What got you interested in cycling (or interested again)?

[MontyVeda]

As a kid I was always bombing around on various shapes and forms of bikes (the neighbours used to bring all their old scrap bike bits to our house and me and my mates used to mash-up rad combos and make our very own oddball BSOs

...

Everyone seemed to do that when i was a lad.... massive cow-horn bars, chopper bars on an old racing frame, wheels that were too small for the frame, inverted drop bars, huge bendy aerials (?!?)... there were no rules, and no ramp was too big!

Never got round to learning to drive, so never stopped cycling about as it's quicker than walking... so i guess i can only blame my dad as it was he who taught me to ride a bike when i was too young to remember.

Cycling for me has always been about transport and never about sport.

 

[Rickshaw Phil]

I've cycled since I was very little - had my first bike when I was about 4 and can still remember the feeling of frantic excitement when my dad took the stabilisers off for me and I wobbled away balancing for myself for the first time.

Around the time I started secondary school interest was waning a bit until I decided I was sick of getting on the stinky, overcrowded bus and started riding to school. This was a great decision as I had a quiet leafy commute that I didn't have to share with certain people I hated.

Work followed and interest waned again as I learned to drive and got my first car. I did carry on cycling but the rides were infrequent and only ever 3 or 4 miles long. Then a couple of things happened: Firstly, when buying a new (to me) car the salesman questioned why I needed a car at all when I could easily cycle the distances I usually drove at the time. Then I spent an afternoon sailing and realised that I'd allowed myself to get so unfit it was an unpleasant amount of effort to tack a dinghy.

I decided to buy a cheap knockabout bike, that I wouldn't care too much about if it got stolen, and ride the 3 miles to work at least 3 times a week. That reignited my interest and led directly to my first ride up the Long Mynd and a desire to see more of the local countryside under my own power.

 

[Sara_H]

I started cycling as an adult because parking near my work became virtually impossible. I work in an NHS hospital that has no parking for staff at all so parking was in surrounding streets. Council then put resident parking zone around the hospital.
I usually had at at least a one mile walk through dodgy area's late at night back to my car. I realised I'd be better off getting on my bike at work and riding through the dodgy areas as quick as I could!
It grew from there, really. At first I only used the bike for commuting to work, and I gradually started to use it more and more for transport until I got to the position where I hardly used my car, so when it was written off in a crash a couple of years ago I didn't replace it. My OH has a car that I have access to a few times a week, but I rarely use it.

 

[snorri]

I lost the cycling habit for some years due to travelling away from home in connection with work but eventually got a job close to home which was a few miles from the nearest town. I realised when I was driving into town, for shopping etc. I often saw people I knew along the way and exchanged a friendly wave in the passing, however on the few occasions I used the bike I actually stopped and chatted to these friends and aquaintances. If I really wanted to keep in touch with what was going on in my community it was clear I was going to have to cycle more, so I did and have never looked back.

 

[John Shingler]

tight fitting clothing

 

[Easytigers]

Don't remember many days when I didn't cycle as a kid and ALL of my favourite Christmas presents were bikes (especially the lime green BMX with mag wheels!) Then I don't know what happened...just stopped riding at the age of 14ish. At Uni all my housemates were into cycling and I just laughed at them while I caught the bus/walked everywhere (no logic to my behaviour but I think I was secretly scared because they were all super fit...who'd have thought with them being cyclists!!!).
Anyway, age 33 I decided to get a bike to go to work on to save money...what a life changer!
I'm now fitter, happier and skinter than I've ever been!!!

