Before I was older
I’ve had a bike ever since my fifth birthday. I remember going to a two storey bike shop on a busy back road in Stockport with my parents. My brothers and sister were there too, though Edom would have been a toddler at our mother’s side. Russell and I ran about making judgements on the various vehicles. In the end there was no competition for the white bike with the red tyres. That break with convention was too attractive to resist. I was allowed it.
When we got home I had to take it for a spin and I did down Leigh drive, a long downhill residential street with a dead-end. My mother wanted me to make a judgement, for it wasn’t actually yet my birthday, that came a week later; so I had to choose whether I wanted the bike now, but nothing on my birthday, or to wait. With patience and maturity I have since lost, I chose the latter. My mother was pleased.
With my bike, I explored. I went far and without hesitation. Woodley, the town we lived in, was stopped at one end by the canal. That was where we lived. The school was central and beyond it I was a stranger to the residential faces. On the other side of the canal was a council estate and I explored its streets too. Soon, I knew the whole place street by street as well as by short cuts.
That was my first bike. There were subsequently others which were better suited to main roads and to canalside tracks. Aged about nine we got cycling proficiency instruction from school and afterwards I felt qualified and confident to use the roads. I cycled for several miles along a main road to Stockport. I only turned back when the roundabouts were too choked with lorries for someone my size and age to negotiate properly. I don’t know where the canal led but I followed it until the path ran out at some factory preceded by a bridge. Over the bridge I lay in the sun and watched barges come and go. One time I abandoned the canal path and followed a footpath instead. Along from it there was a tree that must have been a hundred years old. It took slight climbing to get off the ground in the first place, but thereafter one could roam around its branches for hours. I stayed for a long time, utterly seduced by the solitude it granted. I sang aloud very loudly because I could. Thereafter, when I needed to be alone (and I was that sort of child), it was that tree I would go to.
I never consulted a map. I had a homing instinct so that even when I did get lost I could circle until something recognisable came along. Say ‘Stockport’ or 'Greater Manchester' and one thinks of the urban space, but around Woodley, Bredbury and Hyde the green space was broad and I found rivers, and little hamlets with cobbled, mossy streets which had trees overhanging so densely that the whole place was in shade. There were one storey white harled houses that looked like, and possibly were, old smithies and the like. One place was remarkable. A cobbled road emerged from a footpath that had led me through some woods. High and damp stone walls were on either side and the road led to a river. There was a low but broad and quick waterfall. The woods continued and were thick and dark and there were signs of old steps. Following them, there was a network of overgrown paths; further into the woods more steps. Unmistakably, there was some form of cellars or dungeons. Fascinated from above but unwilling to delve within, I never found out what the compound actually was.
I didn’t always cycle alone. With friends I would find old factories and play hide-and-seek; we would rumble down Werneth Low; we would bang about mountain-bike ranges like the best of them. But I enjoyed exploring alone and I was good at it. Parents, one gathers, do not like their children to stray so far from home these days. I was eleven when we left for Scotland, and joined a rural community. There, there was greater potential for exploration and greater freedom. But I didn’t do it. It was too vast and I felt it belonged to someone else. I allowed friends to show me places, I learned about the region that way. It was a different form of introduction.
When we got home I had to take it for a spin and I did down Leigh drive, a long downhill residential street with a dead-end. My mother wanted me to make a judgement, for it wasn’t actually yet my birthday, that came a week later; so I had to choose whether I wanted the bike now, but nothing on my birthday, or to wait. With patience and maturity I have since lost, I chose the latter. My mother was pleased.
With my bike, I explored. I went far and without hesitation. Woodley, the town we lived in, was stopped at one end by the canal. That was where we lived. The school was central and beyond it I was a stranger to the residential faces. On the other side of the canal was a council estate and I explored its streets too. Soon, I knew the whole place street by street as well as by short cuts.
That was my first bike. There were subsequently others which were better suited to main roads and to canalside tracks. Aged about nine we got cycling proficiency instruction from school and afterwards I felt qualified and confident to use the roads. I cycled for several miles along a main road to Stockport. I only turned back when the roundabouts were too choked with lorries for someone my size and age to negotiate properly. I don’t know where the canal led but I followed it until the path ran out at some factory preceded by a bridge. Over the bridge I lay in the sun and watched barges come and go. One time I abandoned the canal path and followed a footpath instead. Along from it there was a tree that must have been a hundred years old. It took slight climbing to get off the ground in the first place, but thereafter one could roam around its branches for hours. I stayed for a long time, utterly seduced by the solitude it granted. I sang aloud very loudly because I could. Thereafter, when I needed to be alone (and I was that sort of child), it was that tree I would go to.
I never consulted a map. I had a homing instinct so that even when I did get lost I could circle until something recognisable came along. Say ‘Stockport’ or 'Greater Manchester' and one thinks of the urban space, but around Woodley, Bredbury and Hyde the green space was broad and I found rivers, and little hamlets with cobbled, mossy streets which had trees overhanging so densely that the whole place was in shade. There were one storey white harled houses that looked like, and possibly were, old smithies and the like. One place was remarkable. A cobbled road emerged from a footpath that had led me through some woods. High and damp stone walls were on either side and the road led to a river. There was a low but broad and quick waterfall. The woods continued and were thick and dark and there were signs of old steps. Following them, there was a network of overgrown paths; further into the woods more steps. Unmistakably, there was some form of cellars or dungeons. Fascinated from above but unwilling to delve within, I never found out what the compound actually was.
I didn’t always cycle alone. With friends I would find old factories and play hide-and-seek; we would rumble down Werneth Low; we would bang about mountain-bike ranges like the best of them. But I enjoyed exploring alone and I was good at it. Parents, one gathers, do not like their children to stray so far from home these days. I was eleven when we left for Scotland, and joined a rural community. There, there was greater potential for exploration and greater freedom. But I didn’t do it. It was too vast and I felt it belonged to someone else. I allowed friends to show me places, I learned about the region that way. It was a different form of introduction.