Easing of Lockdown Week 20, 7th August 2020
One of the things we have been denied over the last few months is variety. “Boo hoo,” you might say, “get over yourself.” Fair comment, because for the majority of us, lockdown has been a reasonably pleasant experience. Time with the family, less time wasted commuting, some lovely cycling. Is it therefore greedy to want
Easing of Lockdown Week 19, 31st July 2020
We’re often accused of being the snowflake generation. Well, maybe not my generation, more the millennials who are my children’s cohort. We’ve not really seen war and pestilence in our lifetimes, and you might have expected such a so-called soft generation to have been somewhat broadsided by this wretched Covid thing. I actually think we’re
Easing of Lockdown Week 18, 24th July 2020
I shouldn’t be surprised I suppose, I’ve been riding bikes long enough. How is it possible that something as simple as a ride to the coast and back can produce such an overwhelming sense of wellbeing? That group thing, albeit sensibly small and distanced, a road trip, a cafe, some comic interaction with locals, including the
Easing of Lockdown Week 17, 17th July 2020
Let’s talk about kit. Rifling through my cycling drawer a few months back, I found my old triathlon ‘unitard’. A skin-tight, one-piece lycra suit that was designed for swim, bike, run. It’s tempting to say that as a 30-something I was whip-thin with washboard stomach and lantern-jaw, but sadly even then I looked more like
Easing of Lockdown Week 16, 10th July 2020
Quite early on in the pandemic, when we were deep in lockdown, a BBC news reporter door-stepped an elderly gent. His only human contact was with a charity delivering food for him. ‘It’s just so nice to see someone’ he said. My equivalent is the Amazon delivery guy. Though he’s not my only pal, I
Easing of Lockdown Week 15, 5th July 2020
Seemed to go alright didn’t it? Fancy giving it another go? We’ll run the same routine of staggered start times and different locations, still with a limit of 6 riders per group. I have repeated Niki’s beautifully conceived guidelines from last week at the bottom of this email; please do your utmost to stick to them and
Easing of Lockdown Week 14, 26th June 2020
If you want signs that the lockdown is done, check out the pictures from Bournemouth or Anfield. Let’s hope that this last few months of isolation have not been for nothing. In the mix of human tragedy and economic catastrophe, the distruption to the first half of our cycling year has been a relatively small inconvenience,
Lockdown Week 13, 19th June 2020
Just when you were beginning to think it would never end – it seems we may be able to re-introduce group rides. We were told we would have 2 weeks warning of group activities being back on – but in the event we’ve just had 1 day. We had a really good look at whether
Lockdown Week 12, 12th June 2020
Doesn’t seem to be getting any easier does it. I’ve tried to keep tabs on what we are and aren’t supposed to do in terms of meeting up with other people, but that does mean watching the news and I’m afraid I can only cope with so much. It feels to me as if we’re
Lockdown Week 11, 5th June 2020
No question, it’s been a difficult week at a time when difficult weeks are not in short supply. I’m not sure this email is a platform for making weighty observations about the ills of the world, more a haven of relentless optimism and encouragement to get on your bikes. It is, however, hard to ignore the