I ride bicycles

My main mode of transportation is bicycle. I have never owned a car.

My father bought me my first bike when I was nine. It was a cheap 10-speed with drop handlebars. An older boy at my school showed me how to adjust the derailleurs and since then I've done all maintenance myself. I bought a small blue metal toolbox with my pocket money and started putting together a toolkit. I still have it and use tools that I bought more than forty years ago, although my collection continues to slowly grow as I encounter new technology (eg. hydraulic disc brakes).

Having a bike made me very independent. I could ride the eight miles across town to play with a friend, and I didn't need my father to drive me to school for chess club at the weekend. That independence was briefly interrupted when a car driver pulled out of a side-road in front of me, sending me over his bonnet. I narrowly avoided a broken neck but I got a black eye from my spectacles and the impact destroyed my bike frame. A classmate very generously gave me an old frame he didn't need. I called the mash-up "Angus".

When I went away to university I bought myself an old secondhand bike for £20. It had rod-pull brakes that didn't work very well but it gave me a lot of freedom.

In my second year, my mum paid for a fancy new bike - a bright-yellow Saracen Tufftrax, complete with oval chainrings. It was my first decent bike and great fun. Sadly, the quick-release seatpost meant my saddle got stolen a few times and the whole bike was stolen at the end of my third year.

I brought over parts of "Angus" and overhauled the £20 bike. That lasted me for a year or so until it too was stolen (maybe because of the Brooks leather saddle).

I became a postgraduate and walked for a few years. Eventually I bought a really cheap mountain-style bike (new for £100?) which did the job of getting me around town a little bit quicker.

A few years later I moved across the country and decided to buy a touring bike. Ever since I was a teenager I'd liked the look of the Raleigh Randonneur (with its Brooks leather saddle and cutesy spare-spokes chainstay protector) but for some reason I decided to buy a Dawes Super Galaxy. It was a good decision: I rode it for more than twenty years. Lots of parts wore out and were replaced in that time but I was still on the original Deore LX rear derailleur and had never had to touch the bottom bracket or headset when I started riding my next bike...

A shortcoming of big-wheel bikes is that they are a pain to transport in a car. Taking one on a bus/coach/train isn't always possible. This became an issue in 2020 when I started regularly splitting my time between two parts of the country but wanted to be able to cycle in both places. I didn't really like any of the standard Brompton options so I bought one customised by Ben Cooper in Glasgow with a Rohloff hub, hydraulic disc brakes, and dynamo lighting (and Brooks saddle, of course!). I also have a Radical Design "Chubby" trailer for when I want to haul significantly more than the 10kg that the Brompton's luggage carrier is nominally rated for (such as sacks of cement).

[ Pictures to be added once I dig them out (or take them). Also a proper review of the Brompton once I've worked out the kinks. ]