Boris Bikes... Ltd.

Having turned into a London salary-man, I had to try a Boris bike.  I mean, you arrive to Euston and the options are to join the medieval melee of peak-time tube travel, negotiate the bus network hoping you don’t end up in Watford, walk – which is fine but time consuming and, at certain points, just as competitive as boarding the tube – and cycling.  Many have their own cycle – indeed some carry it in the train, and Euston has notably increased the number and sophistication of its cycle parking points.  For those who don’t  or won’t, the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme (to give it its proper name) offers a great alternative… some of the time.

The theory of it is great : within the area served the stands are indeed ubiquitous.  The prices are very reasonable – first 30’ free, a quid for 24h, a fiver for a week:  how good is that!?  The bikes look well designed – why, they even have gears (3-speed hub gears – I believe they are Sturmey-Archer: a true British classic). 

The reality is more mixed.  The booking process is reasonably straightforward, but nobody tells you that the first time you ever hire a bike you need to go through it twice – once to register your card, the next to actually obtain the release code and take a bike.  I stood there for 10’, waiting for something to happing at first, then poking alternatively the machine and various bikes, then rang the helpline where, unsurprisingly, the first thing you heard was a recorded message related to this problem – so, alone I am not. 

Then there’s the vagaries of usage patterns.  Yesterday, for instance, the whole thing worked a treat – I took a bike from near work, made it to Euston in twenty reasonably pleasant minutes, parked easily in one of several empty bays, and away I went.  

Today, by contrast, I arrived to Euston to find a lone bike left in its stand.  I obtained a release code and, alas, a red light in the stand showed me this last remaining bike was in fact a dud.  I rushed to another cycle point to find none left.  Then another where there were many – but when I put my card in, after a long delay the machine displayed an error message.  This happened a second and then a third time as I tried successive cycle hire points, so I gave up and walked the rest of the way, having squandered a precious half-hour trying to get a Boris-bike.

Boris, by the way, didn’t actually father the creature, so to speak – not this one, at any rate.  Not only were other European cities (like Paris and Barcelona) quicker off the mark, I am reliably informed the ball for this scheme got rolling on Red Ken’s watch, even if the bikes (unlike Barcelona’s) are blue – or rather, the livery on them is, for the bikes have the sort of grey-brown finish of 1970s office furniture.

My £30 fold-up

They do say you get what you pay for.  Fork out hundreds of pounds and you can fetch the queen of fold-ups, that jewel of the dying breed of British engineering excellence, a magnificent Brompton.   Spend a couple of hundred quid and you can get one of the cheaper imports, reasonably decent items that may well take a few more seconds to put together or pack away, with gears that perhaps don’t purr along quite as smoothly as those I am told a Brompton offers.

Spend £30 on ebay and you get a cross between a circus prop and a sophisticated instrument of torture, bound in equal measure to amuse passers-by and set you up, on an early morning, to be grumpy and on a short fuse all day, dwelling on the prospect of having to ride it up hill back home when the train finally makes it to whatever God-forsaken sleeper town you happen to have your lodgings in.

That is exactly what I am contending with.  The bike, pictured, is something I bought for completely different purposes – mainly, the idea was that if we wanted to take the kids to the park to ride their bikes, we could only fit three bikes on the bike rack, and two small bikes in the boot: this meant we could only have one adult bike – so I got a fold up for the other adult.  The seller was the Brazilian wife of some bloke who lived on the Cheshire plain, West of the M6 somewhere between Chester, Wrexham and the civilised world.  The chap, the Brazilian assured me, had an identical one he used every morning to cycle to a train station from which he then carried on to Liverpool.  That, the cynics may say, explains a lot.  The fact that is a single-speed is not in my view its main shortcoming – it may not be great up the hill but it would be bearable.  Nor is so badly made – it may be heavier than the better bikes, being made of steel, but the joints lock well enough and have only a little play in them.  The main problem is that the wheels are smaller than those of the more expensive folding bikes, and the frame is proportionally shorter.  This results in an awful ride, really unstable.  Stopping becomes an act of defiance, as is steering too much, and since it has no racks and all the load has to go in my rucksack, I am forced to ride leaning forwards a lot, because with the seat-post fully extended to suit even my modest height, the saddle actually hangs almost further back than the rear whell – lean back and you’ll land the back of your head on the tarmac. 

So, what next?  I have to choose from a number of options.  To be fair, the little bike has done the job, reducing the time it would take me to reach the train station from 45’ (on foot) to 20’.  I could therefore grin and bear it.  I could buy a Dawes fold up for as little as £165 at a shop I know.  I could look for a good second hand fold-up on ebay.  I could transport my proper bike to my commuting base and enjoy the experience.  My host – my ever generous and helpful Father-in-Law – has offered to dust off his long-forgotten bike – in which he used to cover pretty much the same distance – for me.  This would be the most efficient option in terms of cost and effort.  It would also catapult me into the world of 1970s cycling, as the machine in question has the features we all regarded then as innovative – a smaller frame with longer, V-shaped handlebars, looking almost like a bigger fold-up bike except that it doesn’t fold.  To be honest, I don’t mind that – it will be better than my £30 eBay bargain, and for the time being that is enough for me.

London calling...

Compared to Manchester, cycling in London is thriving - there's more of them, a wider variety of shapes and sizes and styles, from the Hell's Angel, nazi-helmet character to the genteel, continental style high-heeled lady - and of course, the lycra brigade in its various sub-species (incl. mine) are well represented.

That said, the experience of cycling in central London cannot be pleasant. The traffic, the pedestrians, the tourists, other cyclists, it all seems to me bound to make the ride that little bit less enjoyable. And the things I see some cyclists do - this chap, for instance, at high speed between the two slow moving rows of cars, then a sharp bank to the right and then counter-bank to the left to zig-zag around a double-decker - either consumate skill or tremendous folly. A pedestrian stepping in the way at the wrong moment or a car door opening, and it could all end in tears so easily.

Sometimes I toy with the idea of cycling in London - ie if I have to go to Head Office as I sometimes do, to take my bike in the train and then go from Euston by bike, then back to Euston etc. Or perhaps I could dust off the little, primitive foldable I bought nearly three years ago.