I learned a new word this month.

Vélotaf. And no, that's not French for a Welsh cyclist, although it is French.

Apparently it means a utility bike, a bike used for work, or for getting to work, and it's a rather nice all-encapsulating word.

My mountain bike, deputising for two road bikes which were temporarily incapacitated, shod with slick tyres and taking me from home to work and back again every day. That was a vélotaf during that time. So is the fixed wheel that now shuttles me back and forth, despite its lack of 'guards and rack.

Most of the bikes I see in the morning will be vélotafs, and while we can get bogged down in splitting off into factions of mountain bikes, folders, recumbents and so on, when any bike is used as a simple means of getting from A to B, to shuttle us for a purpose, it really doesn't matter where its genes lie. It is a vélotaf.

Which makes the largest group of cyclists anywhere vélotafeurs. Citycycling is vélotafing, and we really don't care what you ride, as long as you do.

.anth