There we were, my girlfriend and I, trapped in our tent by great clouds of midges during a cycling holiday in northern Scotland. It was only about 7pm. To pass the time I proposed. Katy accepted, probably because it would have been a long, uncomfortable evening had she said no. Remarkably, we remain happily married 27 years later.
From my earliest years cycling has been an integral part of my life. I remember the thrill of my parents taking me into our garage on my fifth birthday and there, at the back, was my first bike — second-hand, but no less exciting for that.
My brother, Hugh, and I grew up on bikes — tearing around the back alleys of our small Northamptonshire town and racing down to the River Nene to fish for pike.
Later, at boarding school in Uppingham, my friend Matt and I would cycle 25 miles to Peterborough on a Sunday morning, gorge ourselves at his great aunt’s house, then pedal furiously back to avoid punishment for missing evening chapel. With the aid of bikes we could mount nocturnal raids on the local strawberry farm, and just about make it to The Gate at Bisbrooke in time to gulp down a surreptitious pint before supper.
I didn’t take a bike to university: Edinburgh was too hilly and cobbled. But I had a real old boneshaker during a subsequent gap year spent teaching in Rajasthan. One afternoon I emerged from my classroom to find a cobra entwined around the front wheel. Back in London, jobless, I cycled around the city to compile a guide to greasy spoon caffs.
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That got me an interview with the Hitchin Gazette in Hertfordshire. I put my bike on the train from King’s Cross and rode to the newspaper’s office in the market place. After the interview I was unlocking my bike from a lamppost when the editor came out to buy his lunch. He thought that showed enterprise, he told me later, and thus I secured my first job in journalism.
Katy and I courted on bikes. We would cycle around Normandy at Easter, camping in freezing woods at night and warming ourselves up with great bowls of caf? au lait in the nearest village the next morning. We cycled up the Loire and around Scotland, but for our honeymoon we splashed out on a motorbike.
After children came along we moved to Washington. America might be the world’s most litigious, safety-conscious country, but we somehow found a child’s seat that fitted on the crossbar. We thought it was a wonderful set-up until my four-year-old son put his foot through the front wheel and sent us both somersaulting over the handlebars. Barney ended up with five stitches in his chin.
Much later, cycling in Montana, we followed our host around a corner on a forest track and came face to face with a bear.
We’re back in London now. We cycle everywhere — how else would a sane person travel round this gummed-up city? Occasionally we take our bikes out to the country at weekends. Our favourite ride is through the heaths and woods of the Suffolk coast between Aldeburgh and Southwold. There is barely an incline, let alone a hill, in sight. We get off and push our bikes through the sandy bits.
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The rides may have become gentler, but a quarter of a century after marrying Katy, and nearly half a century after riding my first bike, my passion for both remains undimmed.