Take in quieter cycle routes and clear your head
“I can spend all afternoon at my desk thinking about a problem but an hour on my bicycle and I have solved it” is a remark I overheard recently which resonated with me. Cycling can be a great place to mull over your thoughts, if you can find a nice peaceful road to cycle on and last weekend I was lucky enough to find one of the quietest and most beautiful routes I have cycled in a long time. Our route started at the Cotswold Lakes, winding its way through tiny hamlets following country lanes with only the occasional need to cross a main road, all the way to the pretty village of Bourton-on-the-water. Here, in stark contrast to our ride, it was absolutely jampacked with noisy tourists. We stopped briefly for an ice-cream and to fill our water bottles before riding off, back into sanctuary of the quieter countryside. It’s been a long time since I have ridden my bicycle simply for pleasure rather than for training. Cycling is an entirely different experience when you don’t have your head down focused on pushing hard. You notice a hedgerow of blackberries ripe for picking, a field full of golden wheat and the smallest of animals. Riding on main roads can often be a bit fraught with traffic but if you seek out the lanes it is considerably quieter. Cycling clubs are a great way to experience this type of cycling. They tend to have members with intricate knowledge of the back roads, where the best traffic-free local routes can be found as well as the coffee stops. Planning your own cycling routes is fun but following them can be tricky, particularly if your sense of direction is better served by Google maps than working out if your shadow should be over your left or right shoulder. Cycling a new route with a friend is helpful, at the very least you will have someone to argue about the direction and share your woes when you realise the route you have planned takes in one too many steep hills at the end of it! Go seek out some new routes this summer and I promise it will result in a quieter cycle in the sun.