Cycle commuting
Part of my plan for this year is to get rid of the car, and spend more time outdoors. Something that helps both aims (as well as saving us money and saving fossil fuels) is for me to commute to work by bike. I actually planned to start commuting in by bike last year, but my hospitalisation set that plan back a bit. Last week, I cycled in a couple of times, and I’m really enjoying it.
We’re really lucky that we’re almost on one of the National Cycle Network routes, which in turn happens to go very close to the University. So I can do almost the whole route through parks and very quiet residential streets, which makes an enormous difference to the feel of the ride. I used to like commuting in Oxford, but you did have to have your wits about you the whole time, and a healthy sense of paranoia that everyone in a car was trying to kill you, which didn’t make for a relaxing ride. Now, I can mostly glide along serenely — daydreaming, thinking about work, mentally composing blog posts — with only the need to keep half an eye out for rampaging dogs or oblivious pedestrians.
