Without a car

We were busy abandoning our car to head off to the ferry on bikes when my
phone bleeped to warn me of incoming email; an enquiry from someone
developing ideas for "a new, iconic British road movie," a film exploring
the way the car has shaped our lives, landscapes and way of living. I
thought she'd got the wrong person since I'm not exactly an advocate for
motoring. But turns out she was after an alternative view of life on the
road, without a car. Now that's something I can talk about.

As a car user, cyclist and pedestrian I sometimes find myself comparing what
I get from these different ways of traveling, what I notice and what I
become when I get into the car, climb onto my bike or head off on foot. No
doubt we live in times when the car is king and so undeniably convenient but
how much do we know about what we lose by driving compared to cycling or
walking, or what we have lost to accommodate the car in our cities, towns,
villages, countryside, lives. Many of us know only the car and have no other
positive personal, first hand reference point to compare it to.

For me cycling is a positive alternative to travelling by car. It brings me
back into contact with the elements, terrain, natural world, my physical
being and other people. There is no insulation, no tin box, no protection
from the sun, rain, storm, wind. You feel the weather and know what it is.
You know the terrain more intimately too; feeling the rise and fall of the
road, noticing the slow drag, that gentle run down, that hill you never
sense in the car. You feel your legs working, your heart pumping, the cold
air in your lungs on a winter's morning, you growing stronger as you make it
up that hill you struggled with for weeks and how that illness makes you
sluggish, saps your energy, slows you down. On a bike you are part once more
of the social world of pedestrians and that special club of other cyclists
amongst which there is a camaraderie you don't get amongst drivers - the
passing nod, wave or hello, a recognition of someone else who is willing to
make an effort to get where they want to go.

And when we ride as a family, we're doing something together, as a unit,
getting to amazing places under our own steam and realising we can do that
without resort to a car. We slow down, stop more, see more, experience more,
feel more. Right now as we head off to Spain to tackle the Pyrenees and the
ancient Pilgrims route to Santiago de Compostela, we're off on a journey
that is part family holiday, part physical challenge, part adventure, and
part complete change of scene and lifestyle. We leave behind the car, the
house, the routine for an itinerant existence where we'll stay where we
stay, stop where we stop and let the journey unfold; campsites, hostels,
hotels, wild camp spots, there'll be a bit of everything I'm sure. Sunshine,
rain, wind, hilld, mountaind, flat, on-road, off-road, inland and coastal
riding. The variety, freedom and unpredictability is quite intoxicating...
at least in prospect. The reality is much more mixed - of course there'll be
different routines, boredom, hard bits, arguments - all the things there are
at home. Our life on the road is family life transported to a different
setting, played out to a different rhythm, against changing backdrops, with
the added daily stimulus of encounters with new people, places and
experiences. And then there's the daily satisfaction of knowing you got
there under your own steam and that extraordinary things are possible if you
can just pursue them in little chunks one day at a time. Now who can say
that about travelling by car?