Getting on their bikes for carbon challenge

From today, Julie, 43, and Alasdair Ross, 44, from Darlington, and their two children are to rely on bicycles for transport. Mrs Ross said the challenge was laid down at her Weight Watchers class after she reached her target weight.

To help Mr and Mrs Ross and Stephanie, 14, and Hannah, 11, with the task, Halfords have given each of them a bike.

Mrs Ross said: “The hardest bit is going to be for my husband, who has to travel quite far to see clients for his business. He’s allowed to ride a bike to the station and catch a train and then ride it at the other end. I work for the business at home, but I do quite a lot of voluntary work with the Brownies and the church, and travel to that. It’s not totally feasible that we can carry on without the cars afterwards, but, hopefully, we’ll get quite fit and cut down how much we use them in future.”

Halfords also gave the family a collection of accessories to assist in carrying out their day-to-day chores, including cycle locks, a selection of panniers and backpacks, reflective waistcoats and baskets.

Northern Echo: Getting on their bikes for carbon challenge

Good luck to the Ross family.

My own family gave up our car 9 days ago and we’ve not missed it so far. We hardly used our car, and resented spending money on car tax, insurance, servicing, MOT, etc, so we sold it. We’re viewing it as a one year experiment, initially, but we’ll see how it goes.

We’re using internet shopping for our groceries, buy meat from a local butcher and have just signed up for an organic veg box delivery.

Our two kids are a lot younger than the Ross’, so we’ve bought a bike trailer. Buses, trains, bikes and walking get us about. We’ve booked a hire car for our main summer holiday.

If the Ross family would like any advice or support, I would be happy to offer it. If anyone knows them, can you pass on this blog address?

Update: I just realised that we’ve not been given free bikes by Halfords! How does that work? Can we have some? 😉