Skyride

On Christmas Day 1914 Fritz and Tommy got out of their trenches and played football together. The next day they went back to man their machine guns, mortars and sniper rifles to kill each other. As a child visiting the site of the front line I could not comprehend it. I still find it difficult today.

Last Sunday, the Sunday before In Town Without My Car Day, some roads in central London and other cities around the country were closed to motorised traffic. The route began at Buckingham Palace in Westminster and ended at Tower Green, hard by the Tower of London in Tower Hamlets. It passed by Trafalgar Square and under London Bridge.

The place was full of cyclists of every age and background. Many had probably never cycled on a road before – let alone in the centre of a large city; yet others, by the look of them, were experienced urban cyclists. For all of us it was a special day. The atmosphere was alive. The noise was of people enjoying themselves – it was not noise at all really. Like birdsong, the sound was part of nature. Cycling down the Strand, which is usually lanes of thundering traffic, was an eerie experience. Almost silent. I could not help feeling how much better the centre of our cities could be if they were always like this. It can be done. It just needs people to experience it for one day and then imagine the possibility for it to happen everyday, and to believe that they can make it happen.

London and our other great cities would be the better for it.

Surely after such a day we cannot go back into the trenches as if nothing has happened. It is not just about climate change, healthier living or safety – it is a visceral understanding about being human. I know I am ever the optimist, but I believe a tipping point is upon us and people are seeing, hearing and feeling a new way of living for themselves and their children. To take H G Wells’s idea further, “Every time I see a family cycling along a city main street, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.”