I’ve had a few conversations recently - in life, and online - about how I got started cycling in London. As urban cyclists go, I’m pretty amateur - most days I do four miles to my office and back, at a nice relaxed speed - so I’m hardly an expert.
But it occured to me that perhaps if I had read more blog posts by women like me - not very sporty, rarely seen wearing a pair of trousers, concerned about how sweaty I am at my destination - who were excited about cycling, I might well have had the confidence to give it a shot sooner than my sixth year in London (I now regard the previous six years as a tragic, non-cycling wasteland).
Therefore! Here are my six tips on how to get started cycling, with the caveat that you’ll definitely want to check out more expert advice from your local bike shop, and from the Guardian’s bike blog.
1. My first bike, Attitude, was a scrappy (literally) thing that my BFF Sebastian bought from a purveyor of stolen bicycles and then sold to me for £30 when he was leaving London to go and live in Iraq. You might think that this should have been a clue that Seb and I had different approaches to our personal safety. You might also think that when I got on Attitude for the first time and promptly fell off, on my head, that I might have taken that as a sign that it was not the bike for me. My relationship with Attitude was nasty, brutish and short. This brings me to my first tip: get a good bike. A crappy, cheap bike is not a good investment, because you will not want to ride it. My current bike, Sebastina (feeling guilty about selling me such a rubbish bike, Seb generously bought her for me), is a Bobbin: it is heavy, Dutch, and slow, and I bought it when it was three months old and lightly pre-loved.
2. Get a friend to teach you. Yes, you probably can ride a bicycle, but if you haven’t ridden it on city streets before, go out with a friend who has more experience than you in a quietish neighbourhood in a non-rush hour. Judo, who failed his cycling proficiency exam in 1990* but has been confidently riding ever since, took me for a quick spin around our neighbourhood and taught me basic skills, like how to take corners properly. If you don’t have any cycling friends, then I wouldn’t sneeze at actually taking a cycling proficiency course. It certainly can’t hurt.
3. Baby steps. I was cycling around my neighbourhood for months before I decided to attempt the commute, which I was finally pressed to do during the tube strike last year. Cycling on unfamiliar streets can feel intimidating when you’re a new cyclist, which is why I made a point of riding the route to work on a quiet Sunday afternoon before I actually tried it during the rush hour.
4. Stay calm. If you have a big, heavy Dutch bike like mine this won’t be so much of a problem, but don’t be afraid to go at a pace you’re comfortable with, even though it will seem slower than average to begin with. Accidents happen when uncertain people feel pressured by cars/other cyclists to go faster than they’d like to, and craziness results. Particularly when you are sharing lanes with cars, remember that you are a vehicle too and just because some driver is beeping at you in an impatient way doesn’t mean that you should be flinging yourself into oncoming traffic or taking to the sidewalk.
5. Be prepared for some angst. One of the reasons that I love cycling to work is the dramatic reduction in commuter rage from my life – no more people elbowing me in the face as we climb over each other on to a Tube train. Quite often I turn up at the office in something approaching a good mood. But there’s still plenty of aggro – between cyclists, between drivers and cyclists (drivers hate cyclists), between pedestrians and cyclists (because they can’t hear you coming, pedestrians will frequently step out in front of you without looking – you have to be very vigilant). Basically, to be a successful London-based cyclist, you will have to be a little chippy on occasion, and be prepared to get shouted at by strangers. I was initially very upset by this. Now I am as chippy as the best of ‘em.
6. Never wear a wrap skirt. But always wear a helmet, some kind of reflective clothing, and lights for riding at night. Always.
*Amended, following Judo’s correction. ‘I was a prodigy,’ he notes.
