Is @chdot going to reveal the site of the first pedal stroke? Won't be a dry eye in the house I don't think.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Events, rides etc.
The first place I ever cycled
(79 posts)-
Posted 7 years ago #
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Two yellow cards in coming up for eight years, c'mon big man yer no gonna send me aff fur that ur ye?
Posted 7 years ago # -
First successful stabiliser free run was on the pavement around to Merchiston Park
It's probably one of my earliest actual memories that couldn't have been recreated/falsified from pictures
Skills honed thereafter by years of the canal when it was pure and unsullied by commuter types ;)
Posted 7 years ago # -
It's probably one of my earliest actual memories that couldn't have been recreated/falsified from pictures
That's one of the things I was wondering about. It's such a powerful experience that it stamps itself into the structure of your brain.
Gonnae Streetview yer location?
Posted 7 years ago # -
Sorry gembo and iwrats neither sighting was me. I was out today but solo to East Linton and bimbling.
Posted 7 years ago # -
I learned up and down the Linthills Road on a huge (to me) raleigh of unknown age. Not too far from where Gembo first turned a wheel Click here
Posted 7 years ago # -
@diarmid, good to see the lint hills road on sunny Google. Apparently the cemetery is so bad these days my wee ma does not want buried there anymore.
It would not surely be wrong to say you also lived on or near a farm?
Posted 7 years ago # -
Indeed yes a sheep farm in this house here
Posted 7 years ago # -
I don't remember where I first cycled!
The farm on which I grew up had some ancient tricycles and a (16"?) bike with stabilisers - I never managed to have them removed.
Then I asked my parents for a bike, and we went to another farm to buy a job lot from them.
I hopped on to the one sized for me, and rode off, to my parents amazement, "when did he learn to cycle?"
I've no idea when I learned, or indeed where the donor farm was, but I enjoyed and abused that BMX (with coaster brake) for many years!
I'll add a link, with the assertion that it was all fields in my day!
Robert
Posted 7 years ago # -
Draw the following Venn diagram
CCE posters, people who grew up on farms, people who cycle regularly?
Posted 7 years ago # -
On this stretch of road in the cul-de-sac that I lived on in Hartlepool.
Learnt on the road with my dad pushing me. Remember it well. We then used to cycle down to nearby parks.
I remember once heading to the park ahead of the family and inexplicably falling in the pond while waiting for them to arrive. I went in with the bike. No idea how that happened.
According to my parents I had a penchant for falling into bodies of water at every opportunity. Perhaps why I turned to sailing for most of my youth in a desperate attempt to stay out of it.
Posted 7 years ago # -
@gembo - The percentage from a farming background is way more than the general population. Dunno if that's significant. I had to learn to cycle to get to the school bus, so it was a necessity. All the children on our road cycled. However when we moved to the town I cycled to school, as did about half the class. The streets were quieter then and you didn't expect your parents to be chauffeurs.
Posted 7 years ago # -
That's right - there was no transport to take me over too see mates in the village or the neighbouring villages so a bike was essential. Sometimes took the tractor in winter though
Posted 7 years ago # -
@ Diarmid - yeah - our nearest neighbours were half a mile away. We kids would cycle to each other's places to play.
Our winters were never that cold, though they were fairly wet.
Posted 7 years ago # -
So the answer to shifting modal share is to send all the children to collective farms? Tough sell, but worth a try.
Posted 7 years ago # -
@IWRATS - Should have added that these cycling children got their driving licences as soon as they could.
Posted 7 years ago # -
We weren't allowed to walk or cycle to school - the state school (non-denominational) was placed in a nationalist area in a town with several maintained (Roman Catholic) schools.
As a result each year began with safety advice on what to do if the school buses came under attack whilst running the gauntlet (keep your head down and don't make provocative signs out the window)...
Needless-to-say travel not involving steel armour was ill-advised, but not for the usual reasons of road safety!
Robert
Posted 7 years ago # -
So far not a single member of CCE learned to cycle in the City of Edinburgh. Coincidence? You decide!
As apparently the only native Edinburgher on the
forumthread I feel it is duty to ground this thread in real local geography, none of this foreign fancy geography or ruralness…I learned to ride at my house in Chesser using a too big for me mates bike that I could never get going, managed to ride my own appropriately sized one with little effort one Christmas. Then spent much of my youth cycling up the fierce Robs loan in my highest (only) gear (broken rear mech) giving my lazy brother a backy to my grans in Hutchison.
Posted 7 years ago # -
@steveo
Brilliant mate, but Streetview mibbe?
Posted 7 years ago # -
@IWRATS - Some of us know the fierce Robbs Loan from bitter experience.
Posted 7 years ago # -
It may be if lived on a farm as a child used to being outside as have to walk to the school bus also play lot outside.
Posted 7 years ago # -
@iwrats: behold!
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@55.9321371,-3.2471437,3a,75y,154.77h,69.1t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sDVTc_L9yqTSsAy8-DZlJhQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656As a child swooping down into Chesser Cresent at max speed was the greatest fun, don't think I ever encountered a car coming the other way. Thankfully, it would have probably ended badly! Though I did get shouted at by my dad as we intersected once for going a triffle too fast.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Turns out I have been to Robb's loan to pick up a suspension fork for Madame IWRATS' bike.
But from the other end.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Robb's Loan is on my Spokes delivery round.
I always get lost round there.Posted 7 years ago # -
Woodburn Park, St Andrews (specifically the low path).
There was a super slide in those days that ran down the slope of the hill. Long and fast.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Prior to that road block Rob's Loan was a terrible rat run, my mum would always walk us to school as it was the most dangerous part of a morning that included crossing Gorgie Road and Balgreen Road. After it was put in and probably coinciding with my being a little older I walked on my own*.
Based on that one piece of infrastructure I'm of the opinion that all estates should be closed off in the middle so that kids can play in the street and the only traffic is local, residential and probably less mental, might actually encourage future cyclists and much cheaper than sending every child off to a farm!
*note my memory time scales may be a little hazy
Posted 7 years ago # -
@LivD
Posted 7 years ago # -
@steveo - Kids mucking around on their bikes on quiet residential streets should be a part of an ordinary childhood.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Indeed Rosie, Ironically its probably the one thing modern newbuild car centric Barret box estates have over 30's - 60's council estates. The level of permeability of places like Broomhall and Carrick Knowe have led to them being nasty fast roads between two major arteries probably not helped by real time mapping routing people through them rather than waiting in traffic.
Posted 7 years ago # -
As there weren't any balance bikes where I lived up until I was 2¾ my release-the-grip-on-the-saddle moment was on Bloxham Road, outside where I lived from 2¾-6½. Just round the corner here by the park was my first and only accidental over-handlebars event caused by incautious front brake use - later over-the-handlebar episodes were caused by bricks on the ramps or wheels detaching after getting stuck in boggy ruts on woodland paths. Later cycling memories from that area include tootling along here humming the theme from CHiPs.
Posted 7 years ago #
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