The day that Rhoda went viral

Well, that was a bit of a surprise. We got back from our training trip to Northumberland and popped up a video clip, and 24 hours later over half a million people have watched the clip on twitter. Rhoda has been retweeted by Chris Boardman, Susan Calman, Jeremy Vine, police forces up and down the country and seemingly the majority of the cycling community in the UK. The BBC, ITV and Road.CC all got in touch to ask if they could run a feature of the video. 

So often we see or share videos of awful driving around cyclists, so this textbook pass from an exceptionally patient & careful HGV driver for D&W Agri coming into Jedburgh deserves sharing, as does Rhoda's response! They're not on Twitter but we've thanked the haulier directly. pic.twitter.com/t46zQvfFoU

— Family ByCycle (@FamilyByCycle) June 3, 2018

The internet appears to have been ready for a cycling good news story, and we are more than happy to oblige - you see, cycling IS a good news story. Cycling with our children allows us to share with them something that we and they love. 

 Cycling with our children teaches them good habits and makes exercise and the outdoors normal and enjoyable. Children are designed to move. They need to move to develop properly. 

Cycling shows us the world in a different way to other modes of travel and has taken us to places we wouldn’t otherwise go. 

 We need to be seeing children in all our public spaces, including our roads, and not just travelling in private cars. The roads are public space, for everyone to use. If they are going to cycle on roads themselves in the future, they need to be taken on the roads and to learn how to cycle with consideration and how to keep themselves safe. 

At the end of a long, wet ride, we encountered a lorry driver whose consideration and care in passing our family impressed us. The clip on the internet doesn’t do justice to the patience shown - the lorry was sat behind not only Rhoda and Daddy but also Mummy and Ruth, and sheltered us as we laboured up a climb, crossed a bridge and negotiated the busy stretch back into town. The lorry followed at a decent distance from our back wheels to make it clear to us that he was willing to wait and give us the space to negotiate that stretch of road safely. 

 In a world where everyone is in a hurry and those passing us are often closer than they need to be, all four of us were grateful. It stood out. 

We are raising our children to be thankful for kindness shown to them, and to show appreciation, so both Ruth and Rhoda gave a cheery wave and a thank you to the driver, so that he/she would know that we had noticed the care taken and that it meant something. 

We didn’t see the video of Rhoda until we got home and downloaded our memory cards, and we had to say thank you to the driver. We had no concept of how far it would go. We hope it triggers more good passing and more thumbs up and thank yous on the road - what’s not to like about that?! 

What did Rhoda make of “going viral” - well, not a lot, to be honest! It’s all a bit abstract when you’re 4! She was VERY excited that Susan Calman had retweeted her. She’s a big fan of Susan’s, particularly her Strictly Come Dancing appearances. And she was VERY excited to speak to the lovely chap from D&W Agri who called us last night, equally astonished at the scale of response to the video, and rightly proud of his driver, whom we look forward to meeting again, to thank him properly and reflect on a truly remarkable couple of days!

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Too much, too soon, or too little, too late? Thoughts on childhood and opportunity.

We've had some really lovely responses to the video we posted yesterday.

@FamilyByCycle This is wonderful, the editing, the narration, everything!

— Anna McNuff (@AnnaMcNuff) August 15, 2016

It's prompted me to write a little about a couple of fundamental principles we apply - that just because most children of a certain age don't do a particular thing, it doesn't mean ours shouldn't; and that to presume we have nothing to learn from our children limits our own horizons.

So often, children of our kids' generation get precious little chance to be children. They are burdened with pressure and responsibility they don't need, given choices to make that would best be made for them, and exposed to things they just don't need to know about. We live in a society that does all that, and then has the temerity to wrap them in the most appalling kind of cotton wool. We're in an era where a parent can believe their irrational fear of the bogeyman can kibosh every other child and their families having photographs on a school sports day - if there are any actual sports at all and if indeed anyone is allowed to win. Children are prevented or at the very least dissuaded from going outside to play, and then left in front of computer screens and televisions bringing them far more risk and brain-rot than they'd have found in the street.

This week sees the launch of the latest film adaptation of the classic 'Swallows and Amazons' and the director, bless them, has decided both that the original storyline isn't exciting enough for today's kids, and that a child nicknamed 'Titty' is now a problem. On the contrary, by my reckoning the biggest anathema for the children watching the film, and the most exciting prospect, will most likely be the idea of playing in the great outdoors, never mind doing it without 'elf an' safety or other politically correct spoilsportism (if that's not a word, I've just made it one!).*

It would be all too easy for me just to whinge about that, but we've learned that opportunities to do something about it are still abundant, if parents take it upon themselves to lead from the front whilst the state still lets us (even if it has long since decided no longer to actually advocate this pernicious, maverick approach, or make it easy for working families to do it).

