The Accidental Cyclist by Dennis Rink

Author:Dennis Rink
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: coming of age, london, bicycle, cycling, ageless, london travel

Anyone who has ever cycled through the City of London will know that it was never designed for motorised transport. Actually, the City itself was never really designed – it sort of grew organically, changing with the needs of its times, adapting itself to modern life, be that the life of the twelfth or the seventeenth or the twenty-first century.

Every time that there has been the opportunity to rebuild the city, after fire or war or pestilence, those in authority resisted to chance to start afresh. Instead, they allowed the wounded city to heal itself naturally, leaving behind scars to remind citizens of its painful past. At the time of the most extensive destruction of this city – the Great Fire of 1666 – there were no cars or vans or lorries to think about when rebuilding. These modern inventions are better suited to the big American cities that have sprung up in the new world, designed on simple grid systems with wide avenues, huge car parks, and long open roads that go on forever. They were not designed for ancient cities, even less for ancient cities on small islands.

The bicycle, on the other hand, is perfectly suited to city life – compact enough to allow easy movement and storage, clean enough not to pollute its surroundings, and quick enough to take its passenger from A to B in a minimum amount of time. If you think about it, a little more than a century ago most journeys in London would still have been undertaken on foot, and most food produce or commercial commodities would have been transported by handcart. Only the very wealthy could afford their own horses and carriage. The better-off could afford cab fare, while the vast masses would simply walk. Nowadays every man and his dog owns a car – that is the curse of modern life.

Icarus may have been thinking these thoughts as he circumnavigated St Paul’s, but it is hard to tell, because he was still mindful of the Grey Man’s instructions to be slightly paranoid, to watch out for car doors opening ahead, cabs making a u-turn, lorries and pedestrians and all the other perils that awaited him. After years of his mother’s example, paranoia came easily.

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