I remember the moment I first rode a bike free from stabilisers. My dad had been running along holding on to the back of my red Raleigh Poppet while I shouted out “Don’t let go. Don’t let go.” My legs frantically going round and round on the pedals. I was scared to take the leap by myself.

My mum patiently instructed me to start by bringing one pedal up to the top of its rotation and then press down on it with my foot as hard as I could. I did as I was told and, just like that, I was away – pedaling under my own steam.

Soon the Raleigh Poppet was outgrown and I was given a hand-me-down bike from a friend of my parents. It was a light pink colour and of the style that I’d come to know the cool kids referred to as a ‘granny basher’. I didn’t care though. I cycled up and down the street where I lived and round and round the park. Before long the three gears it had were useless and only one brake would work, I rode it until it fell apart beneath me.

Bike number three came as a Christmas present when I was 10. This was the early 90s and the choice for any bike conscious 10 year-old was between a mountain bike and a ‘racer’. Living in The Fens I chose a mountain bike and so my granny basher was succeeded by a Raleigh Cassis mountain bike.

The other week as I was cycling through London I saw a bike exactly the same as my old Raleigh Cassis, the bike I failed my cycling proficiency test on at primary school. I wanted to stop and take a picture, and I regretted not doing so. But later that day my sister told me that my old mountain bike was still alive and well and living in her shed.

That was it for bikes and cycling for a good ten years until I moved to London and needed something more reliable than the tube for getting around. The bike to work scheme hooked me up with a tax free Ridgeback Comet that I named The Mighty in a nod to Che Guevara.

The Mighty served me well – built like a tank this hybrid has traversed the city numerous times, bouncing through potholes and not flinching as I flung us both up and down curbs. I haven’t learned to change an inner-tube because The Mighty has never had a puncture and that’s quite an achievement for a six-year-old bike that enjoys going off-road.

Now, though, there’s a new love in my life. A sexy young Spaniard caught my attention. The Orbea is my first ever road bike (or racer as the 10-year-old in me still wants to call it) and it’s like none of the bikes I’ve ever ridden. It’s fast, it makes light work of hills and it doesn’t like being told what to do – at least not by me.

I was beeped by a taxi as I wobbled my way across the road on my maiden voyage and shortly after had a near miss with a parked car. As I rode it five miles through London on our first journey home together I realised I was having to learn how to ride a bike all over again. I raised up my pedal, put my foot down on it hard and away I went, just as shakily as I had 25 years previous.