My Bikes

I got my first proper bike on my seventh birthday. It was a gold Raleigh with three gears and whitewall tyres. I cycled regularly in the Forest of Dean until I was sixteen when I spent my hard-earned savings on a Vespa scooter and paraded around Gloucester in parka, Ben Sherman shirt and Levis. Later I got into motorbikes, then cars and I didn’t own a bicycle again until I bought a second-hand Dawes Galaxy in 1987. Over the next fifteen years, this trusty bike took me on a series of multi-week cycling tours, including the Scottish Highlands, the Western Isles, Normandy, Brittany, Sri Lanka, Southwest China and a circumnavigation of the entire Irish coastline.

I love the sense of freedom that you get on a bike, the wind in your hair, the unfolding landscape, the immersion in the natural world and the encounters with people you have not yet met. It is certainly the best way to explore somewhere. I’ve particularly enjoyed cycle trips in developing countries, where cycling is the most common form of transport, for then you are travelling with the people as they go about their daily lives. This island, with its multiplicity of back roads, is the best place I’ve ever lived for cycling.

Fifteen years ago, I recognised that my faithful Dawes Galaxy had earned an honourable retirement. In its place I bought three new specialist bikes, each of which would do part of the work that it had done so trustily: a Dawes Audax for local day rides, a Bontrager all terrain bike for the supported cycle-tours I would do in faraway places (e.g. Patagonia, Laos, Vietnam) and a Dawes Sardar for the solo cycle-tours I would do in Europe (e.g. Italy, Spain, France).

Then, eight years ago, I got cancer and, like all other aspects of my life, my cycling changed. After the series of major operations with their collateral damage to my body, it’s taken me plenty of time to rebuild a modicum of strength and fitness. Even now, some eighteen months after my last major surgery, I only feel able to ride every other day. Perhaps I may become strong enough to do multi-day cycle tours again.

Over the years, I’ve learnt how to maintain my bikes. I’m largely self-taught; and when a local bike shop returned one of my bikes in a dangerous condition after bodging the repair, this process was given impetus. So now the time has come to invest in a new bike. But I’m not buying a bike ready-made from a shop. I’m going to build it myself from scratch. Although I’ve had experience of some of the tasks involved, I’ve never actually built a full bike before. It’s going to be a challenge and a learning process. I’ll post regular instalments from that journey here.