Cycling trips by women rose by 56% in the first national lockdown. Four riders share their experiences and tell how they’ve caught the bug
Beth Baker-Stock, a senior cycling and walking officer, in a council sustainable travel team, cycled through university, before moving to London for her first job. “This was just after the tube bombings [2005], when I didn’t like being in crowded places,” she said. “I got a bike on the cycle to work scheme and started cycling to work every day.”
“Later, when we moved back to my home town of Poole, we chose somewhere that was near a railway station and near bus routes, because we didn’t have a car and wanted to see if we could do without it.”
Beth didn’t cycle much after that, because without the safety in numbers she experienced in London, “I just felt drivers weren’t looking out for cyclists. Then we had kids, bought a car, bought a second car…”
At the time, Beth happened to be designing cycling infrastructure as a chartered civil engineer, and though she wanted to cycle more regularly, she could only cycle to work on the days she wasn’t doing the school run.
“Then the pandemic hit and I was working from home, so like everyone, we got the bikes out of the shed. I was having a conversation with my partner, saying ‘our lifestyle has got to change, why have we got two cars? It’s a complete waste of money’.” As both parents were key workers, the children soon went back to school and “since then, every day we’ve done the school run, three miles each way, come rain or shine, all through winter, through hail storms, it’s been on the cargo bike,” says Beth.
While their kids, now aged seven and nine, are outgrowing the family’s long-tail cargo bike, some of the school run is on ‘quite horrible roads’, and the eldest is scared of the traffic, while Beth says cycling on the pavement doesn’t work. This means that they are considering a different cargo bike for their growing children, although it will cost more than £4,000.
“I don’t want to spend that much money. I’d much rather my kids could cycle by themselves, but it’s just not possible,” she says. The local council recently won a £79m ‘Transforming Cities’ Government grant for six ‘highquality’ cycle corridors, after which further routes will hopefully follow.
“I wish I’d known about cargo bikes when my kids were babies. My biggest piece of advice when people ask me about them, is to join the Facebook group, Family Cycling UK; it’s just such a mine of great knowledge and support. The other thing is to think of it as a car replacement, and not a bike, because that will make you feel better about the cost. It will change your life: our school run used to be stressful and it’s genuinely fun now, we get fresh air, we get people waving at us -it’s joyful.
“Another parent at my kids’ school has one now, and everywhere we go, people stop and ask us about it. People always say you can’t cycle if you’ve got kids or shopping, which isn’t true. I like to think we’re helping people realise there are other options than the car.”
Anne Shackleton had always enjoyed riding a bike, but longer distances had become more difficult with age. A semi-retired university careers consultant, aged 60, based in Whitley Bay, near Newcastle, she didn’t feel safe using public transport during the pandemic, and tried not to use the car, but wanted a time-efficient form of transport.
“We’re lucky to have an ebike shop in Tynemouth, so my best friend Karen, who hadn’t cycled for ages, came along for fun and it was the most wonderful experience,” she says. They test-rode ebikes on the Sunrise Cycleway, a ‘pop-up’ cycle lane that ran along the seafront for a few weeks last summer.
“I watched my best friend bloom. She said: ‘This is it, this is what I wanted, I feel confident, I want one. I want to cycle up to Sainsbury’s. So she got one, too.”
“We hoped the Cycleway would at least be in place until Christmas [2021], but it was taken out early, which we were really upset about. Seafronts aren’t often commuter routes but actually we could go along from North Shields to Tynemouth on this one.” The friends have kept cycling but Karen isn’t confident on the roads.
“From our houses you can’t go anywhere without riding on the pavement or the road, so we go a few hundred yards to the local park, which leads to a local Wagonway [a rail trail, for cycling and walking]”.
“I live with anxiety and cycling takes care of my mental health. I have an elderly mum who lives in sheltered care, about three miles away. I go and visit her on the bike, which she calls ‘the machine’. She watches me out of the window; she loves to see me come and go on it.”
“Switching from car journeys to bike, and the Sunrise Cycleway, have done wonderful things for me: I’m taking care of my mental health, I’m going along the seafront supporting local businesses, going for a coffee or meeting friends for lunch, and seeing my mum.”
Anne believes whatever your circumstances, age or ability, you can cycle. “I don’t need an adaptive cycle but if the time comes when I do, I know the option is there. When I was originally trained as a careers consultant, just after the Equality Act came in, we were told if something is suitable for people with some form of disability, it’s suitable for everyone, and I strongly believe that.”
Anne couldn’t find a women’s cycling group nearby so she’s hoping to set one up with campaigners at Space for Gosforth. “I’m interested in building people’s confidence and enabling people to cycle for short journeys,” she says. “We’ve been running community social rides on the last Friday of the month along the seafront between Tynemouth and Whitley Bay.” The council is consulting on a permanent Sunrise Cycleway design -and Anne hopes once that’s built, things will be even better.
