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.

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