I have always cycled to a certain extent but when I moved down south, I only used to do local journeys by bike because at the time I was convinced there was no safe route to work (due to having to negotiate 60 mph rural A roads).
Over the following two years I was subject to increasing motoring costs due to the poor quality roads taking a toll on my car (the only roads that lead to my workplace are single track and full of potholes) and I eventually got fed up enough to re-analyse the cycle to work option. I thought I had found a suitable route using bridleways to avoid the fast, busy A29 so decided one day to give it a go. Unfortunately when I got to the bridleway I intended to take I found it was unnavigable on a bike so had no choice but to re-route onto the dreaded A29, a NSL road with fast straight sections interspersed with blind corners and summits. To my surprise I found that it was not such a bad road to cycle on after all, and motorists were capable of seeing me in tiime and passing with a decent clearance. I was encouraged by this, and I decided to do it again another day, and it just went from there. Initially I couldn't do the full round trip so had to work up to it by getting a train part way and cycling the rest, and doing the same coming home, soon I could do the full return trip on the bike, and eventually I became fit enough to cycle both ways.
Initially I started with a roadified mountain bike, then bought a Birdy folder, then someone in the local cycling club let me have his old road bike. A couple of years ago got a new road bike using cycle-to-work scheme. Still got the other two bikes.