The greatest disservice children today suffer from is paucity of expectation, of smiling dream-assassins determining what they may or may not try to do, with a predetermined agenda of troubling themselves as little as possible - and so as a family we delight in setting the bar high, making opportunities and cheering the children on to go for it, because they usually can (in their own way) and because it's exciting! Engaged children are, frankly, much easier to parent, so we're doing ourselves a favour, too. It isn't always easy - one day I will write the blog post about 'taking a child cycling vs going for a ride on your own' - but it's seldom without reward.

Few people expect a little girl of three to be riding a trailerbike helping to tow her little sister all afternoon, less still to be learning to read the map as she goes. The faces as we pass people say it all. Nobody expects said little girl to help to film, and then record the voiceover for, a film documenting the trip, but as cute as we may think it is (whether anyone else does is another matter - it's our job!) pivotally, Ruth is so, so proud of herself. That little film will now be the springboard to something else. Having tried the trombone, she's asking to learn the violin. Who knows, maybe she's planning to busk round Spain like Laurie Lee, and latterly Alastair Humphreys.

Maybe for your family and your children it's not even bicycle touring but some other activity or interest you love, that you want to adapt to make it family friendly. Give it a go! I'm sure you can find a way.

One of the biggest motivators for Family ByCycle, is not to say 'look at our kids aren't they incredible' (that's the kind of sickening self-promotional bilge we all whizz merrily past on our Facebook timelines, let's be honest), and in any case we don't hold all the answers, but hoping to encourage other parents 'you can do this, too!' - we dare to dream that we can help build a critical mass of families with children whose horizons are as broad as they can be, who dare to dream, who participate in and explore the world, yes, as children, not as frustrated, stressed little adults, neither constrained to their peer group and the expectations of others. After all, who as an adult surrounds themselves only with people born within a year , and a few miles, of them?

Thomas Ivor's talk about cycle touring as a child received a wonderful reception at the Cycle Touring Festival in Clitheroe earlier in the year, and he's delighted to have accepted an invitation to speak at this Autumn's 'Yestival'. We're especially looking forward as a family to participating in the 'Dreamcamp' part of the event, in the hope not only of inspiring kids to think big, look far and aim high, but for the adults to receive from them a healthy dose of childlike wonder and enthusiasm. I'd rather be blindly accused of 'too much, too soon', than any of our family grow old to realise we did 'too little, too late'.

Why not join us there and give it a go?

Read more on this topic in another post from a little while ago...

* Yes, I know about Pokemon. It will pass. Again. I predict that the gaggle of people staring at their smartphones outside the council offices late at night will not survive a single winter!

Inspiration for the infants

We had a super night out in London last week, to hear the mighty Anna McNuff speak at Dave Cornthwaite's 'YesStories' event. Taking the little two into town on the train is a #Microadventure in its own right!

Ruth and Rhoda are by far the youngest ever attendees to this event - and it's always something of a lottery when you take children to something they might not necessarily be expected at! Luckily, they received a wonderful welcome and acquitted themselves pretty well, despite an inopportune event with the reappearance of a half-chewed dried apricot during the main event. We really enjoyed Anna's new talk, 'Let me tell you about a time when...', and she coped wonderfully with both the live regurgitation and periodic heckling from her young fans. We are very grateful to her for her kindness and interest, and for blazing a trail for little girls like ours to follow.

In Mr Cornthwaite's 'Just say yes' spirit, and with the car's bike carrier finally fixed, I didn't have much choice, then, but to take the girls for a bike ride (Thomas Ivor is away this week) the following day, so we went to finish off the Brampton Valley Way, which I will write a separate review about shortly. We've been gradually crossing off different parts of it for a little while now.

Over two days, Ruth has done 20 miles on the trailerbike, Rhoda a lap of a car park, and the 'Bike+Trailerbike+Trailer' combination has been well and truly tested pending Katie's annual leave. By taking the double Croozer we can use it as a 'broom van' to sweep Ruth up if her little legs decide enough is enough; we can't speak highly enough of the Islabikes trailerbike (very sadly no longer made and still commanding decent money second hand). It confers a significant weight saving over the Trek Mountain Train we used in the Hebrides in 2014 and much improved stability thanks to the rack mount system, and whilst a little on the long side (a couple of feet longer overall than the double WeeHoo, we reckon) it is a remarkably nimble and manoeuvrable outfit.

As ever, assuming we get that far this summer, we're developing another touring setup, with Thomas Ivor on his Islabikes Luath 24, now morphing into a 'bikepacking' setup thanks to our friends at Alpkit, who have made him a beautiful bespoke frame bag. Our replacement bikes seem to be doing the business, although I am reserving judgement on the strength of the wheels.

