ZEN AND THE ART OF E-BIKES

A new mode of transport has allowed Alexander McCall Smith to take life in the slow lane, and it is an ideal antidote to lockdown blues

Alexander McCall Smith appears to have found the antidote to lockdown blues, and it's by taking life in the slow lane

This is all about bicycles, but, before you turn the page, I hasten to point out that it is not about all the technical matters – frame weight, complicated Japanese braking mechanisms, derailleur gears and so on...

Mind you, bicycle gear systems are rather interesting. When I was a boy I was given a bicycle of which I was inordinately proud. It was a Rudge, which was a well-known make in those days. It had a gear system known as a three-speed, made by a firm called Sturmey Archer, and if you had this you were one up on those who had no gears and had to work for their hills.

This was, of course, before the invention of lycra, and so as you were cycling along, if you wished to avoid catching your trouser leg in the chain, you wore cycle clips. Now, if you know what cycle clips are, or, more significantly, if you actually use cycle clips, then… well, you are likely to remember that the poet, Philip Larkin, invoked them in that remarkable poem in which he refers to taking off his cycle-clips ‘in awkward reverence’ when he wanders into an old church.

The fact of the matter is that cycle-clips, along with threespeed gears, have a whole hinterland of association. Some things are not just what they are – they are metaphors, and cycle-clips are metaphors for caution and, perhaps, a certain sort of quaintness. They are above vulnerability. None of us wants our trouser leg to be caught in a chain – none of us wants our life to be messed up by grease and tears in the fabric. That is the broader, metaphorical meaning of cycle clips.

And as for Sturmey Archer three-speed gears, the significance lies in the name Sturmey Archer. The name is a solid one – it inspires confidence at all sorts of levels. Sturmey is strongly evocative of the term sturdy, and Archer exudes a feeling of being on target. A moment’s research reveals that there were in fact two engineers called Henry Sturmey and James Archer, who, over a century ago, patented a bicycle gear system. You can still buy bicycle parts that bear that name, in the same red lettering. Si monumentum requiris, circumspice…

I had no idea in those Sturmey Archer days that eventually there would be bicycles with nine gears, that some of these bicycles would be powered by electricity, and that I would possess one. Nor did I know that during a period of isolation

– of which all of us had little dreamt – I would find great consolation in riding this bicycle on journeys which had no particular goal other than to get one out of the house-bound durance into which we had all been consigned.

When you ride an e-bike, you make a declaration of sorts. What you are saying is that you know more effort is required to ride a conventional bike, and that they are therefore better for your health, but you don’t care. You have traded the coldshower approach to life for the warm-bath approach.

If it makes you feel any better, you may describe that as Epicureanism. A philosophical label will help as you are looked down upon by athletic, non-electric types who ride past you in a flash of black lycra. They may have reservations about your use of electrical assistance, but then being on an e-bike is a comfortable and highly recommended place.

Edinburgh is a very good place to have an e-bike, as indeed are many parts of Scotland. There has always been a strong cycling lobby in Edinburgh, and this lobby has worked closely with the local council to establish a network of cycle tracks that now cover much of the city. Some of these tracks are on old railway lines and make use of the tunnels of our railway past. Others follow canal tow-paths or rural tracks that survived the age of the car.

Electric bikes have an additional advantage of allowing you to think. On a conventional bike, you inevitably spend a lot of time concentrating on the effort you are expending; on an electric bike, where effort is not the issue, you find that your thoughts meander rather pleasantly.

You can ride with an old friend, as I do, and talk about every subject under the sun. You can ride out through Dalmeny and watch the shipping in the Forth. You can see the sea, flat and placid, stretching out to the islands. You can see Berwick Law down in the distant blue, a shimmer, an improbable cone. You can stop for a rest that you don’t really need, and look up at the Rail Bridge and the bridges beyond it – one for each of three centuries of engineering.

You can think of how fortunate we are to have this country, this place, that cycling, like walking, takes you back to. And, with your e-bike, you need not worry about the hills – real or metaphorical.

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Being on an electric bike is a highly recommended place