“just look at Oxford and Cambridge.”

Cycling also offers a sense of independence.

In the UK cycling was very popular until the end of the 1950’s but it really lost out to our love affair with the car.

It’s quick, and it makes you look and feel great!

Of being able to get up and go wherever and whenever you want. That’s invaluable.

Regaining a culture where cycling is seen as an everyday part of life requires time and effort.

In other places, where the car has been king for many decades, it takes more time.

But the headmaster happened to have been to Cambridge and decided to try and push some of us towards Oxford and Cambridge.

It [Cambridge] wasn’t a holy grail in the sense that I’d never been to Cambridge.

My school was a state school in Leeds and the headmaster usually sent students to Leeds University but he didn’t normally send them to Oxford or Cambridge.

But then, when I did go, the contrast between Leeds, which was very black and sooty in those days, and Cambridge, which seemed like something out of a fairystory, in the grip of a hard frost, was just wonderful.