Two wheels good (if you can avoid the potholes)

Readers, I fear you have judged me in haste. I have bought a bicycle, the first I have had in seven years. I wobbled back from Halford’s without breaking more than a sweat. It’s part of my fitness fervour, but my purchase decision also hinged on the fact that Transport for London decided to close Albert Bridge for 18 months, leaving me in the quandary of how best to reach the King’s Road. It’s been my material Mecca since I was a child, and now I have to drive all around the houses, literally, to reach it. For the record, I don’t have a Chelsea tractor, I drive a Prius, so there.

The solution was to go down to two wheels, as the bridge is still open to cycles. Four wheels bad, two wheels good. The sun is finally out, and pottering around Battersea on a bike is delightful. 

Sarah's shiny new bike

There is only one thing disturbing this delight. Or rather there 1.6 million things around the UK disturbing this delight - the potholes. While they may jigger your suspension in a car (in fact they are a potent argument for driving a 4×4 round city centres), leaving you clutching your teeth like Janet Street Porter on a PowerPlate, on a bike they may prove lethal. The vicious weather has created loads of new ones, and the existing ones have become positively cavernous.

I can’t find any actual statistics for the number of injuries, but when you Google ‘bicycle pothole injuries’ you get a company called potholeinjuryclaims, so there must be a fair few. I counted eleven annoying ones, and a great big one, in which you could have housed a family of elephants, on my three mile round trip to the shops this morning. Admittedly there were fewer on the Yummy Mummy Chelsea side of the river, than on the Slummy Mummy side where I live.

We are the pothole capital of Europe, if not the world. The subject often crops up on radio talk shows, and people ring in to explain why cheap, quick setting tarmac is unstable. I don’t care, I just want them sorted out. Potholes lead to seriously defensive cycling, and a tendency to look down at the patch of road in front, instead of the road ahead.  Apart from ruining the incomparable joy of taking my little fold up to the open road, it’s bloody dangerous.

Bikey needs a name. I was thinking of calling it Kulveer, after Boris’ psychotically pro-cycle side kick. Maybe you’ve got a better idea?

Tags: Cycling