Alright, so technically I’ve already reviewed Barclay’s Cycle Hire - but I just thought I’d give you slightly more sane update on how I’m getting on. To be honest, considering how infrequent my blog updates lately I thought I should probably just say something to let you know that i’m not smeared under a lorry somewhere: A gooey blend of man meets brioche.
Alright, so as my early impressions hinted, when the service first launched it didn’t really work. Citing ‘unexpectedly high demand’ the system went into total lock-down, substantially irritating middle-class tossers all over London.
They fixed it soon enough though, to be honest. I like to imagine Boris handled it personally, ploughing through a mess of wires like the demented plumbers from Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.
So I’ve been zooming around quite a bit on a bike lately, and as it turns out, cycling is top-shelf-banana fun. If you’re considering the service yourself, here are my top three reasons why it’s well worth a pop:
1. Space on the road
Churning out thousands of casual sharey-bikes onto the roads of London has sent a message out to drivers: Watch out. With so many blustering amateurs wheeling around the roads, it’s only so long before someone gets killed. It’s likely to only be a temporary effect, but anyone looking vaguely wobbly AND on a Barclays Bike is pretty likely to be given a fairly wide berth on the road. I’ve found it really helpful when getting to grips with how all this ‘road stuff’ works. Do red lights actually apply to me? They’re pretty much optional, right?
2. Abandonability
The main problem with owning a bike is that it’s quite a commitment - not only in terms of cash, but also on a day to day basis - where you can’t simply abandon it in the middle of the night like would with a rental bike, or your wife and children. This gets particularly tiresome when you’re planning on drinking heavily. Very much like taking an alcoholic friend to a house party, whilst it seems like a great idea at the start of the night, at some point later in the evening you’re going to have to get them home again, and somebody’s likely to get hurt.
Boozy midnight bike-swerving aside, there’s a lot to be said for the ability to just give up and get a bus home, particularly when living in the UK - an island that features just enough aggressively changeable weather to keep me fairly convinced that I am in fact somehow trapped in a BBC nature documentary time-lapse video.
3. Low Investment
It’s all very well having a lovely wheel around in the summer sun, or even a brisk morning power-jaunt in the fading autumn. But winter? Winter can fuck off.
£45 quid for a year is a bit of a bargain, providing you don’t go over the 30 minute time-limit too often, and rack up an extra charges. Considering the painfully expensive charges TFL put on all their fuel-based travel things, it’s not hard to get your moneys worth out of this by just using it for a couple of months a year. The rest of the year? Well, that’s up to you really. Personally, I’m giving up in about two weeks and getting the bus until February, because I’m a half-baked excuse-filled doughnut.
But will there be a dusty bicycle blocking up my hallway? Will unloved gears turn red in my wet winter garden? No. Brilliant.
So go on, give it a crack. It’s cheap, drivers will stay the hell away from you for fear of being implicated in your accidental death, and if at any stage you decide you really can’t be bothered - you can just give up entirely without everyone you live with resenting you massively for filling their house with your fickle junk.
