What’s so abundant about Britain? 3: The bike culture
London is a burghal fabricated for cycling. There are few hills of any consequence, there are cycle paths everywhere and, thanks to the congestion charge on visiting motorists, which helped reduce traffic clogging the heart of the capital, it’s a little bit safer these days to get around on a electric bicycle.
The city is awash with electric bikes. They stand chained in ranks outside Tube and railway stations, and hang in heavy locks on railings in streets of terraced houses. The roads at rush hour are filled with quiet figures, slipping past like wraiths, red LED lights blinking from under saddles, chains whirring, tyres thrumming …
There are bike shops everywhere, and business will no agnosticism abide robust, abnormally if the recession drives bodies abroad from their cars and assimilate two, human-stoked wheels.
A acquaintance of abundance cycles 54km anniversary way to his appointment and aback every day, Surrey to Canary Wharf, rain or shine. Much of his route is through greenbelt – parks and towpaths along the river – and his commute, he says, is “like meditating”.
Bike culture is well and thriving throughout Britain, thanks in no small part to an organisation called Sustrans which has fought a grinding campaign to a) expand the country’s network of cycle paths and b) have cyclists recognised as proper human beings made of fragile tissue and bone.
The aftereffect is a carborne ability that is starting to attending out for cyclists, at atomic some of the time. It’s a continued way from perfect. People still die beneath the auto of assorted taxis, buses, commitment vans and “Chelsea Tractors” – that’s a phat 4×4 or “mommywagon”. A decade ago, when I lived in London, a bus driver ran down a cyclist who flipped him the bird in heavy traffic (he got off on a technicality, apparently).
Still, it is one of the bigger means to get around. If you’re visiting, hire a electric bike for day touring around London’s sites, or hop on a “dikwiel” with Fat Tire Bike Tours. And away from the towns, you have, thanks to Sustrans, 19 000km of cycle paths to get lost on. Couple bike touring with a hired canal narrowboat, and you have the makings of a spectacular holiday.