 

[LutherB]

I got a Raleigh Grifter when i was 12, cycled everywhere, used to sneak out at night to cycle the empty roads of Leighton Buzzard. Moved to London and had a scare cycling down Chingford Mount when my brakes failed! Bought a mountain bike and cycled everywhere in London on that, then a hybrid commuter thing for work. Moved out to Berkshire 3 years ago and bought a road bike - absolutely love it! 32 years cycling in all, best form of transport ever

 

[Kies]

A child of the 70's and 80's i went everywhere by bike.We famously went camping on the IOW and would lock all 10 bikes together on the beach!!! Even after i had learned to drive, i would cycle to work in Ruislip and often come home for lunch, it really was quicker by bike than a car and i could only borrow dads car on a weekend anyway.
I got older and had enough to buy a car, so the joys of cycling were forgotten, life got busier, first a wife, a mortgage, kids and an ever expanding waistline. Weekly football was played for almost 20 years, so I could pretend I was getting fit, but in reality a social pastime that included a few pints post match.
3 years ago a knee injury meant it was time to hang up the football boots, and do something else, but what? That's when the doormant cycling gene kicked back in and it was time to embark on my first love all over again.
At the age of 44 i bought a cheap MTB and started cycling, i remember well that first 3 mile loop i did - sweating and puffing - sure i would die without a puff on the ventolin inhaler. I kept thinking,when did cycling become so difficult (still remembering the days of my youth). Cycling slowly became easier and i got a little faster, signed up to C2W scheme and bought the Defy, found CC and a few parish members nearby that gave me the social side as well .... never looked back (unless i hear a vehicle).
Now it is my drug over all others, i am grumpy if a cannot cycle. I have done a fnrttc, and a 107 mile ride for charity. The thought of doing long rides in 2014 ( L2B, London to Warwickshire) are filling me with a buzz like no other.

 

[ComedyPilot]

Like others I was a kid in the 70's that rode everywhere. I also remember riding my bike with a leg in plaster, and the other leg in one of my mum's leather boots pretending to be Barry Sheene. Kept riding most of my youth till I left school.

Met Mrs CP in 1988 and drove everywhere, living in rural Yorkshire does that to you. Moved in to a house in Driffield in 1993 and started riding BSO/MTB to work every so often. Fast forward to 1999 and I moved jobs so drove most days - I also had developed (or was still suffering from) chronic adventure sport overload, so all my time money etc was spent climbing skiing, motorbiking, gliding, paragliding, skydiving, so cycling never really got a look in.

Moved house in 2001 closer to work so the BSO/MTB got dusted off.

Then around 2004 I started to ride more and more.

Got a Merida racer in 2006 and really started piling the miles on.

By 2009 I really wanted to stretch my horizons, so started touring on the BSO/MTB, and did a 4 day tour of Yorkshire in 3 days.

2010 saw more miles on the BSO/MTB tourer when I used it to ride 800 miles round the Netherlands in 8 days.

2011 saw the purchase of my first 'real' tourer, a Dawes Karakum, which was quickly utilised to do a tour of Germany, 1400 miles in just over 2 weeks, self-supported, fully-laden tour.

2012 and 2013 were quiet years, just doing local rides/commuting, and a really enjoyable brewery tour with 4 blokes from work (all newbies to touring)

I have recruited my younger brother to cycling (June 2013) so we now ride together most weekends and the odd midweek eveing. 2014 has no real plans on the horizon yet, but I would really like to do some more Audaxes, and a couple of FNRttC to make the latest addition to the stable (Ridgeback Tour 2013 c/w SON hub) pay it's way. There's a small tour to the TDF Yorkshire in July, but other than that I am taking it as it comes.

 

[Bryony]

Used to cycle loads as a kid, my friend and I were always out and about around the village where we lived on our bikes.

When I left school at 17 I started work at a stable yard about 3 miles away and since my mum didn't drive it was either walk or cycle, as cycling was quicker that's what I decided to do.

Just over a year later I left that job and started a new job and so the cycling stopped.

Fast forward 10/11 years and I have a heart problem, and a bit of a weight problem. Me and my OH were talking about trying to lose weight and get fitter and we were trying to think of something we could do together and cycling came up. He already had a bike so I went on eBay to look for a cheap bike, found a dual suspension MTB for £31 went and picked it up and took it out the following day and I was hooked from there!!!

