Cycle your commute
April 2009
The transport challenge - we challenge you to get on your bike. We're collecting stories and photos about your best biking experiences. Send them to info@otesha.org.uk.
We love our bikes. We don't understand how you couldn't love bikes, so this month we challenge you to get on a bike.
Wherever you spend your days, we challenge you to cycle there one day this week. If you’re already a committed cycling commuter, we challenge you to get an unsuspecting friend on a bike. Or take your bike on a journey you've never done before. Then, tell us about your adventures on your bike.
We want to know who cycles the longest, the fastest and the most exciting route. Have you ever hitched a lift on a barge? Made a friend on a bike? Given up your car? Or have you just had enough of the rush hour crush and found your way on two wheels instead?
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Edmund's stories:
The furthest I've ever cycled within a day is 160 miles from Bristol to Tavistock via Exeter. Before setting off me and my mate turned an entire loaf of bread each into peanut butter and Marmite sandwiches. By nibbling these continually we managed to stay on our bicycles all day long! The funnest part was crossing Dartmoor because there were huge traffic jams of angry honking tourists stuck in their cars. The lanes were just wide enough for us to squeeze by unaffected.
The furthest I've ever cycled within three hours is sixty miles, and that was with clothes, a tent, a big bottle of whisky and two trifles.
My most surreal cycling experience involved hitching a lift in a 40 tonne Tesco lorry from Cirencester to Leicester. This lorry was big enough for my bike to fit up on a shelf in the driving compartment behind the heads of me and the driver. The driver said that he really wasn't meant to give unauthorised lifts but that he'd make an exception if I sang him a song. To repay his kindness I sang 'the Ballad of Tescos' the entire journey. It is a parody of 'the Ballad of Tom Jones' by 90's pop group 'Space':
♫ This will be fun, it will be such a lark
It is lucky for us they have a big carpark
We're going to the supermarket, Tescos! Tescos!
I just can't wait as it will be so good, Tescos! Tescos! ♫