The School Run

Cycling to school/Cycling at school

When I was of school age I cycled about 4 miles to school; on a second-hand bike with rod-brakes, and no gears and I went on my own.  There was a war on at the time, and quite a lot of enemy activity overhead. 

     There were no street lights when it got dark.  No waterproof clothing apart from a cape, no helmets, no high viz jackets.   As far as I can remember we did not receive any training.

     There were very few cars about, but there were a lot of military vehicles.

    We were not collected or met after school, there were few male parents anyway (they were doing military service of one sort or another.

     I don’t need to show pictures of typical scenes outside the standard school at the end of the school day.   You will be familiar with the picture; hundreds of cars blocking the local streets with parents waiting to pick up their children.

 

     The situation in Holland and Germany can be startingly different to that of UK as this picture illustrates:-

When I was surveying NCN routes in the South East, I came across cycle training exercises in progress, in several places, Folkestone, Pluckley, Kennington, and one other place which I have forgotten for the moment.

     I was not impressed with the teachers methods, who, and in each case, especially in Pluckley, the poor pupils (once they had earned their cycling proficiency certificate), they had nowhere in the village, or near their school, where they could cycle safely.   Sending them out into such un-cycle-friendly  environments is like throwing  lambs into the ring to be slaughtered.  

     By chance I came across a number of school children with bicycles, who were wearing, yellow, full length High-Visiblity jackets, but they where wheeling their bicycles along the pavement, not riding them!

     When I asked why, I was told by one of the adult supervisors, that the pupils were only allowed to ride on cycleways, and that was the reason why they were walking back to their school from some cycleways which were at least 500m away.

        Three days previously, I had been in Germany where I had filmed school children of the same age, leaving school; most of them were cycling, many wore helmets, few were accompanied by an adult, and these children were very confident doing so.

      As I have already stated: when I was of that age, I cycled 4 miles to school, unaccompanied, and there was a war on.