me later – dynamic and immensely likeable. I’m feeling like he’s won me over before we’ve even started.

I tell him how impressed I’ve been, pedalling along the river to reach the Quay on a route shared with lots of pedestrians, to see no ‘cyclists dismount’ signs, even when I came across narrow bridges. Such signs, a scourge of cyclists, are prominent elsewhere. Lancaster’s got plenty, a travesty in a place which is supposedly similarly intent on boosting cycling.

“We’ve been really lucky”, Zsolt says. “I worked in Reading before, which could potentially be one of the great cycling towns – it’s about the same size as Exeter, it’s got a big university. But there’s just a lack of councillor and officer support there.

“Whereas here”, Zsolt goes on, “we’ve got really keen councillors who want to make Devon the greenest local authority, we’ve got a new Chief Executive – he’s been in place about a year – who’s got a £1,500 touring bike, and who’s pledged, as his ‘Doing it for Devon Pledge’, to cycle to work 25 times this year, and he lives about 20 miles out. He’s quite a young guy. So he’s a really good ambassador.

“Then my boss on the project, who’s the Head of Highway and Network Management, who generally, in other authorities, would be a diehard car driver, he cycles in. The Head of Engineering cycles. So in all the places where you’d usually find barriers, you’ve got people who are interested. That’s the thing, Exeter’s got that”.

It’s not been complete plain sailing. “I’ve had one traffic signal engineer who’s been a pain in the arse, but he’s retired now. Anyway, it wouldn’t be right if there wasn’t one person who was a bit of a problem, would it?”

The city’s demo town project is known as Cycle Exeter. Zsolt tells me it’s “a partnership between the City and County Council. At the City Council – I work for the County – the lead officer there, who’s the head of planning, is a trustee at Sustrans. So it’s just been the right group of people, really”.

Zsolt’s describing what’s sometimes called ‘top level buy-in’, and it’s what cycle campaigners dream of. We strive to persuade powerful people of the benefits of cycling, but it’s a long, uphill, often futile struggle. To have people in place who’re already converted to the cycling cause, what a head start! By way of contrast, Zsolt cites one of the other demo towns, Darlington, where plans to allow cycling in the town centre have recently faced fierce opposition from councillors. Cycling in city centres is one of many controversial issues in cycling promotion. To me, it’s a no-brainer; of course, people should be able to cycle everywhere. Still, people worry about it.

Despite what Zsolt says, riding a bike doesn’t guarantee a pro-cycling attitude, any more than being a woman makes you a feminist, being poor a socialist. Still less does riding a bike automatically instil the capacity to imagine and commit to a rosy cycling future. But there’s no doubt that direct experience of what it’s like to cycle helps a person appreciate some of the difficulties of cycling, and makes them more likely to be sympathetic to the need for improvements.

Zsolt’s clearly tremendously committed to the project, and talks about his work with real passion. So how, I wonder, did he get here?

He did a first degree in Geography at Aberystwyth University; he went there because he loves mountain biking, he’s always been a cyclist. He moved on to do a Masters in Transport Planning at Oxford Brooks University, where he did his dissertation on car-free tourism initiatives. Like me, he’s long felt perplexed that, by cycling, he’s doing something good, yet when he cycles he feels marginalised, pushed to the sides of the transport environment, into the gutter.

Cycling is the reason Zsolt became a transport planner, but once he’d become one he felt most of his work wasn’t about cycling. Because the County Cycling Officer was away on leave at the time, he got the chance to put the city’s demo town bid together, and that led to his getting the post of Cycle Exeter’s Project Manager. It’s the first project he’s managed.

“They took a bit of a risk, but I suppose because I was passionate and enthusiastic, that makes up for a lot”.

Now, to be a cycling officer with a budget feels quite a privilege. He’s part of a three year project during which, he says laughing, he can “go mad”.

So how’s it going, so far?

“I think really well”, Zsolt says, before elaborating in both personal and professional terms. Personally, “it’s quite difficult because it’s like a hobby, so it becomes a bit of a labour of love, so you don’t know when to switch off”.

