Commencing Commuting - cycling to work in a post-COVID world.
COVID has changed our family, quite considerably. The jury’s still out on precisely how, but changed we are, that’s for certain.
On the one hand, we made the best of a bad job - ‘Lockdown 1’ brought us quiet roads and nice weather. Thomas Ivor raised a tidy sum for the NHS charities with an astonishing feat of endurance on the turbo trainer, and built his own road bike, Ruth rode to the seaside in her first big miles day on her own bike, and together with Rhoda appeared for a second time on national TV in the United States, as ‘Little Big Shots’. On the flip side, it was bad on the job front, as one of us ended up stuck on reduced hours, and the other out of contract and contemplating life as a social media influencer and lifestyle guru.
Where others managed to spend their COVID year being paid not to work, much to our frustration when we opened Strava, and whilst many people we knew were (as I had been) on the leading edge of the things the country had to do to keep the show on the road amidst chaos and loss, we just felt our world stealthily and quietly closing in on us; I think this was all the worse for the fact that we had, up to January last year, been steadily broadening our horizons and building momentum as the Family ByCycle. We were on a roll - our first trip to America, soon after a trip to the Netherlands, was suddenly to be our last significant expedition anywhere, until… well, it still is!
Down to 80% of one income and having lost the other, with seriously ill family members we couldn’t help as we would wish, we, like so many others, could put 2020 down as a disaster of a year - and it was difficult not to - yet to write it off completely would miss some subtle but significant changes, which are likely to see us out of the pandemic.
Despite, nay, galvanised by the best efforts of Northamptonshire County Council to tiddle the Emergency Active Travel Fund money up the wall, along with the outgoing Borough Council’s reserves, we’ve built bridges with other likeminded people in our own area. Our town has begun a Critical Mass ride, which saw us back on the TV and the attendance for which confounded our modest expectations. We were the principal force behind a ‘school street’ campaign, which now has been made permanent (albeit baking in some flaws we need to fix). Thomas Ivor flew the nest and started going further on his own two wheels. We bought a cargo bike, and then another, and eventually our second car’s battery went flat because it didn’t get driven anywhere for about 9 months at one point.
Almost without feeling it, we have almost eradicated local car journeys - and in one of the most hostile towns towards active travel, in England. Is that a challenge? Yeah, too right it is. If we had Dutch-spec infrastructure, our lived experience of the place we inhabit, would be so very different. But we’re doing it. The Onderwater tandem takes the girls to school and the Elephant bike (an old Royal Mail postman’s bike) takes Kate and me to the shops and on all those little local errands - like racing to get some leftover vaccine from the surgery, at the end of the day! We needed a trigger; an excuse. We had it, and it’s now a habit.
I wasn’t hurrying back into work, having shepherded the children through lockdowns, school-at-home (not homeschooling, which is totally different and in my view, very often better) and the like, but earlier this year, opportunities arose, and one in particular caught my attention, and apparently I caught theirs, because I’m back at work.
Suitably emboldened by our pandemic-induced embrace of doing all our local business by bike, I told myself I would ride to the office, conveniently overlooking the fact that my old commute, (which was less than half as far) to catch a train from Northampton to Birmingham, got driven more often than I’d like to admit. Until now, I’ve restricted myself to sticking my bike on the back of the car and going for a ride at lunchtimes, to get a break from the desk, some fresh air and a bit of a mental reset for the afternoon’s challenges - but now, the weather’s finally turning, I’m getting my feet under the table in my job, and it’s time to do those 35 miles differently.
Goaded by a pathetic and frankly inflammatory post on social media from our local council the other day, I commented on Twitter that if a family like ours was struggling to overcome the obstacles to riding our bikes round here, then what chance someone new to it? If we, persuaded by and evangelical about the power of the bicycle, couldn’t make it work, who on earth were we going to persuade! That being so, I’m approaching my new journey to work determined not just to overcome but to chronicle the challenges, to help shine some light on what we need to fix as a society to make it easier for everyone to be more active, reduce their impact on the planet and others. What are the obstacles? How do my workarounds demonstrate the gaps in provision and imagination which we could fix? How can I learn from the reactions of others, what would be a game-changer for them?
First things first. I am 57 years late for the train I wanted to catch. Hold that thought - and why, as a consequence, I’ve ordered a set of secateurs…
To be continued…