Drive, and arrive stressed. Cycle, and arrive exercised

From Marion Walton.

I AM a cyclist for fun who doesn’t wear lycra and wears a hat in the rain.

Many of my mornings are made of the dull cold before dawn, and the relief as the sun floods across the fields, or sits a fiery red, or spills through an early-morning mist.

I’m nodded to on my way by the faint ghosts of daffodils that begin to glow yellow as the minutes pass. I see dark squirrels that stare and then flee, and once a kestrel took out a blackbird in front of me.

I notice the planning applications and missing cats and even parrot notices. Sometimes I meet a friend walking the dog. I always see the regulars huffing and puffing their way up the hill and we share a cheery good morning.

Then I’m by the reservoir. Sometimes there are swifts, but most often stunning cormorants, penguin-like, and other birds drying their ragged wings like something from a fairytale. Often there will be a heron, still as stone.

Then I’m in town, with the grind and stink of cars. Mostly people are decent and the journey to work finishes happily, 20 minutes from St Martin to the Hospital. Other times I am cut up, or the cycle lane is blocked and I am forced into the road, probably because people are simply unaware that a cyclist is there.

Other mornings I have to travel by car, when I see very little and quickly turn off the repetitive blare of the radio. I sit with some shame in a queue of single-occupied cars. There are too many of us now for that. Some will have no choice but to drive through infirmity, but most will. I think about whether to turn my engine off, then the queue trundles on a bit.

I practise filter in turn and let people in, enjoying the occasional wave from someone, and becoming disproportionately annoyed when someone doesn’t acknowledge the politeness.

We travel in our cars as if they are extensions of our home and private space; that’s why the affront, I think. Really they’re potentially lethal and polluting lumps of metal and plastic.

I often arrive at work to find the parking spaces taken, and when leaving work for school pick-up I have found myself blocked in with miserable consequences. I have now resolved to try and cycle always.

I am slim and trim, I cost the health service nothing, I don’t pollute or create noise nuisance or lengthen the traffic jam. Others have my parking space and, professionally employed, I contribute at least my share in tax revenue for road upkeep and everything else.

The other cycling commuters I know are nurses, psychologists, teachers and lawyers who do the same.

Please can Jersey begin to take cycling more seriously? Many people do not understand the green-lane principle of a speed limit and priority for horse, walker and cyclist. It needs reinforcing. I don’t feel I can let my child cycle the short distance to school because of them.

Another small change that could make an incredible difference is staggered work start times. If I reach town at 7.30 am the cycling is more pleasant; the same applies later at 9 am, after school drop-off. I am lucky to have an employer who understands the mutual and wider benefits of flexi-working. Perhaps others could do the same?

As a driver, I often arrived stressed. As a cyclist, I arrive exercised and so appreciative of our beautiful little Island. And there’s always room for more bicycles.