In terms of the project, “we’ve built around 16 km of new routes in the last year. Looking at the numbers, in the first year of the project they went up about 14%. In the first three months of this year, compared to the first three months of last year – we’ve got a network of automated counters, they’re up by 20%.

“Then we’ve got a Bike It Officer working in the schools. Nationally, I think 2% of kids cycle to school, and we’ve already got it up to between 7 and 11% at most of the secondary schools here”.

“Wow, that’s really good”, I say. Rumour has it that Exeter is doing best of the six demo towns.

“That’s what our bid focussed on. When we go round, I’ll show you some of the schools. There was a big re-organisation of secondary schools in the city, and our Deputy Chief Executive pitched to Cycling England that this created a once-in-a-generation opportunity – ‘new build schools, let’s open them with great cycle routes’. So that’s what we’re trying to do”.

Children of secondary school age are notoriously hard to reach. For many, cycling is somehow just not ‘cool’. But Exeter can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. These new secondary schools provide a fantastic opportunity. They’ve got cycle routes going straight to their doors. They’ve got plenty of good bike parking. They’ve got a passionate Bike It officer working to instil enthusiasm. They’ve got international trails rider Andrei Burton helping with promotion. With all of this, Exeter can’t fail to get kids on bikes, can it?

The goal is to have 20% of Exeter’s children cycling to school, which seems remarkably unambitious. A sceptic might suggest that the majority of any new cycling trips will replace not car trips but walking trips and obviously, it’s the car trips which need replacing. Time and statistics will tell.

I stop asking questions. Zsolt pulls out the wad of maps and brochures he’s brought along to fill me in on everything that Cycle Exeter’s been up to. They’re working on an impressively wide front to promote cycling in and around the city.

Then it’s time to ride. Zsolt takes me on a tour. What a tour! I was about ready to rest, but Zsolt, bless him, has other ideas. We go in, out, around, about, adding another 20 miles to my day’s total. The ride blurs into a procession of cycling facilities. We negotiate busy roads, get in the way of people riding home from work, hop up and down kerbs. We’re ducking and diving our way through the city. It’s staccato riding, quite unlike the smoothness of the long-distance cycle touring which I’ve been relishing on my ride so far.

We head out along the river and canal, down unsurfaced tracks and silent ginnells, behind schools, past kids on BMXs, through the city centre. Everywhere we go, there’s people cycling. Not masses, not like Amsterdam, or even Oxford, but more than the average you see in English cities these days. Exeter’s almost as much of a mystery to me at the end as it was at the beginning, but I get to see an enormous amount of new cycling infrastructure.

Particularly given Cycle Exeter’s push to get kids riding to school, much of this new cycling infrastructure has been created from old pavements, freshly converted to shared use – places where pedestrians walk and people ride, side by side.

12. Cycling England

I’ve come to Exeter because it’s one of six English ‘Cycling Demonstration Towns’, and other than my home town, the only one needing no deviation from a standard End to End route. Like Lancaster, Brighton, Darlington, Derby and Aylesbury, Exeter is experimenting with ways of getting – to use Cycling England’s line – ‘more people cycling, more safely, more often’. The six towns have been tasked to develop exemplary physical environments for cycling, to raise cycling levels, and to share lessons learnt along the way. I’m keen to see how things are going.

I suppose I should tell you that I’m not optimistic.

Why?

Let’s start with money. Cycling England devised the demo towns project for very practical reasons. The Government gave it £5 million per year, to get England on its bike. That’s so pitifully little that Cycling England sensibly decided to target its efforts in a few places, where it sought to raise spending to the kind of level found wherever cycling is taken seriously. In the Dutch city of Groningen, for example, where well over half of all journeys are made by bike. Cycling England hopes to demonstrate to the Department for Transport how investing a sensible amount in cycling will produce more journeys by bike. And then it wants more money, for more cycling.

