SEEING CORNWALL ON A FOLDING BIKE

26th June 2009

Pure leisure, plenty of pleasure on two 15-mile round trips. Resting the bikes against Philps pasty shop in Hayle (reputedly one of the best), passing children shout “Look at those bikes!”

The bikes are decent – Dahon and Dawes – so climbing long hills the back way from Hayle to St Ives is no problem. Negotiating the descent to the harbour is equally steady. The receptionist at the Tate Gallery won’t let us bring them in until we point out that they’re folders – she points us to the self-service cloakroom and we stow them next to a couple of wheelchairs.

Before that we’d sat in a harbour-side restaurant, our bikes leaning up on the pavement next to our table while we slurped mussels and mackerel.

Another day, another short trip, this time following off-road track and lanes on national cycle network route 3 from Hayle through St Erth to Marazion (my first view ever of St Michael’s Mount) and over to fog-shrouded Penzance.

This was the day of the pasty, and later a cream tea, with cream so deliciously clotted it was well on its way to becoming butter. The bikes sat in the café garden with us and – confessions now – got folded up later on as we sleepily bummed a lift off a friend. Whether it was the cream, the jam, the carbs or the sun, something set us off yawning and succumbing to the pleasure-combined-with-leisure aspect of our trip.

So unlike our other cycling experiences. No helmets, constant sunshine, seaside shorts and trainers, rolling gently between hedgerows, walking the bike up steep cobbled streets. The only problem was taking a topple over the handlebars in soft sand on a road behind the dunes. But we have to have some stories to tell.