Meet the instructor – Nicky Dick

How old were you when you started cycling?

I was probably 4 at the time. So down at my nana’s house in Sussex my father bolted wooden blocks onto the pedals on a bicycle he found in the garage at the time. The trouble was I couldn’t actually reach the floor, so he would sit me on this thing and I would ride, right round the garden. It was a slabbed garden, with rose bushes, and I had to shout for somebody to come and get me, ’cause I couldn’t stop. 

What motivated you to become an instructor?

I used to run a B&B for 20 years. And I’ve always been a cyclist and I’ve always been a sports coach, kind of like behind the scenes and I do a lot of triathlons. I was on the Board of British Triathlon until recently and I worked with world Triathlon as well. 

I just thought, you know what? I’ve had 20 years of running a B&B, I’ve had enough. I want my weekends back. And this job cropped up because I was doing some community support for kids who don’t get the same opportunities as my kids, and I thought you know what, to get kids cycling safely on the roads? That would really float my boat. 

What’s your favourite part of the job?

Watching the kids’ faces when you show them. So first of all, I’ll show them how to squeeze the front bike. They all go oh, wow. That’s how brake blocks work. And you know, when you show them how the gears work, they just look at you as if it’s a light bulb moment.  

And then watching them going from not even being able to do a start, stop on the pavement to doing a perfect right turn off an A road or on an A road. You know, doing a perfect right turn when three days earlier they were too scared to even leave the pavement. That’s beautiful.  

And then listening to them, they’ll say, Nicky, guess what we’ve cycled at the weekend. And this is all without the parents, they’ve gone off on their own because they’ve realised the freedom cycling has given them. 

Do you have any favourite cycling memories or experiences?

I remember when I was 12, my friend Don and Steven and Crappo, he was always called, Crappo, we cycled from my house 60 miles to one of my mum’s friend’s houses in Rutland, from Bedford. And the next day we cycled home. I had a red bicycle with no gears, that my Dad had got from a scrap heap. My dad was a motorbike racer, so we were quite a mechanical family. Steven had his mother’s shopper that was stuck back in 3rd gear. I can’t remember what the other two had but it would have just been nails that we’d got to mess around on. 

We slept the night in a tent and then we started back. We had to walk up Rockingham Hill because we lived in Bedford; we didn’t really realise what hills were like. That was hideous. And when we got back to Bedford, Don decided we needed to stop at the Bedford railway station bridge that went over the railway line, because he wanted to get train numbers.  And we all thought, oh my God, why do we have to stop to get train numbers? And then we all thought, well, hang on a minute, it doesn’t matter if we stop. It’s not dark. It wasn’t the case that we needed to get somewhere. It was all part of the journey. Without being coordinated, part of the journey was actually stopping and catching train numbers. 

And my favourite race has to be Mountain Mayhem at Gatcombe Park. It’s a 24 hour mountain bike race, basically you set off at two in the afternoon on Saturday and you finished at two on Sunday and ride as many 10 mile laps as you can. One year, me and a friend we raced as a team and came second as a ladies team. Princess Anne gave us our stuff, and we’d trashed Gatcombe Park, because it was muddy. We shook hands and [my friend] just goes sorry about your garden. 

What do you like to do in your spare time?

I like to swim and I like to run. After working all day, teaching kids, I’m going to go and do a six mile run. I like to go for a swim on my own and go for a run on my own because I’m with people all day. 

Where’s your favourite place in the world?

Well, I don’t know if this is corny and what everybody says, but you know what? Home. Home is a derelict farmhouse off a quarter mile track a mile from anybody anywhere else. I’ve got 30-40 mile views across the Kinder Scout from my garden, right across the hills, which is stunning whether it’s sunshine or snow. 

When we bought it, my husband planted the wood there because he’s in forestry, and thanks to planting that wood, we are now surrounded with a mature woodland, and it’s where the kids have been brought up. 

Do you have any top tips for people who maybe want to start cycling or cycle more if they haven’t done it for a while ?

Yes. Don’t wear that underwear under your [cycling] shorts. 

And get off Google Maps and learn how much is on an OS map. Stop looking at Google Maps, get your OS map out there and learn what the contours look like. Learn how far things are apart. Learn how long it’ll take you to cycle down that bit of road. And realise that the blue line is the river, not a motorway! 

Do you have a cycling hero?

There’s a bloke called Ted Simon who rode a motorbike around the world. He wrote a book called Jupiter’s Travels. And I read that when I was a kid, a teenager. He basically nicked a Triumph motorbike from Birmingham from the factory and he spends four years riding around the world. And I probably read that twice in a row.  

Although he did it on a motorbike that didn’t matter to me because that opened my eyes to using a bike for travelling, not just for riding to your mates. Because it’s a mode of transport. Loads of my friends have cycled all around the world. My friends have cycled up and down America, across New Zealand, done all those big trips. But it was Ted Simon who made me think, oh, do you know what you could do that, couldn’t you? 

If you weren’t a cycle instructor, what would your dream job be?

I would like an unlimited budget to ride my bicycle all over Europe and possibly beyond, so I can stop in hotels and not have to camp, and write a travelogue. I need an unlimited budget so I can have a decent bike and I could stay in hotels. 

And I wouldn’t want it pre-planned. I would just want to go where I wanted.  

Are there any projects or anything else you’re doing that you’d like to tell us about?

I’ve got quite a lot of jobs. So generally my jobs are teaching Bikeability in rural schools, or I work in Derby. I also work on events and drive a power boat, and I’m a professional swim guide in the summer in Greece. 

And also on Saturdays quite often I teach cycling to wagon drivers. They have to do a course with us, it’s called vulnerable road users. And basically I go out and teach them not to hit cyclists on the roads. They’re never going to be cyclists. But they think I understand why that cyclist does that now.