This sounds good. Better, Cycling England has managed to persuade Government of its case. Results from Exeter and the other first wave of demo towns have convinced the Government of the worth of extra support for cycling. In a massive funding increase, £140 million is being spent on, among other things, a second wave of ten cycling towns and one cycling city.

But let’s get this in perspective. £140 million sounds a lot. Until you think, ‘that’s for the whole of England, for three years. Until you learn that £140 million would barely cover the costs of the three-and-a-bit miles of just one road the Government plans to build, between the M6 and Heysham, a road I know a bit about because it’d be in my back yard.

On paper, Government thinks bikes are cool, cars are rubbish. It’s there in the policy documents. So Government makes a big fanfare of its increased support for cycling, from diddly squat to simply squat. Meanwhile, it continues to spend vast amounts of money on maintaining the great car economy. It’d be darkly comic, were it not so pathetically sad. Sustainability? Progress towards any such vision is so painfully slow, we’ll all be long dead.

Then there’s the message. I wonder about that too. The first six places to receive funding are ‘cycling demonstration towns’. The next crop are simply ‘cycling towns’, and one ‘cycling city’. What do these terms make everywhere else? ‘Non-cycling towns’? A ‘non-cycling city’? Places not to ride? The ‘cycling town’ tag risks giving the impression that everywhere else is a cycling desert. We don’t have to proclaim Birmingham a ‘driving city’, we know that already, thanks very much. Sure, cycling’s seen better days. And it will again, irrespective of what the bureaucrats do. In fact, cycling’s resurgent – London hosting the grand depart of the 2007 Tour de France, more and more cyclo-sportives, the renewed popularity of track cycling. Yet people paid to boost cycling can give the impression that cycling would not happen were it not for them, as if they’re responsible for cycling and somehow ‘in charge’ of its future. Which is of course complete nonsense.

The really bonkers thing about Cycling England, though, is this: it aims to promote cycling by encouraging people to get on a bike, when everyone knows you first need to get them out of the car. To me anyway, it seems obvious that the sooner we stop talking about ‘promoting cycling’ and start talking about ‘deterring driving’, the sooner we’ll get somewhere.

Specifically, I fear that what the cycling demo towns project might be demonstrating is how to sneak cycling in a bit more at the edges of a system which continues to be dominated by motoring-as-usual. When what it ought to demonstrate is how to get cycling to the very heart of our lives, towns, cities.

Cycling professionals try to sell cycling without taking driving off the shelves. But you can’t do it. It’s cars which stop people from cycling, perhaps because they’ve got one, almost certainly because they’re scared of the idea of being a cyclist surrounded by them.

Look at The Netherlands and Denmark and what you very quickly realise is that in the UK we’re nowhere near interventionist enough in our efforts to get people cycling. Increase bike parking, but also reduce car parking. Provide more space for riding bikes, but also take away space for driving cars. Build a cycling network, but at the same time start to dismantle the driving network. It’s as though we’re not actually trying to get people cycling, but instead merely to cajole them gently and tentatively in the right general direction of an increased proclivity to thinking about and maybe, one day in the not-too-distant future, if it’s sunny and warm and the cars have gone home for the day, giving cycling a go. In the meantime, of course, everything else – the decisions of government, the mass media, the lifestyles of the rich and famous – continues to push people towards cars.

So perhaps what we need is not so much Cycling England; that places too much emphasis on technical measures to make people more likely to start cycling. Perhaps what we need instead is Stop Driving England, which places emphasis on technical measures to get people out of cars. After all, one cycle lane might generate absolutely no cycling journeys, especially if it’s rubbish. But one bollard, even if it’s a bit wonky and looks ugly, so long as it’s reasonably solid and well located, can stop a thousand cars.

At every level of UK Government, civil servants seem completely incapable of envisaging cycling futures. They remain enamoured with the great car economy, the mantra and the myth that the route to economic competitiveness lies down the biggest road. And for as long as Government thinks this, it will keep providing it, and most people’s feet will remain firmly on automobility’s accelerator. It is Government which must engage the clutch, apply the brake, move down through the gears, and bring the great lumbering dinosaur of automobility finally to a halt.