I have since got rid of that bike and now have my lovely road bike and hard tail mountain bike and looking forward to lots of fun and happy miles on them!!

 

[cosmicbike]

Like many I spent my childhood riding bikes, from the early chopper style which is entirely accountable for my first scar and 8 stitches at age 6 (well, the ramp didn't look that big, or indeed quite as wobbly as it turned out to be..). My Dad was, and still is, a keen cyclist, commuting into London daily by bike was normal for him, so he was fully supportive of us getting out there. As I got to my teens it was all about mountain bikes, my beloved Raleigh Discovery covering thousands of miles until it was stolen on the last night of a holiday on France when I was 15 years old. This led to my first road bike, a Raleigh Team Banana which served as my college bike until I learned to drive, at which point bikes got forgotten...
Fast forward 20 odd years, and 2 kids now riding bikes, so picked up a Boardman Sport MTB. Dad took me on my first ride in 20 years, straight up Tite Hill, cheers Dad I needed 3 stops and felt very at the top. 20 miles later I was hooked again, but safe in the knowledge that my 20+ a day smoking habit had to go. 2012 saw a new ride, a Trek 7500 E hybrid on the C2W scheme, and I did my first commute early 2013.
The road bike was collected 3 days after being discharged from hospital, and did 200 miles before I went back in On the plus side, it's been a great re-building tool this cycling lark, and if nothing else has made me appreciate how bad my fitness, particularly my breathing, had become as a result of smoking.....

 

[morrisman]

Type 2 Diabetes
Hypertension
Obesity

All of which are much improved

 

[ColinJ]

What got me interested in cycling again ...

• Eating and drinking too much and getting no exercise led to me putting on 5.5 stone in 3 years. I needed to fix that.
• Stress was killing me, and I needed something to calm me down.
• The man giving me a lift to work was over 25 years older than me but way fitter. That made me think.
• I remembered how much I had enjoyed cycling as a child.
• Watching Greg Lemond win an exciting Tour de France victory in 1989. I decided to buy a bike and get fit. So I did.

 

[Glow worm]

I cycled a bit as a kid in the 70s and 80s but never that much and stopped completely as a teen. It was only at college in Wales in 1992, I bought an old BSO for a tenner - the reason? I'd moved out of Bangor to a village 3 miles out (Talybont) and was too tight to pay for a cab to get me home from my local in town at closing time.

The bike was unrideable on purchase, so I took it to the LBS. I'll never forget those first few yards pedlling away from the shop after they'd fixed it up for me. The feeling of total freedom - I was completely hooked and have been ever since.

Turned out my 'BSO' was a 1950's road bike made by Carpenter- beautifully light and worth several hundred quid, though I'd never sell it of course. It lives at my parent's house in Norfolk now in graceful retirement.

 

[Andrew_P]

Rode everywhere, L2B aged 15 without a plan other than follow the A23. Loved cycling. Got my driving licence bike went rusty.

My middle daughter, Emily gets these bees in her bonnet and fads and we were on our first family holiday in France idyllic location and on site there was a Cycle Hire and she kept on and on about hiring some bikes for me and my three daughters. As it was holiday I capitulated after a week, hired them for three days. I was 5 stone over weight and 44 hadn't ridden for years I remember as clear as if it was a minute ago that instant feeling of euphoria as all the cycling memories came flooding back as I wobbled up the path. That was summer 2009

That afternoon I have my other clear as day memory in my excitement we went off on the cycle paths got lost ended up on quietish back road, there was a hill which we all struggled up then I belted down the other side and suddenly remembered I had my three kids in tow looked round in panic but then saw them all flying down the hill with great big huge grins. Seriously those two memories are burnt in as clear as day and will be for the rest of my life! Changed my life forever (she still lays claim to be the life changer)