All things being equal, Ruth is off to cycling club tonight for a first ride in her own right, so for now, here's a video of our outing in the Brampton Valley, which we will talk about a little more, soon...

Fame at last

Family ByCycle's very own Ruth has made an appearance on the GCN show!

Scroll forward to 16:20 to see her in action. Well done, Ruth!

Desert Storm rolls out

A rather sad day for the Family ByCycle today as Thomas Ivor left us for the impending school term. He'll be back in three weeks for a visit.

The good news is that 'Desert Storm' - the second-hand Islabikes 'Beinn 20' we picked up for him the other day, has gone with him, so he now has the means to keep riding whilst he's in Devon. We've kitted the bike out to a rather different spec, dispensing with racks and guards for now, fitting the OE knobbly tyres at lower pressures, a toolkit and basic computer from Aldi - oh, and the obligatory colour co-ordinated Islabikes bottle!

After the washout of a bank holiday, which put paid to us having the couple of days touring that we'd hoped for, we were able to head out to the park this morning to start filming our review of the 'Beinn', which can now include some comparison between pre- and post-2012 models, and show the bike in different incarnations - colours, accessories and the like.

It will fall to me to do most of the filming now, and then hopefully we can get a script written between us so Thomas Ivor can do some 'voice over' work next time we see him. We hope that we will be able to persuade more parents (and children!) of the value of a properly-sized, lightweight bike, in helping youngsters to get riding more proficiently at a younger age, with fewer of the distractions and hindrances all too commonly experienced.

The little guy had his first try at using a lavalier microphone today, which complicated the costume changes a little, and we had an incident with a flat battery, but we're gradually getting there with our new video production setup. GCN, eat your heart out!

On location with a pair of 'Beinns'

Hopefully the coming winter will give us all the opportunity to cook up some exciting plans for another adventure next year. Thomas Ivor has been watching 'The man who cycled the Americas'  this week (again!) and has an idea about doing his own version of Mark Beaumont's epic trip...

As Thomas Ivor has departed, the girls have been out of sorts today, but with more good weather I'm hoping to have them both out on the balance bike again before long. Meantime, it's galettes for tea tonight. Fourth night running!

Family ByCycle, on location...

Another morning, another departure. Another farewell to new friends, en route to stay with more strangers. We had a great time with Yves and Christine. In particular, it was so affirming to meet people who had done what we are doing, and more, long enough ago to be able to judge that it worked! They're off soon to return to the road without their now grown-up children, at which I will be pleased to hear some more feedback, because I would still like to take Katie for an epic trans-continental bike trip once our children are packed off to university, before they beat us to it! Ruth took a turn this morning at writing in our hosts' visitors book.

No sooner had we dropped back into town than we bumped into another touring family with their children and trailer, in the supermarket car park! Jean-Yves and Caroline, Romane (3) and Gabin (2) were also headed for the north coast and we had an interesting chat with them before getting underway for real.

Thanks to our changes of plan, today has been our first actual low-mileage day, as we prepare to turn north tomorrow and head towards St Malo and home. Finally, we've had some time to do some filming and photography.

That awkward moment when a car crosses the road in front of you whilst the self-timer's running...

Filming yourself on trips like this is rather harder and very much more time consuming than it looks, and there are lots of folk out there having a go at it, with varying degrees of success. It adds a lot of weight, it increases the 'battery burden' significantly, and most of all, you have to find a happy balance between riding and filming. Too much stopping and filming can become tiresome for the group; too much riding and you never have time to film any of what you're passing through. Throw in a triple dose of 'never work with children and animals' and you're asking for trouble!

Today turned into something of a 'filming day', which has been fun, although the quiet paths of the canal aren't all that representative of the greenways we have been on for much of the trip so far. It's also difficult to get the camera very far from us within the confines of the towpath.

Canal towpath isn't really our favourite kind of route for covering ground, although it does increase the likelihood of finding picnic and play areas en route. Like some railway paths, they can serve to insulate you from the places and people around you. Being flat they also demand a steady slog, particularly noticeable when touring, and depending on how the path is engineered you may have lots of width restrictions, gates and road crossings to contend with. Most of all, if I can say this, we don't like trying to put the miles in when we are tripping over the kind of 'Sunday afternoon' dog walkers and cyclists who are only going to cover a mile or two all day and who aren't attuned to sharing space. None of that is conducive to riding freely. Mercifully, although the section we used yesterday ticked many of these unfortunate boxes, moving further inland (as generally with Brittany, we are finding) caused things to quieten down considerably. We didn't see many people at all today, of any kind!