Alison Stenning is a Geograph Professor at Newcastle University, North Shields, and a Play Streets [a scheme enabling communities to close their street to allow kids to play there] organiser.
“Aside from holiday trips, I hadn’t cycled regularly since I had my daughter, who’s now 10. I felt that juggling daily childcare and work trips, plus dropping something off on the way to or from work for Play Streets was too complicated by bike.”
During the first lockdown, Alison and her daughter cycled for fun, to break up the school day, and to visit her dad, three miles away. They soon started doing longer rides in and around the coast by bike. In the summer, a new cycleway opened, and soon almost all of their weekly travel was by bike.
“We’d meet friends, cycle up and down, and I was really enjoying cycling, plus getting involved in campaigning around the cycleway and increasingly thinking: this is what I want to do more of. I started researching ebikes – we have a local ebike specialist – and I found out about the Tern GSD [long-tailed cargo bike].” Alison says: “I do a lot of deliveries of posters, and cones for Play Streets, and I thought: ‘this is wrong delivering stuff to car-free streets by car’.
“I hired an ebike for most of November and December and I did way more cycling than normal, including popping to work to pick stuff up, go shopping and also going out and exploring the local area in lockdown during the winter. It felt good to do it on the ebike; you’re not fighting against the elements in the way you are on a regular bike.”
The local ebike shop took delivery of Alison’s dream cargo bike, the Tern GSD, at a time cycles were in short supply. “It forced me to make a decision. I thought I could sell it easily if I had buyer’s remorse, but I’ve ended up using it for probably 90 per cent of my transport since I took the plunge.” It became Alison and her daughter’s main form of transport, and Alison recently started cycle commuting two to three times a week, riding 50-60 miles per week.
She’s clocked up 650 ebike miles in seven months, compared with 200 in the car. “With the ebike, I realised I could do those complicated trips, like dropping off stuff before or after work, and sometimes I’d end up doing six miles more than I planned because it was easy.”
“I went cycle camping with a friend who also just got an ebike, and I could pile everything on the bike.” The pair hope to ride the Coast to Coast, or C2C, next year. She says: “I think ebikes are great. It’s liberating, and you don’t get knackered going up a hill. I also know my local area so much better than I did.”
Alison’s advice to new riders is to go out with other people, and learn the local routes. Some local trails may be fine in the day, but if they’re unlit or isolated, women might not feel safe using them at night. She says some routes are patchy or poor, and she would like to see more high-quality cycle lanes so she could cycle safely with her daughter.
“Initially when the pandemic kicked off, I wanted things I could do that would keep me positive and happy,” says Lacky Ahmed, a 43-year-old executive assistant at a London university.
Bored with doing the same walks, runs and Joe Wicks’ routines, Lacky thought: “The roads are quieter; now could be a perfect time to start cycling.”
Although she had wanted to cycle for some time, the London traffic, and a traumatic road collision on holiday in 2013, had put her off.
“My mum’s neighbour George, who I’ve known since I was a child, is a cyclist and I told him I was really keen to buy a bike, so he helped with advice, including helping me get the right frame size.”
With many shops closed, and no option to try a bike in person, internet bike research became Lacky’s daily after-work project.
“Eventually George found a bike in Chelmsford, Essex, at the end of May: a mountain bike. It was just before a Bank Holiday and the weather was gorgeous. I was totally lacking in confidence and couldn’t even sit on the saddle, so George and I practised in my local car park.I practised and practised and I suddenly got really confident and it just made me so happy.
“Suddenly I could cycle to the park, and then I started going longer distances. George helped me build my confidence on the roads, and it took off from there, really. It’s been one of the most exciting things I did in 2021, and I even went on to do a 36-mile charity bike ride in August of that year.” Despite the bike shortages, Lacky also managed to upgrade her heavy mountain bike for a hybrid.
“In terms of my mental health while being stuck working from home, it was great to explore the neighbourhood, speak with fellow cyclists, go to Greenwich Park and take a picnic. These were all things I never thought I could do. I still stick to places I know, and I need to get better at going to new places, but I’ve been cycling for well over a year now.”
While having some good local cycle lanes helps, some roads have really bad surfaces, with potholes, which makes Lacky nervous -along with the occasional aggressive driver. It hasn’t put her off, though.
“My advice to new cyclists would be: go for it. It’s amazing being able to conquer something you feared for so long, and having George, who’s an experienced cyclist, teaching me some basic techniques really helped.
You see things differently when you’re on the bike. You can go further afield, you can cycle for an hour or two, have a pitstop somewhere, have lunch with friends, and then continue cycling.
“Last summer one of the things I really liked doing was a cycling weekend in the Lake District. That was a bit ambitious, because I didn’t expect the terrain to be that challenging. There are so many places to explore in the UK including Wales, plus Hadrian’s Cycleway or the Coast to Coast in northern England. So that’s a few things to try in 2022.”