Pedalling my Boris bike

Bikes lined up in their docks

London Mayor Boris Johnson, champion
of the cycle hire scheme

I have joined the Boris bikers. I tried them once or twice last summer, when I bought day membership on my credit card and it was a somewhat mixed experience. The main problems were a lack of bikes where and when I needed them and then problems with the pay stations not taking my credit card. It was also a faff having to enter my card and get a code every time I wanted to use one.
Availability seems to have improved quite a lot and the tube has been really crowded (and likely to be more so during the Olympics in a few weeks time).
Anyway, I decided to buy annual membership, which costs £45 plus £3 for a key, which is actually an electronic stick which has your details encoded. When you want to use a bike, you push your key in, wait until the light goes green on the docking station and you can then withdraw your key and pull out the bike. You can use the bike for up to half an hour without paying anything more and when you’ve finished you just push the bike into an empty docking station and that’s it.
If you use the bike for longer, I think it costs £1 for the next half hour. It’s designed for short journeys around town and is perfect for that. There’s also a website where you can check which journeys you’ve made and see the times taken.
So I’ve been using the bikes between King’s Cross and Victoria and it takes me around 20 minutes to cycle the three miles, so I don’t pay anything extra. With a tube journey costing me £2 each way, I only have to make 24 journeys and the annual membership has been paid for. I have to say that I rather enjoy the journey and, despite the really wet start to summer, I’ve made good use of the bikes with probably around 10 trips already clocked up (the scheme has just recorded 11 million journeys in the two years it’s been running).
I certainly feel as if I’ve done some exercise by the time I get to Victoria and once I’ve built up some stamina, I’ll start to use the bikes both ways (I’m a bit worried about missing my train in the evening).
The bays at King’s Cross are quite busy, but in the morning there are half a dozen men bringing new bikes out of a nearby garage and pushing them into bays. In the evening, the reverse happens, with a similar number pulling bikes out and taking them into store, so there’s somewhere for you to dock.
I have had a few minor issues. The bells never seem to work and with pedestrians apt to just wander in front of you, I’m always ready to shout “look out”. The other common fault is that the gears are often a bit dodgy. They don’t go in smoothly and often jump out of top gear and down a cog. The bikes are quite low geared, so if it does that, you can suddenly find yourself pedalling furiously.
A week or so ago, I jumped on a bike at King’s Cross and was soon puffing like a train. I couldn’t work out what the problem was, then a chap came past me on another bike and told me my tyre was almost flat. I docked it in Cartwright Gardens and pressed the fault button so no-one else would use it. However, you can’t dock a bike and immediately get another out, so I was stranded on two feet. I walked across Russell Square and got on another bike from the bay by the British Museum. I’ve made a point of checking the tyre pressure before undocking the bike since then.
This Monday, my bike had a badly buckled front wheel which gave it a bit of wobbly handling, but nothing to worry about really. Considering the hammering and abuse the bikes must get, it’s surprising they’re not in a worse condition.
My journey goes through the back streets alongside Euston Road. I start in Belgrove Street, then cut across to Argyle Street, Whidborne Street, Judd Street, Leigh Street and Marchmont Street. It sounds complicated and there are a lot of one-way streets and dead ends, which means that there are not many cars. In the one-way sections, there are bike lanes, so it works quite well. I go through Russell Square and round the side of the British Museum, then across Bloomsbury and down into High Holborn. I then turn left into Shaftesbury Avenue and then sharp left again down St Martin’s Lane past The Coliseum and into Trafalgar Square in front of St Martin’s in the Field. I then go through Admiralty Arch into the Mall and turn left into Horse Guards Road and Birdcage Walk around the perimeter of St James’ Park, into Buckingham Gate and then Bressenden Place to park up alongside Westminster Cathedral (not Abbey) which is the Catholic cathedral.
There’s not too much traffic except in Russell Square and Trafalgar Square and it can get a bit busy in Bressenden Place. It’s really nice being in the open and cycling through Bloomsbury and Covent Garden is a pleasure. On a couple of days, I’ve cycled past a troop of cavalry horses returning along Birdcage Walk from their morning exercise to Wellington Barracks. There’s one rider holding two loose horses. They hold up all the cars as they queue up to go through the barracks gates, but I can cycle past quite easily.