The Fridays Cycling Club

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I cycled into Central London on a daily basis for several years without incident in the era before cycle lanes. Then they installed a bus and cycle lane on Westminster Bridge and I was immediately side swiped by a bus that was trying to

overtake me just outside the Houses of Parliament. Luckily, I fell towards the pavement, rather than into the road, and escaped with only minor cuts and bruises. In fact, I’ve had worse injuries recently learning to ride with clips. MPs would have probably called for these new-fangled cycle lanes to be abolished if I’d have died on their doorstep.

 

I had to give up cycling to work when I started working from home around 2005. Unfortunately, this change of lifestyle may have had a bit of a negative effect on my health. In 2014, I found myself in hospital having a triple heart bypass. Okay,  the 40-a-day smoking habit and the unhealthy eating probably had something to do with it as well, but I think the cycling had previously been helping to offset those things. After my surgery, I decided to give up smoking (if you don’t count vaping), eat fewer pies, and take up cycling again. I bought myself a new bike and started going out for rides with

a new purpose, staying alive.

 

What made you come along to your first Fridays ride?

I was gently cajoled into doing the Whitstable ride by the ride leader, Kim Carter. She and her husband Rick are old friends of ours. She’s been telling me for several years how much fun she has on the rides and how friendly you all are. I discounted the fun and friendly bit as, unlike me, Kim is a naturally gregarious person who could have fun at her own funeral. Instead, I focused on the distance – 70 miles sounded like a bit more than I could chew. Maybe one day, I told her.

 

On our last visit to see Kim and Rick, my wife and I took our bikes and joined them on a short ride (coincidently, to

Whitstable, albeit only from Herne Bay, just a few miles down the road). Having softened me up with a nice pub lunch along the way, Kim again proceeded to extol the virtues of the Fridays’ ride and, in a moment of weakness, I agreed to give it a try. After that, there was seemingly no escape.

 

How did you prepare for your first ride with us?  And how did it go?

I have to confess that my preparations were dominated by a gnawing fear that I wouldn’t be able to keep up. Accordingly, my number one priority was to arrange for my wife to come and pick me up if I had to give up before the end. Having sorted that out, I thought I’d better do some training. At the time, the furthest I’d normally ride was about 35 miles. After a couple of 50- or 60-mile trips around the Thames Valley I began to feel a bit more confident I could do the distance, but still not sure about keeping up with the pace.

 

In the end, I found the first half of the Whitstable ride fairly comfortable. There were plenty of short breaks with lots of time to refuel. I don’t think I was the slowest rider, but even if I had been, I need not have worried unduly. The Fridays’ policy is to only go as fast as the slowest rider. Looking at the stats, my average moving speed was almost exactly 12 mph. So, if you can manage anything close to that, you wouldn’t look too out of place.

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I began to suffer quite a bit during the second half of the ride. The temperature really started to plummet in the last couple of hours before dawn and it gradually dawned on me that I hadn’t brought enough cold weather gear. Fortunately, at my lowest point, one of the regulars lent me a pair of gloves and, not long after that, the sun began to rise, giving me a

welcome boost of energy that, happily, propelled me to the end with something to spare.

 

What’s the most memorable thing that has happened to you on a bicycle?

It’s the bad things that mainly spring to mind, such as being knocked over by the bus on Westminster Bridge or my disastrous French touring holiday (see below). However, if you’re looking for something positive, I’d say completing the Whitstable ride and a couple of weeks later the BHF London to Brighton route. I did the London to Brighton run with a

friend who was best man at my wedding in 1992 and my son. Although a bit shorter, it was a lot tougher than the Whitstable ride, particularly towards the end. This time it was the heat that caught me out first, followed by Ditchling Beacon. We were riding on the hottest day of the year, about a week or so before the Fridays own Brighton ride. It took me at least a day to recover.

 

What advice would you give to someone doing their first night ride?

Take plenty of layers and a good pair of gloves. It can get surprisingly cold in the early hours of the morning, even in the summer.

 

Anything else you want to tell us?  

A piquet tente tale.  On a solo touring holiday to France, I arrived at my first campsite near Honfleur just before dusk on a Saturday evening and began to unload everything from my bike. I did so under the watchful eye of several French families who were just tucking into dinner as I arrived. I decided to have cup of tea before putting up my bright, new, shiny lightweight tent. This gave the French campers time to finish their dinner, whereupon they arraigned themselves in a semi-circle pointing in my direction, seemingly to get a better view.

 

This didn’t bother me. I was confident I’d have the tent up in a jiffy, having practised several times before I left. Twenty minutes later, my audience looked completely bemused as I packed everything up, loaded it back on to my bike and proceeded to cycle off into the gloom that had now descended.

 

Why had the crazy Englishman come all this way just to make a cup of tea?

 

Sadly, the answer is that I’d forgotten to bring any tent pegs. I never thought to ask them if they had any spare. The truth is I’d no idea how to say “tent peg” in French and would have been too embarrassed to ask anyway. That night, I ended up sleeping rough under some bushes on a nearby country lane. To make matters worse, on Sunday I discovered that none of the local shops who sold tent pegs would be open until Monday. I decided not to wait and returned home that evening.

Many people have since told me that the French phrase for tent peg is either ‘piquet tente’ or ‘piquet de tente’. That’s all very well, but I can guarantee that I will never, ever forget my piquet detentes again, particularly on a camping trip to France. Une fois mordu, deux fois timide, as they say over there (once bitten, twice shy).