By writing this article I wanted to share our family’s experience of discovering the bicycle as a mode of transport for our family with two young children who are two and five years old. I hope our story inspires other Portsmouth families to try it too!

The choice of bicycle to transport our children was never an obvious one. Our previous, pre-parenthood experience with bicycles was mainly for weekend trips and short commutes, often in fair weather. We have never used bicycles for sport, but we always liked the benefit of exercise when we chose to pedal from A to B. When we became parents, we knew very little about options available for us if we wanted to continue using bicycles with our baby on board. In fact, we thought that after becoming parents we will have to put cycling on hold for some time, or maybe forever. 

Nevertheless, we wanted to continue to enjoy time on the bicycles, even if it was for occasional, recreational trips. The simplest way to get our son on-board was a rear child seat which we sourced second-hand and continued cycling as much as we could. However, things got more complicated when we became parents for the second time. Our daughter hated being on the back of the bicycle and we feared that this was the end for our family rides. Having two children also meant that there was a logistical problem when just one of the parents wanted to take both children on a bike.

However, this little logistical challenge has become a start of a family adventure. We searched for solutions, but we were unsure what we were looking for. There were no ‘role models’ in our city and we have only seen children traveling on the bicycle in a rear child seat or sometimes in a trailer. There was no immediate, easily accessible information about the options for families if they wanted to use a bicycle for transport. Of course, unless you knew what you were looking for. We did not. And therefore, it took us time to find the solution.  

Surprisingly, through our search we discovered a whole different and hidden ‘cycling’ world – the world of family and cargo bicycles: box bikes, trikes, long johns, long and mid tails, tandems, triplets, mama bikes, folding cargo bikes and e-cargo bikes. There were also various unusual child seat combinations that could be used. We found that there was a ‘bicycle’ solution for nearly every family make-up. 

Written by Agata, our newest committee member.