We love cycling, but it's not always easy with young children, especially when they out-number you 2:1 and then there's the challenge of transporting 6 bikes!
But we're finally at a stage where our eldest two children are capable of cycling a decent number of miles and our youngest has been cycling independently for a year. So far, L has cycled shorter rides on his small bike, 3-4 miles at a time. Earlier this year we invested in a Trailgator which is a bar fixed to my bike, and it has a bracket attached to the front of his bike. When he tires, we can hook his bike up to mine and it lifts the front wheel off the ground and tows him.
It's allowed us much more flexibility, while allowing him to build some good cycling muscles! It seems to be working well; a couple of weeks ago we did a 20 mile route and he cycled 16 miles on his own bike :-) He also moved onto a 20 inch bike with gears, which seems to have given him his cycling 'wings'.
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| Moving up to a decent bike with gears! |
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| L and I hooked up together |
Our 3rd child, Io, is 7 years old and she doesn't yet cycle independently. She has a permanent hook up to Dylan's bike, called a tag-a-long. This is a 'half bike'.. she has a back wheel and pedals/chain and handlebars. There's a long bar which comes up the front and is attached to the seat post of Dylan's bike. She loves this arrangement and cycles many miles with us this way. We're not sure if she'll ever choose to cycle independently, but so long as she's enjoying it, we don't see any reason to push her. And there's always the option of buying a tandem as she grows :-)
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| Io on the tag-a-long last summer, with Dylan. |
The eldest two are ages 9 and 10. They're both awesome cyclists and have been learning to cycle safely on the roads for some time. As Dylan and I are both attached to our younger children while cycling (or need to be able to watch them closely), we tend to not cycle the roads as a family too often, though we've done a few road rides with our 9 and 10 year olds on a one to one basis and this works well. The 10 year old, Is, is a competitive swimmer and trains 3 hours per week. This training has paid off in cycling fitness.. she leaves me standing up steeper hills nowadays!
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| Dylan with our eldest two cyclists |
So we mostly stick to cycleways and paths, though we're getting more experimental with roads rides as time goes by.
And just because we like a challenge, we often cycle with two other families who are equally as bike-obsessed. Between the three families, we have 12 children. That's 18 people, cycling together. It's beautiful chaos and we all radiate big grins when we cycle together! We're sometimes spread out over several miles, as the older children like to cycle on ahead, with one of the adults in pursuit (not always as easy as it sounds!) There is often a couple of groups of middling cyclists, chatting as we ride, casually overtaking a child who has stopped to pick blackberries or investigate a tree to climb. Then ducking back into the side as the same child whizzes passed again....
There's usually an adult bringing up the rear, making sure we have no-one falling behind. Every few miles, we stop and re-group - for the cyclists at the front, it can sometimes mean a 10 minute wait for a re-group.. but that's just another reason to smile and feel happy. Sharing cycling with a large group of friends is a very good feeling. And there's always someone who has a secret stash of sweets in their rucksack while you wait.....
We recently visited Northumberland with our family friends and the 18 of us cycled on the quieter roads around Bambugh and Seahouses. We created quite a spectacle and many tourists stopped to look and stare as our pelaton of 18 bikes went passed! We got a lot of smiles, nods and even waves. You can't help but smile when you pedal as a group, in a beautiful place, with the sunshine on your skin!
So we started tracking our cycles with the children, around the 23 July which is when school finished. Is goes to the pool three times per week and it's 3.5 miles each way, so we soon racked up a good number of 7 mile trips. My boys go to karate, and this is 5 miles away, so we did this journey too.. this was a little trickier because the roads are busy, though there is a quiet footpath along the a road. Dylan towed L for this journey and kept a close eye on T. That was another 10 miles, plus an hour of karate (made for a good night's kip for my boys!)
At the end of July we travelled to Derbyshire and set ourselves the task of cycling the full length of the Monsal Trail. This is a dis-used railway line which runs between Bakewell and Chee Dale, over viaducts, through long, lit tunnels, while taking in the spectacular scenery of the limestone dales and the Monsal Head. There are a number of lime kilns you can walk into along the way and the scenery across the river gorge is second to none. We did this trail last summer, with our cycling family friends. We went back this year without L in his seat as he wanted to participate too.
The trail is mostly flat and gravelly and has a couple of places you can stop along the way to use toilets and buy drinks/ice creams.
We started at Hassop Station near Bakewell and cycled the length of the trail, through the tunnels, all the way to Chee Dale and back. It was stunning and L managed 10 miles under his own steam. We added 15 miles to our total.
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| Dylan and the tag-a-long on his single speed bike which was a prize he won in a competition. |
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| One of the tunnels along the Monsal Trail |
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| Pit stop |
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| 15 miles of cycling on a very hot day means a big ice cream at the end of it |
A couple of weeks later we cycled a little closer to home, along part of the Selby to York cycleway. From Riccall, near Selby, into York, this is a traffic free trail and along the way there's a scale model of the solar system, so you can planet-spot along the way :-) We cycled as a group of three families, so 18 of us set off from Riccall. We re-grouped in Rowntree Park in York where we ate lunch and played. Then we cycled back. Along the way we sang, helped an elderly cycling couple with a broken tyre, smiled/nodded at numerous other cyclists, crawled all over the planets of the solar system and bounced over York Race Track! L was on his bigger bike now and learnt how to use gears, and he cycled 16 miles on his own! In all we completed 19 miles that day. Some of our cyclists were 6 years old and they did the full distance. If this doesn't inspire you to get on your bike and ride, I'm not sure what will :-)
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| 17 of the 18 intrepid cyclists! |
After this, we're all feeling fairly inspired to add a few other longer distance routes to our itinerary. I'm going to compile a list and I'll blog about them as we complete them.
The day after we cycled the solar system, Ang and I decided to go back there and run 10 miles along this route. Good practise for our up and coming (gulp) half marathon next month. Both our 10 year old daughters came with us and cycled the10 miles. This brought both families up to having cycled 100 miles this summer :-)
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| Is designed a chart to track our progress over the summer |
