This article is part of a series called ‘A love letter to…’, where Cycling Weekly writers pour praise on their favourite aspects of cycling. The below content is unfiltered, authentic and has not been paid for.
The picture - low res, blurry, manifesting its 12 years of age - shows two pairs of feet, one wrapped in newspaper, and huddled around a quintessentially British tea room fire. Assorted once-white now-grey layers hang from the metal guard, protecting naked skin from the glowing embers. It’s the only souvenir of a winter’s ride, my younger self bolting out with the ‘fast group’, and back with my now husband and a friend, amid icy road spray and mud of questionable origin.
The accompanying text is lost to the tomes of the internet, but probably read - in third person as per the era of early social media - something along the lines of “Michelle has become stuck to a chair in Ditchling [East Sussex, UK] tea rooms and won’t be available for the ride home”.
Of course, we did have to ride home eventually. But those several hours spent locked in an unaccounted-for GPS blackspot and clinging to hot mugs of procrastination form one of my most cherished non-riding cycling memories.
A similar ‘ode to the good old days’ is the recollection of hours spent in Gails Bakery - an overpriced vendor of cinnamon buns and coffee, for the uninitiated - deciphering the latest track/non-track gossip, after a two-hour thrash at London’s Herne Hill Velodrome. The beauty of that one was that it wasn’t a mid-ride cafe stop, but a post-ride cafe stop, perhaps the best kind.
In both instances, the accompanying ride was just as much a joy as a struggle, the pedaling portion of the memory is not a discarded byproduct. It just so happens that the seemingly never-ending cafe stop is the recollection I cherish the most.
Cafe stops are not a habit enjoyed by all riders, my current self included, with time poverty my overriding argument against hitting pause on the pedals. Other grounds for hesitation include the reluctance to acquire ‘cafe legs’ - a sensation whereby once ‘good’ legs are replaced by jelly - and protestations relating to the waistline (the only ‘reason’ I have no time for). However, I’ll hazard a guess that most riders will have a fond ‘cycling’ memory from an experience where the elapsed time in their GPS file has exceeded the riding time to the order of 50% or more. And, that’s because cycling - and our love of it - is very often about so much more than spinning wheels.
Planting my not-so-sweet-smelling self to a tea room chair and emitting a soft glow of humidity for hours has never been a go-to pastime of mine. Especially given my persisting frustration with the inability of cycling clothing brands to create a sports bra that both functions and dries at the same rate as other technical garments. But, deconstructing the world’s events with like-minded people is always high on my agenda. And, I guess that’s what makes the never-ending cafe stop so special: not the location, not the ride there or back, nor the baked goods on display, but the people those moments are shared with.