Current attempts to get people on bikes are really spineless. Britain has yet to get down to serious bike business. I don’t want to knock Cycling England; it’s doing the best it can. What I want is to see the British Prime Minister, in fact the entire Government Cabinet on bikes, showing the way. Nothing less will do. If the Government’s so supportive of cycling, why’s it still not riding?

So you could say, I suppose, that I’m not really entering Exeter in the right spirit. Whilst I realise the city is supposed to be demonstrating how to increase cycling, I’m arriving suspicious that it’ll really be demonstrating how to piss around at the fringes of a road environment on which the car must remain king. That said, I’d dearly love my scepticism to be proved wrong.

11. Boscastle to Exeter

 

The river Valency rushing beneath the dorm’s open window drowned out the overnight rain. The day feels damp, not quite dawned. The cloud is low. I’ll probably get wet later, but it’s dry for now, and mild too. I’ve a long day ahead, so rise early and leave before 8. Work on the harbour’s flood defences has already begun; they’ve no time to waste either. On cold legs full of yesterday’s ride, the long drag out of Boscastle’s harbour is a tough way to start.

Today it’s coast to coast from west to east to meet a man on a mission. I’m riding from Cornwall’s north to Devon’s south coast and its biggest city, Exeter. The wind from the south looks set to blow across me all day. I hope it’ll be blowing from the same direction tomorrow, when I turn north.

The Cornish dry stone walls pull me up off the coast. Quite unlike those of northern England, they’re made entirely of slate, hundreds upon hundreds placed in lines perpendicular to the ground.

I turn inland off the B3263, along narrow lanes. The hedgerows are a riot of colour – harebell, campion, primrose, chamomile, bluebell, stichwort, celandine, and flowers whose names I’ve never known, all jostling for position. Spring has well and truly sprung here. With luck I’ll follow it up the country.

Early progress is slow. I’m averaging less than 8 miles per hour over these uphill miles. I worry about my prospects of reaching Exeter in time for my planned meeting with Zsolt Schuller, the man in charge of the city’s cycling programme. Today I’m hoping to find out how one British city is getting to grips, or not, with the task of getting more people on bikes. It’s a 60 mile rural commute to get there.

Little Tresparret slumbers; I’m ahead of the school run. I fox my way across the day’s first A road, number 39, and down another lane with a stream at the bottom. Grinding up the other side, cows look up as I pass. There’s muck all over these roads; more cows than cars live here. Past a farm gate and the sound of voices, farmers talking, and the low hum of an idling tractor.

The noise of riding is a mix of bird song and the wind rushing in my ears. They fluctuate in their intensity according to my direction, as I snake my way around these back lanes, twisting, turning, watching for cars round every bend. My silent approach and ‘good morning!’ shout startle a couple walking with their dogs, enjoying the middle of the road.

I climb into mist, through another village, past more glimpses and snippets of others’ lives – children wailing, old men coughing. Behind those doors some lives starting, others drawing to a close. Always moving, pedalling on, to the next stage. I kiss the northern edge of Launceston and cross the River Tamar out of Cornwall at Polson Bridge. Devon greets me with a long, steady climb into thicker mist. The cars have their lights on, me too; visibility’s not good, dead pheasants abound. Liftondown, Lifton and Lewdown come and go. I’m making progress now.

It’s a straight, fast descent out of the cloud from Lewdown to Combebow. It’s almost balmy down here. East of Bridestow, I join Sustrans’ well sign-posted route 27, otherwise known as the ‘Devon Coast to Coast’, which stretches 102 miles between Ilfracombe and Plymouth. I reach the Granite Way via a rough and beautiful bridle track starting at the Bearslake Inn. It’s a nifty, gorgeous little link, bouncing me up alongside a babbling brook, through woods, to the beautifully elegant Lake Viaduct, which suddenly towers high above.

