How I Started Cycling

When I was very young I had little interest in riding a bike, I preferred playing football or cricket. I was one of the few people who didn’t do the cycle proficiency test organised by my primary school.

It wasn’t until I was about 14 that I got my first bike. My first bike was a mountain bike. Mountain bikes were all the rage at the time. I enjoyed riding it but found it difficult to find any offroad trails so spent most of the time riding on the road. This led to getting my first proper road bike. A Reynolds 501 frame, with Shimano Sora groupset I think (I can’t actually remember the groupset). It seemed a fortune at the time costing around £250. It was probably 2 or 3 combined birthday and Christmas presents. (I could never imagine a few years later spending £600 on a single wheel…)

In my early days, my only target was to ride as far as possible. I remember when I made my first ride to Ilkely 10 miles away – It felt a huge leap – no more just cycling around the village in circles. This was real freedom. From there I steadily increased the mileage always trying to go further. A big benefit was joining my first cycling club Otley CC. We met every Sunday at 9am for long rides into the Yorkshire Dales.

Joining a cycling club made it easier to do long rides, especially since they stopped 2 or 3 times at different cafes. throughout the day. I steadily progressed from the ‘slow’ group to the B group to the A group. (I never made it to the ‘fast’ group of people – those who actually raced seemed to be really serious and fast). Our rides in the A group were pretty slow – averaging 15mph in a pack is a pretty steady ride. But, it was great to regularly complete distances of over 100 miles. I remember the feeling of utter exhaustion on doing my first 100 miles (after 7 hours on the bike). It was perversely a great feeling.

As important as the riding was, the cafe stops for tea and teacakes seemed to be just as important – if not more so. Until I was 15 I only every drank water. But, I felt like a social outcast drinking water in the cafes, so I followed the social norm or drinking tea and eating toasted teacakes. This is how I started drinking tea.

We regularly stopped at certain cafes such as Burnsall cafe, Dalesman Cafe and Gargrave. But, wherever we were throughout the Yorkshire Dales, the old hands had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the best cafes to welcome cyclists.

Compared to today I remember seeing very few cars on the roads on Sunday. I couldn’t understand how many of the older members nostalgically looked back to the era when bikes by far outnumbered cars on Sunday rides. Alas that era is gone forever!

In the early days I even did a few time trials including a few hill climbs. I remember being really excited to do a 29.36 minute 10 mile TT – averaging 20mph; it felt so fast! (I couldn’t have ever imagined doing a 20 minute 10 like in 2008)

It was a good time, those early days of long mileages at a slow relaxed pace. I saw more of the countryside than I ever would have. Even though I later had a break of 5-6 years from cycling, it sowed the ‘cycling bug‘ which has never left.