My children have now reached the age where they can jump on bikes and simply ride away, without me holding on or helping them at all. They seem to absolutely love the freedom, and I remember the feeling from my own childhood. I would cycle everywhere: to my pals, to school, to the library. Admittedly, Sweden is better set up for the cycling lifestyle. Where I live now, in Glasgow, there is one cycling path into town, but nothing around the neighbourhood, and the cars believe they have the right of way absolutely everywhere. So, my kiddos won’t be cycling around freely anytime soon, that’s for sure.

But when we were back in Sweden over the summer, they swooshed around the place on wheels, wind in their hair, happy shrieks. However, there is one big difference between cycling in Sweden and cycling in the UK. Apart from the obvious and already mentioned attitude to cycling. Namely, the brakes!

In the UK, you can let your pedals spin backwards as much as you want, and you use the handbrakes for stopping or slowing down. But in Sweden, many bikes have a brake built into the pedalling machinery. You brake by going backwards on the pedals. This causes a lot of confusion and frustration for those who learned to cycle in the UK. My husband once fell off a bike in Sweden and proclaimed it was broken. Turned out, he couldn’t work the footbrake.

My kids are happy to be back on their British bikes, but I can’t help wondering: in a place where cyclists have to be prepared to quickly get out of the way of a car, wouldn’t an extra break be helpful? Should we start importing Scandi bikes?

Gabi Froden

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