On the road....

So where to go on my first rides? I am fortunate enough to live in an area where Hampton Court and the towpath are easily available as well as some lovely country lanes after a mile so there was a good amount of safe riding for the returnee bear.

Safe riding…Safe riding can be pretty easy to do, but don’t think that going onto an off-road cycle path equates to safe riding.

No-one tells you about those little rats pretending to be dogs, yapping away, leaping into your path in a misguided belief that because they can bark/yap and have teeth they are as good a killer as a staffie from the worst estates.

Neither does anyone tell you about the kids bounding out in front of you, the elderly walker around the corner, the trendy 20-somethings that are walking along a riverside pub in the glow of an advertisement-led life blocking the entire bleeding path.

And no-one tells you about other cyclists.

Like all humans, cyclists are random, chaotic beasts prone to braking suddenly or veering out in front of you as they cope with hazards ahead of them or just because. 

Some are slow, some are ridiculously quick, some jump lights others have a cup of tea and chat as they wait for the lights to change – OK, I made that one up but some do take an extraordinary length of time to get going. 

Did I say others were slow?

No-one warned me that after 25 years of non-cycling how damn slow I was going to be.

I thought I was going fast until the first of many roadies bombed past me up the Portsmouth Road into Kingston.

Swish, swish, swish as they zoom past, inches from your elbow, leaving you no space at all.

You get your energy on, yahoo, let’s go. You push your pedals, heart picks up the beat, you see them getting nearer and nearer, you can do this. Push, push, push. Look! You’re catching them up, you can do this…

Oh, it’s a red light.

They pose in their expensive lycra, sitting on their 1kg carbon-fibred, racing frames, sipping out of their ergonomically designed bidons (water bottles to you and me), chewing their sports snack, without a care in the world.

Me?

Heart a-pumping, more sweat than the London Marathon, slumped over the handlebars, looking straight ahead in the hope that I am not noticed…

To be honest, some still do bomb past me, but I am a bear on a bicycle going at around 14mph on a gravel bike, and that will suit me.

It is quite weird having someone swishing past you at first and you quickly learn to carry out life-savers – that look around behind you to see what’s going on – for other cyclists as well as cars after all, there’s only so much swearing you can put up with.

There seems to be one particular type that comes out at the weekend. I think you can tell the difference between them and those that cycle every day. It's like what an old ex-army friend of mine used to reckon. He reckoned he could tell the difference between the weekend warrior and regular soldier just by looking at them – it’s an attitude.

They sit on their expensive machines, in their club or Sky tops, and they grimace around Surrey. I swear, they are not using their legs, it’s pure pain and rage. They throw empty bottles onto the road, leave empty gas canister and inner tubes in the road, they are angry. They should be at the top. They should be in the Tour de France. They should be a contender.

Either that or they should really be in therapy.

One other thing that people don’t warn you about is when you are behind one of these wannabes, one of these weekend wheelie warriors…

Spit.

There you are, minding your own business, happy with the pace you are going when a huge globule of phlegm comes flying its way towards your face…not nice.

And do you want to know how to freak out some of those grimacing their way around North Surrey or the Yorkshire dales, etc? Smile out them. Wave. Look like you are really enjoying your ride, even if, as an unfit bear, you are ten to twenty miles in, your legs feeling like jelly and you just wished you had stayed in bed that morning. Just smile. Say hello, wave. Freak them out by reminding them that cycling can be a happy thing as well.  

And for good measure, go on one of the forums and complain how no one smiles back or says hello. Everyone loves reading about that sort of thing... (actually don’t, that was a joke).