E-trike helps Valentine get back cycling

RETIRED social worker and academic Valentine Scarlett was on a bike ride in the Angus countryside in 2020 when disaster struck.

Coasting down a hill on her e-bike, she misjudged the road, sending her hurtling over the bars.

“I was going down a hill. It’s probably to do with the way my brain works. I thought, ‘Let’s just take it’. So I took it.

“But unfortunately at the bottom of the hill the road went one way and I went the other way.”

The now-65-year-old broke her clavicle, damaged her hip and knocked herself unconscious.

She spent a week in hospital as doctors treated her injuries.

For many, the accident would have marked the end of their cycling days. But not for Valentine.

“I wanted to get back out on the road. And I discovered e-trikes existed.

“It never occurred to me not to get back on. That’s just not in my make up.” Valentine bought her first e-trike soon after, rekindling her passion for the sport and method of transport.

I spoke to her for Bike Week 2022. Valentine grins at her e-trike’s distinctive blue frame, complete with stick on butterflies and a saltire.

“She’s Molly, after my gran, who was a feisty wee woman who liked her gin.”

Valentine has had lifelong issues with her mental health. The accident contributed to a particularly bad spell.

But cycling helped her to come out the other side. She said: “It was a sense of being a regular person. My husband David used to take me out after I had got Molly. He had to slow down quite a bit.

“But it was wonderful cycling through Invergowrie, Camperdown and Templeton Woods. It was just so lovely being able to see the countryside. Just being a regular cyclist again.”

Bike Week 2022’s theme is local community. That’s something Valentine, and her fellow cyclists across the city, already know a lot about.

Molly has helped bring new people into Valentine’s life, as well as getting her where she needs to go.

“I am a member of the Dundee Cycling Forum and they are brilliant. I am a very vociferous member of the forum.” She fights for better cycle parking spaces and segregated cycle lanes.

But she also credits the group with creating the kind of community and support that helps as much with mental and physical health issues, as with supporting cycling infrastructure.

“They’re such a support. They really are.”