Now I’m not entirely sure how popular a chocolate teapot would prove to be, for a start who would want to spend good money on a brown teapot? I know I wouldn’t, plus I would just nibble at it when I couldn’t sleep. But apart from these tiny drawbacks, I’m sure it would work just as well as any other kettle. REALLY. Now those two words, chocolate and teapot, are stuck in my mind for a reason. Whilst in 5th year at Ellon Academy, or high school as other areas seem to call it, I asked whether or not I could study higher English, the response I received was, well, slightly unexpected ‘you would be about as much use at higher English as a ………….’ Now that’s what I call positive encouragement from the people who are supposed to be guiding us to a bright and prosperous future.

So as you can imagine when the editor of CC (who happens to be my less talented older brother I might add) asked me to write an article for his magazine well I ran in the opposite direction. “I might do” was my reply, being as vague as possible without having to say no. Unfortunately, Anth is made of sturdier stuff than that and continued with the bombardment of requests, usually every Monday morning when we were both incredibly fed up, sitting in the office with a strong cup of coffee swapping stories about our weekend adventures out on the bikes, followed by “You should write something you know”.

As a result, I now find myself sitting at a desk, typing this article. So excuse my poor English…..

Now I’m going to use a massively over used saying here, but for as long as I can remember I have always loved cycling. Over the years the bike has been used for a variety of uses the most obvious being getting from A to B, or in kiddie terms, flying around pulling MASSIVE skids and jamming old plastic bottle’s in the rear tyre to make it sound like a motorbike! How cool is that?!?

The list would also include a source of income, stress relief, competition, socialising, adventure, I could go on really! All of this got me thinking about my bike history and fond memories of which there seem to be many. My memory isn’t the best, I can put a set of keys on a table then two minutes later accuse someone of moving them as I’m looking for them in a totally separate room, but my cycling memories seem to stick out for some reason.