I climb up onto the viaduct by way of a well graded, surfaced route leading up through broom, gorse and primrose. Suddenly I can feel Dartmoor, feel like I’m on Dartmoor. It’s all around. Right there is High Willhays, the moor’s highest point at 621 metres. It’s a wonderful scene. It smells divine. The hills are alive with the bright yellow of gorse. The leaves on the trees are first flush lime green. Lake Viaduct’s got a fresh lease of life. It’s dated 1874, but it’s new to cycling. With a banana to sustain me until lunch, I’m relishing the prospect of a flat, traffic-free six or seven miles into Okehampton.

The Granite Way is quiet this damp and misty Monday, a different story to yesterday’s sunny Sunday on the Camel Trail. Kids are at school, parents at work, the holiday season in not even partial swing. The path is wide, well graded and surfaced. It clings to the moor’s northern edge. It feels amazingly open, and I’m struck by my privilege, to be enjoying from the saddle of a bike views resulting from the engineering marvel of the railway age.

A long chain of little ponds has formed from the hollows left by some industrial process of the past. They look deep, but I think of how my kids would love to come here with fishing nets. They’d play for hours, if I let them. I reach Meldon Viaduct. Meldon village is below, a dam and reservoir above.

I see train carriages painted green ahead, blending with the national park’s landscape. A thousand feet up, Meldon is southern England’s highest station. Dartmoor Railway runs between here and Okehampton. You can pedal one way, take your bike for free the other. But it’s shut today. So are the visitor centre and buffet car. There isn’t a soul to be seen. At this time of year in this wild place, human life only really stirs at weekends and bank holidays.

A vast quarry still blasts rock from the ground. When the London and South West Railway cut the rail line through here between 1872 and 1874, the engineers discovered the hardness of Dartmoor’s granite. It makes excellent rail ballast, and quarrying started in 1894. Trains still operate between Meldon and Okehampton. The cycle route has not replaced the railway here, but must instead run by its side, two good mobilities together. Both run parallel to the A30, a road which carries an enormous volume of traffic. I’m very glad to be off it.

In the fields, new born lambs play. Bluebell woods drop away, down the hillside. I pass under the road with its speeding cars. I love how I’m weaving these little stretches of route together, to make a longer journey. There’s an art and craft to cycling, one we must revive. Two ladies pedal sedately past the other way. The cloud has lifted, the sun is breaking through. The day is feeling brighter.

In the valley below, Okehampton’s castle greets me. The town’s station buffet is a perfect lunch spot. It’s quiet, unpretentious and good value. The kind of place which only exists and is sustained through the vision and hard work of buffs, volunteers, people with passion. They’re busy now, sprucing the place up, ready for the new season. You can hire bikes here. I pile enthusiastically into a cooked veggie breakfast, washed down with black coffee.

The ride beyond Okehampton, off Dartmoor towards Exeter, is superb. The landscape’s astonishingly green, give or take the odd blaze of yellow oil seed rape so bright it almost hurts. I move east through the early afternoon, Sticklepath, South Zeal, Whiddon Down, Crockernwell, Cheriton Bishop and Tedburn St Mary. A land blanketed by affluence and sprinkled with thatch-roof cottages. The A30 does its job of gobbling up the traffic, leaving the B road which interlaces it virtually free for me. We’re dancing down towards the sea together, the A30 and me, and as I cross it for perhaps the fifth time today, I feel in time with my journey.

There’s two options for the last leg of my day’s ride, from Tedburn St Mary to Exeter. One is signposted to the city. I stop to check that’s the one which the motors are taking, then choose the other. It bangs me straight down a whopping hill, over a stream, and has me grinding up the other side. It’s definitely the back road, and I’m paying for my peace and quiet in sweat and toil. But once up the views are great, and there’s little better than finding a quiet run into a city, especially one so sweetly, steeply downhill.

One moment I’m barrelling off the hills from Whitestone, the next I’m admiring the city’s freshly painted advanced stop lines as I make my way to the Exe, and a lovely path which leads me down river to the Quay. It takes me a moment to realise why it is so pleasant down here – no cars. Like Boscastle harbour last night, I hear not traffic but the sound of human voices.