Do I need to wear a cycle helmet?

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle

The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man’s metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion.  Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well

Wednesday January 7th: Nigel came round on his new bike this morning. It has got a water bottle, a milometer, a speedometer, a yellow saddle and very thin racing wheels. It’s wasted on Nigel. He only goes to the shops and back on it. If I had it, I would go all over the country and have an experience

It’s one of the worst things in the world to wake up and not see your bike where you left it

Bicycles are almost as good as guitars for meeting girls

I came out for exercise, gentle exercise and to notice the scenery and to botanise. And no sooner do I get on that accursed machine than off I go hammer and tongs; I never look to right or left, never notice a flower, never see a view – get hot, juicy, red – like a grilled chop. Get me on that machine and I have to go. I go scorching along the road and cursing aloud at myself for doing it