On yer Boris bike...

Many, of course, said it wouldn’t work. They scoffed at Boris Johnson’s promotion of a bike-hire scheme in London. One of the Mayor’s dafter ideas, and an expensive one.

The case against went like this: no-one would sponsor the project, the bicycle couldn’t compete with the Tube, car, buses, taxis or walking, and there were visions of the Thames being awash with stolen machines the general public had shunned.

So what’s happened in reality? For one thing the sceptics are back-pedalling.

It’s hard to argue against an innovation whose first year of operation resulted in 138,000 members, and more than six million cycle journeys – nearly 30,000 on one day alone. It’s already claimed a string of transport and environment awards, and Barclays has put its name to the scheme and increased its investment to £50m.

By next year it will extend well beyond central London to cover 25 square miles of the capital, with 8,000 hire bikes spread around more than 400 docking stations with their blue and white logo based on the Underground’s symbol.

Kulveer Ranger, the Mayor’s equally flamboyant spokesman for the venture, admits the bikes – something close to a lady’s shopper model – would never win the Tour de France. He describes them as “elegant beasts.”

They’re sturdy and functional with three gears, have good stability and thick, puncture-resistant tyres. Racers they’re not. But put them on a designated cycle-way, or in a lane shared with buses and cabs, and they can cover the miles surprisingly quickly.

What’s the experience like for a first-time user? I rode from Westminster to the Olympic Park site at Stratford via some gritty areas of Hackney (about eight miles), and back through the East End, across Tower Bridge and out to Clapham before returning the bike to a rack opposite New Scotland Yard.

Next day I took in Buckingham Palace, the West End, Regent’s Park, the towpath beside the Grand Union canal to Primrose Hill and Camden market, then skirted Covent Garden, and crossed the Thames at Waterloo Bridge and again between the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament.

Parts of both routes are not for the faint-hearted. I wouldn’t recommend Oxford Street or Knightsbridge to a novice cyclist. As for Trafalgar Square – would Nelson be brave enough to put on bike clips and negotiate its perils in 2011?

Don’t be deterred. Transport for London provides excellent free maps, suggesting routes which avoid the frenzy of an almost constant rush-hour.

You get a different perspective of London from a bike saddle. Going at your own pace through unfamiliar streets opens up the great city’s fantastic contrasts. Within a few minutes, you can be taking in the mansions and embassies of Belgravia, meandering through Hyde Park, imagining that beside a leafy waterway you’re in the heart of the English countryside, and emerge into the sights and aromas of a district where all the world seems to have gathered.

It’s worth taking a ride out to the former industrial area being transformed into the site of next year’s Olympic Games. Your hire bike won’t get you onto the Siberian pine track of the nearby velodrome, designed with advice from gold medallist Sir Chris Hoy, but from the cycle path next to the river Lee at least there’s a close-up view of how some of the £9bn Games budget is being spent.

For a few days next summer a global audience will focus on dramas next to a setting which on a Sunday afternoon 12 months before the big event had its stillness barely disturbed – narrow boats here and there, a lone canoeist, locals walking their dogs, and a few cyclists discovering a scruffy but interesting part of London off the radar of most visitors.

The Olympics guarantee to change that and tourism will miss a trick if, amid all the cranes and hoo-ha, the area’s past is neglected. Never mind the sporting history to come, it already has its own heritage trail.

Leave the cycle path at Bow and you’re in a locality Chaucer referred to in his Canterbury Tales. In 1556, during the reign of Mary I, many prisoners were brought here and burned at the stake in front of Bow Church, currently celebrating its 700th anniversary and now an island in the middle of the A11.

There’s more. Partly in response to a strike by match girls at the nearby Bryant and May factory, Sylvia Pankhurst formed a breakaway movement of Suffragettes at a local baker’s shop.

In pushing the merits of the bicycle, Boris Johnson and his team are no less crusading. They studied bike-hire schemes around the world, from Paris to Montreal, Berlin, Barcelona and Dublin, learning from their mistakes and successes. Paris has been dogged by a bike thefts, and in Australia it’s said that projects have flopped because Aussies won’t wear a mandatory helmet.

In London helmets are not supplied or obligatory. Risky? The organisers claim that accident figures in the first 12 months reflect the scheme’s good safety record – 63 incidents in six million journeys, most of which involved “bumps and bruises.” As for thefts, only 15 machines were stolen.

The London scheme’s main teething problems have been financial. It will cost Transport for London £140m over six years, and it was estimated it would break even in half that time. But in the first three months, 95 per cent of journeys were under half an hour and free – earning TfL no revenue apart from access fees. That situation began to change once the scheme was opened up to casual users, including tourists.

A survey revealed 89,771 different routes were travelled, the most popular being a ride around Kensington Gardens. The busiest docking point was Waterloo Station. The Mayor remains upbeat. He says bikes are good for the environment and London’s image, encourage personal fitness, make more of the city more accessible, and save users money when they switch from other forms of transport.

GREAT HOUSE HOTEL WITH COLD WAR HISTORY

In London John Woodcock was a guest at St. Ermin’s Hotel, Westminster, the first venture in the UK of an American entrepreneur who set out to blend English “great house” period style with the intimate sophistication expected by modern travellers.

He found one of the best locations in the city to achieve his balancing act – a late 19th-century mansion whose grade II-listed architecture and dramatic history became neglected during its time as an anonymous stopover hotel dominated by package groups.

A £30m restoration has transformed the dowdy into four-star deluxe, worthy of its role in some of the great national intrigues of the last century.

In 1940 Winston Churchill asked an eclectic mix of individuals to meet at the St Ermin’s and ‘set Europe ablaze’. The group became the SOE (Special Operations Executive) whilst MI6 had two floors above. Cold War double agent and eventual defector Guy Burgess met his Russian contacts in the hotel’s Caxton Bar.

More recently St. Ermin’s has witnessed plenty of domestic scheming. Being close to Parliament and Whitehall makes it a favourite haunt of politicians and civil servants. How many other places can claim a Division Bell in the lobby to summon MPs to a vote in the Commons?

For other guests Westminster Abbey is even closer, Buckingham Palace and St. James’s Park are round the corner, and the hotel is across from New Scotland Yard’s revolving sign beloved of TV news reporters.

Given its art deco styling and rococo plasterwork it’s not surprising that the so-called Grande Dame of Westminster has made it into films – among them Sid and Nancy, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Mona Lisa.

Room only prices start from £199 plus VAT www.sterminshotel.co.uk

Basics about the Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme:

You can become a member and a one-off fee of £3 gives you a key for quicker access to a bike at a docking station terminal. Non-members follow on-screen instructions at a terminal. Access fees (£1 a day, £5 a week, £45 annually) and usage charges are the same for everyone. A journey of up to 30 minutes is free, £1 for an hour, and so on up to 24 hours which costs £50. Payment is by credit or debit card.

You can report a faulty bike at a docking point, and leave a machine at any in the network. If one is full, the terminal screen will direct you to the nearest alternative and give you an extra 15 minutes usage at no additional cost. There are stiff penalties for late returns and damage. Helmets and locks are not supplied.

For full details of the scheme visit www.tfl.gov.uk/cyclehire