Call me a wimp if you like, but there's a reason why I don't cycle

My youth can be defined by two objects - the pencil and the bicycle. If I wasn't indoors engrossed in my art (I was particularly skilled in this respect), I was outside with my chums playing on our bikes.

However, cycling was more than a casual leisure activity for my family. A bike, like a good penknife, was an essential tool. My father would cycle many miles to work when I was young as we didn't have a car.

In the 1970s my father, brother and I even embarked on ambitious cycling holidays. During the long hot summer of 1976 we set out from our Welsh valley home with a target to reach Weymouth. I was 13 and my brother was just 9. We carried everything we needed in panniers and rucksacks. These were the days before lightweight nylon tents. Ours was a Vango Force Ten Mk3, a rugged cotton tent considered a design classic that is still in production today and costs £400. Our cups were those enameled metal mugs that, along with our pots and pans hanging around our kit, made lovely chinking sounds as we rode. This was real cycle camping - Famous Five stuff - and it was magical.

Our route took us via Chepstow and the old Severn Bridge, and through the glorious countryside of Wiltshire and Devon. Crossing Salisbury Plain in the blistering heat was an experience never to be forgot, and without the regular campsites you find today, we simply picked a field and pitched up, erecting our trusty Vango to the sound of Radio 4 on a transistor radio and the smell of bacon sizzling over a tiny one ring Camping Gaz Stove. The air was full of midges and swallows and we had not a care in the world.

The author and his brother enjoy a hearty cyclists layby lunch in the summer of '76

The following year we set off again, this time with a goal to follow the A4 all the way to London. I was 14 and my brother had reached double figures. We did it in just two days. Our first campsite was the garden of a kindly man who, seeing us cycling through increasingly built up areas as the light was fading, offered use of his garden.

Cycle-touring in the 1970s was a different proposition to today. Cycling across Salisbury Plain you would see only the occasional car, usually something like a Ford Anglia or Mini. Try it today and it resembles the videogame Gran Turismo with high powered cars being driven as if they are in a TV advert.

We only encountered one dangerous moment during our trips, when my brother's bike was clipped by a car driven by an ageing vicar who was devastated and very apologetic.

So now I've explained by cycling credentials, why am I so set against taking up the saddle in the 21st century?

Cycling has seemingly never been so popular. People increasingly cycle for leisure and for work. There seems to be two predominant camps - the offroaders, with their hugely expensive bikes kitted out with space age suspension; and the road warriors, all dayglo lycra and Bradley Wiggins seriousness.

I could never do the former. My body, and especially my knees, could never tolerate the stresses of offroading. All the offroad dudes I know are fitness junkies whose bodies repair well following the inevitable bruises, gashes and fractures they incur as payment for their sport. So that leaves road cycling, which, given a period of acclimatisation I could probably manage physically. I would certainly benefit, as many people I know have from taking up cycling.

But I'm simply not prepared to venture out onto the roads in today's climate. Apart from the obvious dangers of today's congested roads and unskilled and selfish drivers, I'm not willing to put up with the bile from the anti-cycling mob.

The cycling community has a job to do in trying to overcome the growing feeling of animosity from other road users. Cyclists have as much right to use the roads as motorised vehicles. The road system wasn't built with exclusivity in mind; it has evolved over thousands of years for the benefit of people using everything from horses to Porches. But many cyclists don't do themselves any favours with the way they ride or the liberties they take.

We can understand the problem better if we consider the motorcycle. Bicycles and motorbikes are essentially the same - a person riding on a two wheeled vehicle. It's just one is powered by an engine, and the other by legs. However, there are other fundamental differences. Motorcyclists and their vehicles are licensed, taxed and insured, and are strictly required to obey the rules of the road - the same rules that apply to cyclists, but which so many cyclists choose to ignore.

Motorcyclists are also better served with regards to how society promotes them and their safety. The 'Think Once, Think Twice, Think Bike' campaign was the first of many campaigns aimed at educating drivers about the dangers inherent in two motorised wheels sharing the roads with four. The campaigns have certainly been successful, not just in making roads safer for motorcyclists, but in encouraging a degree of respect from other road users. You don't read anti-motorcyclist diatribe in the same way you do about cyclists.

The dangers laid out in the 'Think Once' campaign apply equally to cyclists as they do to motorcyclists, but where are the safety adverts for cyclists? And where is the respect from other road users?

Unfortunately, there will never be widespread respect from other road users for as long as a sizeable percentage of the cycling community persists in thinking they live in some netherworld between road users and pedestrians. You can't be both. But too many think they can. They ignore the rules of the road when it suits them, and go pavement when they feel they need to. It's hardly surprising it's so difficult to target safety videos at them when it's not entirely certain where they operate.

When we took our bikes onto the roads in the 70s we did so in the understanding that there were rules and proper ways to use the road to ensure it was safe and we didn't present any problems to other road users. Obtaining your Cycling Proficiency Badge at school was a mark of honour in the way an ASBO is today. It showed that you were cool and knew how to handle your wheels. But what is there today? Is anyone preparing cyclists for life on the road?

As far as I can see, what we have is a very successful industry selling bikes and kit and encouraging people to get on with it. But that's not enough today. It's hugely irresponsible of society to encourage cycling for its environmental and health benefits, but not to back that up with education about how to do it properly.

It's two wheeled anarchy out there, and I'm too old for that nonsense.