THE last time I cycled any distance was when I went to Selby on my mountain bike.

It's a tractor of a bike with knobbed tyres, and weighs about a ton. Still, I loved the ride out. I had a picnic in the grounds of Selby Abbey, then started back. And got a puncture.

I had no repair kit, so there was nothing for it. I to push the bike home. All 14 miles. That was four years ago. It dampened my enthusiasm so much that that bike has been rusting unused in my garden shed ever since.

Still, I have never forgotten the joys of exploring on my bike as a child. So when Phil Bixby, of the Clifton Cycling Club, invited me to take part in one of the club's Saturday morning organised rides, I jumped at the chance: especially when he said Cycle Heaven, in Bishopthorpe Road, had offered to lend me a decent bike.

So it was that at 9.45am last Saturday, mounted on a sleek, drop-handled racer, I met up outside York Art Gallery with about 30 other cyclists. Most were going out on tougher training runs, leaving five cyclists and me for the Saturday social ride. A gentle 50-miler, said ride leader Kevin Scully. I gulped. But there would be a nice lunch break at a café near Crayke, Kevin promised.

At 10am, the rain was bucketing down out of a black sky. I wondered what I had let myself in for. Miraculously, it suddenly cleared. We cycled through Bootham Bar and out along Stockton Lane into the bluest of blue skies and air washed clean.

My fellow cyclist Howard Dudley said our ride leader Kevin was known in local cycling circles as Mr GPS' (global positioning satellite). "He knows every road within a 50-mile radius of York," Howard said.

That soon became obvious. Kevin led us along a succession of idyllic country lanes I didn't even know existed.

We wound through Stockton-on-the-Forest, Upper Helmsley, Claxton and Bossall. The countryside rolled past, fields giving way to woods, the colours startlingly fresh after the rain. There was barely a car in sight.

The cyclists ahead flashed hand signals to warn of ruts in the road, or potholes. That's the etiquette of the road, explained Alan Waddilove, another fellow cyclist. Most of the time we cycled two abreast, chatting. At the first hint of a car, a shouted warning would go up - car! - and we'd stretch into single file. There was a following wind, which made cycling easy. It was glorious.

At Barton Hill, we hit the A64. Suddenly there were four lanes of cars whizzing past as though the drivers' lives depended on getting there now, now, now. There was something indecent about it after the peace of the back lanes. "Where did all these come from?" I asked to general laughter.

We crossed in a momentary lull, then headed north east along more winding lanes, through Thornton-le-Clay, West Lilling and Sheriff Hutton. The brick of village houses glowed jewel red in the sunshine; the air was perfectly clear.

But the wind picked up and suddenly we were heading straight into it. Twenty miles on the clock, 21, 22. I began to toil. Every rise seemed a mountain. I dropped down through the gears and went slower and slower, battling the wind. Not far to the café now, said Kevin, as we went through Farlington and Stearsby. But it seemed like forever before we slogged through Brandsby, turned down a breathtakingly beautiful lane towards Crayke, and there was the Mill Green Farm café, offering huge pots of Yorkshire tea and generous plates of ham and eggs to famished cyclists.

Never is a meal so delicious as when you've earned it. We chatted happily over mugs of steaming tea and coffee, then set off once more.

Having struggled to reach Crayke, I worried about the second half of the ride; but from the map Kevin showed me, it was clear we were already two-thirds of the way round. Plus much of the route was downhill on the way back, someone said encouragingly - and there might even be a following wind.

After a haul up through Crayke, we bowled along and, despite a late flurry of hail as we pulled into York, arrived a couple of hours later in time for me to return my bike to Cycle Heaven. Howard informed me that we had done a round trip of just on 50 miles.

I staggered home, exhausted but hugely proud - and determined this wouldn't be the last time I enjoyed the lanes around York from the saddle of a bike rather than behind the wheel of a car.

  • Clifton Cycling Club organise a social ride every Saturday, starting from Exhibition Square. The ride is normally between 45-55 miles, with a café stop to break it up. The club also organises more serious rides for more experienced cyclists. To find out more, check out the club website www.cliftoncc.org or email info@cliftoncc.org