Sara Hunt met fellow bike-lover Carl Morecroft, both from the Vale of Glamorgan, through their passion for pedalling
We first ‘met’ on a dating site for people into sports in July 2011. When we added photographs of ourselves to the profiles we both had pictures with bikes in them. Carl says he saw the photo and thought; ‘Here’s the mountain bike woman of my dreams.’ But he’d got that slightly wrong. I’m a passionate road cyclist and the photograph I’d put up on the dating site was of me with a hired bike. But he managed to overlook our differences and we started to share our love for cycling. In 2012 we tied the knot - we took the bikes with us and we were both looking forward to heading out cycling and seeing the beautiful Italian views for our honeymoon. We rode off towards Lake Garda full of excitement. Carl had built my bike for me, because I’ve got a bad back. He’d specialised it, so it was more comfortable. It
was a lovely day, the weather was great and then en route I fell off. The hospital was about an hour away and I remember being in the back of an ambulance, my husband chasing us in his car through the windy Italian roads. It was like something from a film. It turned out that I had an unusual injury in my arm. I had to have a cast that meant my elbow was bent to 90 degrees! Carl looked after me the whole time. We’ve been happily married ever since, riding together at weekends and on holiday, just the two of us or with cycling groups and friends. I’m a doctor and we’re both well aware of the health benefits of cycling. It really brings us closer together too. But equally, when we ride in a group, we usually cycle separately chatting to others. We love the fact that we have this freedom to go to places and take in sights that you really wouldn’t do if you were whizzing by in a car.