Afternoon:
10°c
Even Dr Johnson wasn't right about everything. He came up with a spectacularly daft explanation of why you only ever see swallows in the summer. "Swallows certainly sleep all the winter," he told Boswell. "A number of them conglobulate together, by flying round and round, and then all in a heap throw themselves under water, and lye in the bed of a river." Yeah, right. Trying to work things out rationally, he also got riding a bike wrong, at least according to a poem by William Empson. "Johnson could see no bicycle would go;/'You bear yourself and the machine as well'."
Even now, there are times when a bike can feel an encumbrance in this way - when you have to carry it, lock it or get it on a train, say. But otherwise getting on a bike is just about the single greatest act of personal liberation you can achieve in London, simply and legally. I've only just got there? Yep, 'fraid so. Having once cycled everywhere, I'd hardly been on a bike for 20 years. Then on an impulse I went into a nice cycle shop on Holloway Road and flashed the credit card.
And it's changed my sense of the city, the way I put it together. Back in 1974, Jonathan Raban published a brilliant book called Soft City about how we all construct our own different versions of London, in our imaginations joining up the streets and places each of us knows, so that associations and familiarities matter more than the map - and thus we all mould for ourselves a different city in which to live.
Nothing reveals the truth of this more powerfully than getting on a bike. Whether your London has been a construction of Tube stops and walking or of being car-bound, it alters everything. The places all connect differently. Times and distances all change. In between places, you are fully there, in a way you never are otherwise except on foot.
And then cycling takes you into places you wouldn't otherwise go. I've lived in and around Islington for a very long time, yet somehow had never explored the canal eastwards until now, never realised the size of the basins there. I'd only driven through the main thoroughfares of places such as Stamford Hill, never seen the life of the side-streets in the way you do from the saddle.
Once, getting a car felt like a massive surge in freedom, and mobility, too. Not any more, not in London. Only a bike gives that sensation now.
So it isn't just that cycling is cheaper, healthier, often quicker, non-polluting, all that. It's joyful, too, in a way that has been quite a surprise to me. No surprise to other cyclists, I'm sure. I can only say I must have been hibernating in the bed of a river all this time. I never should have paid Dr Johnson so much mind.
Reader views (2)
Totally agree. However, there are only two issues I have that stop me cycling more often:
1. I live in Hampstead, and any way you cut it, there's a whopping great hill to negotiate to get back home. Not fun after a long day out.
2. The London weather. There is no greater joy than cycling in the sun, the soft breeze cooling your brow. There is also no greater discomfort than cycling in the rain, soaked-through and drenched by the spray from a passing cab.
The reality is, I cycle maybe once a week. I wish it were more, as I really do love zipping around the centre on my bike.
- J.E.F, London, UK, 19/07/2008 10:07
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I couldn't agree more -I have just taken up cycling- after borrowing a cycle from my local community associations and discovered a whole new world - where people say ‘morning’ as you pass by, where you don't feel continually monitored by your car identification number, travelling around London is faster and you get the time to notice the details of the quiet back roads - really recommend the Transport for London journey planner for cycling routes that are safe and interesting.
- Ellen, London, 19/07/2008 09:39
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