Family cycling is great fun. It's precious time together, enjoying fresh air and exercise. That's why families already flock to cycle routes on sunny weekends. The key to making such rides work for a family is, literally, to think small.
Limit the distance to what you could cover in an hour or two. Focus on what your children will get out of it. Think of it as an afternoon out with added cycling and not as a cycling trip punctuated by impatient interludes. (If you're the kind of person who puts six goals past your son during a Saturday kick-about, stick to cycling alone.)
Plan to stop often. A small park with play equipment can invigorate and entertain small children. Or perhaps there's a nice café or some picnic benches? If there's something more exciting, like a castle or a beach, that's all good. But smaller children need patience more than high-octane entertainment and will take pleasure in the smallest things: bread for the ducks; horses running across a field.
ADVERTISEMENT
Don't race by. One of the benefits of cycling is that you can stop when you please, so stop.
If your children are happy on a ride, you will be, too. So please them. Children are often more impressed with the cake they can have in the cafe than with nice scenery. A ride that's a washout because of the weather can be saved by a surprise treat that you stowed in a pannier.
Planning your route
Websites and printed guides are useful for planning routes. It pays to have a decent large-scale map, too. Not only can you plot the trip in advance, you can use the map en route for shortcuts. And if anyone's getting tired, it helps to be able to say: "Look, we're nearly there. Lunch is just round this corner."
Mountain biking with kids
The stuff you'll need
- Plenty of drinks. Water in bicycle bottles is best: it can also be used for washing hands or cooling down.
- Snacks. Cereal bars, fruit, fig biscuits, cakes: energy and morale boost in one.
- Extra layers. Windproof, showerproof jackets all round. Fleeces or jumpers for the kids.
- Spare clothing. Spare diaper or two for tinies, spare underpants and trousers for the recently potty-trained.
- Tool kit. Pump, tyre levers, puncture kit, spare inner tube(s). Ideally a cycling multi-tool.
- First aid kit. Plasters, antiseptic cream, painkillers, high-factor sun cream, wet wipes. Any required medication.
- Mobile phone. For unlikely emergencies.
- Distractions. For the children, e.g. tennis ball, frisbee, action figure.
You can read more at BikeRadar.com
via BikeRadar All the latest from BikeRadar.com http://ift.tt/2dPE9rQ
No comments:
Post a Comment