For every 'Family ByCycle riding past the camera' shot, I have established a well-worn m.o. which, in practise, runs something like this:

1. Decide that there's a shot to be had, and stop; shout to Thomas Ivor to pull up.
2. Park the bike up and un-bungee the tripod; shout louder at Thomas Ivor's rapidly disappearing form.
3. Get back on the bike, hunt Thomas Ivor down and bring him back to where I've left the tripod at the side of the path.
4. Extend the tripod legs and plant it. Try to control breathing.
5. Camera out of bar bag; start explaining the shot to Katie so she can turn the trailer round and return to the point we need to film from.
6. Mount the camera, send Thomas Ivor to follow Katie and use his retreating ride to check the shot out.
7. Set the camera rolling; retrieve bike and set off to join the others, mindful of the precious memory card and battery capacity that is already being used up.
8. Turn back half way to make sure it really is on. Discover that it is. (Note - miss out this step and it isn't).
9. Finally rejoin the rest of the team, as the sun ducks behind a cloud.
10. Nominate who will ride past the camera in what order; remind Thomas Ivor to keep to our pace.
11. Wait for the sun to come out again.
12. Sun comes out; dog walker enters the shot. Slowly...
13. Dog walker leaves shot as the sun goes in again.
14. Set off anyway, in the determined order. Thomas Ivor promptly drops one of us / fails to keep up / has a huge and inexplicable wobble / fails to set off at all because he's seen a wasp several yards away (delete as applicable).
15. Turn everyone round to try again. Seconds later, tripod blows over and sun comes out on empty road. Start muttering to self.
16. Retrieve camera. Stop film and delete the evidence. Repeat Step 8 on way back to the group. Sun goes in.
17. Contemplate asking for the emergency diazepam stash whilst waiting for the sun to come back out.
18. Sun comes out; wait for stream of traffic coming the other way.
19. Decide 'stuff it' on the solar front and set off anyway. Sun miraculously comes out and all is going well until a van drives past the camera right in the middle of the shot.
20. Frantically dash back and do it again whilst everything's looking good. Katie's lip now bleeding from trying not to say 'Calm Down Dear', in the style of Michael Winner.
21. Take number goodness-knows-what. Get in! Upon reviewing the footage, it turns out that an enterprising Thomas Ivor has pulled a face as he passed the camera. Decide at the last minute not to pitch his bike into the hedge. I'll only have to retrieve it myself.
22. Go back and do it all again. Return to the camera to find that it ran out of battery/memory card/both, moments after you entered the shot
23. Ruth announces she's done a poo. Bite own lip. Give up and decide to make do with whatever footage we have.
24. Dismantle the camera and tripod.
25. Look for the bungee that holds the tripod onto the rear rack, which pinged off into the grass earlier.
26. Hurriedly lash the tripod back onto the rack and set off after the family. Breathing exercises.
27. Wonder "Good heavens, what was that" (or similar) as one end of the bungee comes free, catches on a spoke and pulls itself apart, firing the hooked end through the drivetrain and nearly pitching you off.
28. Improvise a new method of attachment for the tripod using the top straps on the panniers and the remains of the bungee, vowing never to waste time and effort trying to film like this ever again. In through the nose, out through the mouth.
29. Flog back up to the rest of the family, who by this time are wondering what on earth has happened to you and have stopped. Forego the break they've just had, and take the front once more.
30. Move on, look for another spot, and repeat.

Now, I admit that this may sound like an exaggerated version of events but every stage has genuinely happened, on occasion on the same afternoon and several of them in the same take. It is a wonder we get the footage we do, sometimes, but with some ingenuity attaching the GoPro and with our new video-capable DSLR body (shamefully, bought immediately before this trip without chance to practice with it - not recommended) it is most certainly possible to put together a few minutes of film from a family trip, and I think it's nice to have evidence that we all went on the ride together, even if our relative pace on the road may mean that it grossly misrepresents the extent to which we actually ride in formation!

Ten minutes' work for three seconds of film!

It will be some weeks, even months hence before I will have sorted out, edited and cut the video from this trip, but I always find that the editing process is a nice way of itself to relive the places we visited and experiences we shared.

It's a shame we haven't had more short days like this, and I do think it's important that families record their memories, even more so than other cyclists - not least because the children won't remember half of it! We would undoubtedly have put a couple more days like today into the schedule if it weren't for the need to fit in with both ferry timetables and Thomas Ivor and Katie's holiday dates, but either way, hopefully we will have something encouraging to show you when we get home.

Our impression that the canal was somewhat energy-sapping was confirmed when we rejoined the road for the first time in many miles, which felt much better on the legs even though we had some climbing to do. A tricky little run in on freshly topped road to meet our host, Gilles, and his little girl Adélie who's three, at a much earlier arrival time than we've become accustomed to. We have been made wonderfully welcome, the bikes are parked in the garage, the girls have made another new friend and we're looking forward to sharing a meal later with another likeminded family. Something to enjoy, and something worth remembering.