Of Bikes and Mowers

Most days I take a ride around our village on my bicycle. There is something very intimate about a bike that puts me in contact with my environment, sensations that are lost in a car. It's a great way to stay in contact with what is happening in the community, to notice as the seasons change, gardens bloom, lawns are cut. Wildlife seems to accept me on my bike just as it does when on a horse, not so on foot.

Friends who visit often smile as they see me using my bike around the garden but its surprising just how far one has to travel in even a confined area, putting hawks out to weather, feeding poultry, doing stables, checking the paddocks, it all adds up to several miles each day and many years ago I learned that its a great saving on the legs to use my bike. In my experience bikes are like mowers, one ends up with a fleet in which each model has a different job to do. A look in my barn shows we currently have five different mowers, each with a particular role - we fitted a new engine and renovated the 50 years old Ransomes Auto Certes, it is a great delight as it makes the wonderful stripes of a well mown lawn and should now last another 50 years, an old Hayter rotary mower for the rough stuff, a newer JCB rotary for the more civilised areas, a big ride on for the large areas, and then a tractor mounted topper for the paddocks.

I have often wondered just why I find bikes so familiar and reflect on years of their use. When I was at school I did an early morning newspaper round on a very worn out old frame to earn money and buy my first 'proper bike'. At preparatory school my morning journey took me by bus into town followed by a walk of about a mile through the town past an old fashioned bike shop, dank and dusty with that unique smell of rubber and oil familiar to any bike shop. It was a small shop owned by a local biking enthusiast and in those days, not long after the war in the 1950's, when money was short and people were used to making do, there was little stock, the arrival of a new model for sale was quite an event. A Holdsworth, Dawes or Raleigh was something to be inspected and drooled over, feeding a young boys dreams.

Then when I moved to senior school there was another longer walk through Colchester town centre to get to the Grammar School on the other side of town from the bus terminal, again past another, better, more extensive bike shop. At senior school there were of course bike sheds to house a couple of hundred bikes of pupils who rode to school, for some of the boys bikes became a passion. Cycling was not just a sport or pastime it was a necessity for most people and for many it became an absorbing hobby as well.

In later life it seemed second nature to carry on. My old bike was still with me when we were married but the temptation and dream of the bike shop window became possible at last. I bought a duo of Claud Butlers, one for me and one for Jenny, nearly forty years ago now and they still delight me. Today my favourite bike still lives in my barn to take me on my frequent rides around the village. In subsequent years we accumulated a couple more, a mountain bike to cope with the garden and fields, then another that had some suspension but it soon broke and now hangs from the rafters awaiting repair. There is seemingly always something in the barn being renovated.

As we have aged the sport has become more interesting and now with satellite TV we can watch the big European tours all summer - how wonderful that in this era our British cyclists have won the most famous race, the 'Tour de France', two years running. The Giro d'Italia, opens the season and the Spanish Vuelta is near the close at the end of summer, we have just watched its finish and autumn is now here, hawks are on the lawn. Funny, mowers never seemed to get a sporty side but the seemingly ageless technology seems to hold a fascination of its own. Most women don't seem to get that somehow?