Real cyclists don't use e-bikes

An impossible 45 years ago, I decided the moment had come to get back on my pushbike. I had long hated the way the motor car was taking over the world and wanted to play my part in changing this.

I also had a more selfish reason. After two years on the Fleet Street diet of lunchtime excess, I could already see my first heart attack was not far off. I was in my late twenties and getting almost no exercise. I knew of people in the newspaper business who did so little walking that the uppers of their shoes wore out before the soles did. Something had to be done.

In those days, bikes had not moved on since my childhood days, pedalling my heavy green Hercules over the Sussex Downs on summer afternoons. The brakes were as feeble, especially in the wet. The Sturmey-Archer three-speed gears were just the same.

For decades we fought for segregated cycle paths where no motor vehicle was allowed

The big difference was that there were millions more cars, and their drivers all hated me. I remember many things about those early days as a militant cyclist in the nation’s capital. I recall the morning my rattling second-hand bike was stolen by a middle-aged geezer in a tweed jacket, who managed to escape even though I was beating him round the head with a bag of dirty laundry at the time. I especially recall the struggle to get up Primrose Hill on my first two-wheeled journey home. The way in had been all downhill. But this was a serious gradient, and I was not going to give up and get off. As a result, I almost lost consciousness. The months of browsing and sluicing on the Daily Express had already begun to clog my cardiovascular system, and I swear I could feel actual globs of fat detaching themselves from the insides of my arteries as I heaved myself upwards.