I’m sitting in the dark eating biscuits with Jools Walker while she tells me about elitism in cycling. It’s not quite what I was expecting from an interview with an icon in the cycling community, but the rain has forced us inside. Five minutes ago Walker was gliding through the park on her Pashley Princess against a curtain of falling blossom. Now the rain is lashing the windows as we sit on her sofa, with the rain-spotted bicycle propped against an armchair, looking slightly resentful.
“The way cycling is portrayed sometimes…” Walker tells me, reaching for another biscuit from the super-sized tin her mother has supplied. “It can feel like you have to have the latest gear or the latest bike, or whatever, to take part. The other day I heard someone refer to it as ‘the new golf’. No offence to any golfers, of course,” she adds. “But cycling doesn’t have to be this hyped, expensive, middle-class, aspirational thing. There’s the Lycra that you’re supposed to squeeze yourself into, the diet regimes to make you the fittest and the best, and get thighs the size of a lamb. It’s just like… No! That isn’t it. It’s part of the narrative, but it’s not the whole story.”
Walker, it should be noted, does not have thighs the size of a lamb. Sure, she cuts a glamorous figure in her paper-bag trousers and statement necklace – and her blog, VéloCityGirl, was originally devoted to cycling and fashion. However, it’s her candid, humorous takes on mental health, the female cycling experience and the industry challenges for women of colour that have made her such a prominent presence.
Now she’s written a funny, vibrant book, Back in the Frame: How To Get Back on Your Bike, Whatever Life Throws at You, which details how cycling has helped (and hindered) her own wellbeing – in particular her diagnosis of depression, and the stroke she suffered in her 30s. It’s also an instructional manual for any budding female cyclists who, like her, aren’t seeing anyone in the industry they relate to – whether that’s other women, women of colour, or just the fact that they’re 28 and might feel they’re past it.
It is, Walker believes, vitally important for women to cycle – because they tend to quit, which Walker knows from experience. Despite a childhood spent joyfully wheeling the BMX she inherited from her sister around the streets of Canning Town in east London – where Walker still lives, in the local authority house she grew up in – Walker stopped cycling when she was 18.
“It was that classic thing that seems to happen to a lot of young women – your friends aren’t doing it any more, it’s not cool, everyone drives instead.” Mostly, though, it was because of the relentless street harassment.
“From the time I was in secondary school, apparently just riding my bike in my school uniform made me fair game for disgusting comments. So I started changing out of my uniform before riding, and adjusting my cycling route. If I’d been a young boy it’s highly unlikely I’d have had to suffer that, but ultimately I had to compromise what I wanted to do for my own safety, just because I was a girl.
“I wish I could go back to 18-year-old me and say, ‘Don’t stop. Because you’ve got no idea that you’re going to spend the next 10 years thinking about it, but never getting to do it.”
Finally, thanks to her first job as a university admissions officer, Walker signed up for the government’s Cycle to Work scheme, and bought her Pashley Princess. It should all have been plain sailing (or cycling) after that, but a short time later she was diagnosed with depression.
“Although I was diagnosed as an adult I always knew I had depression, because my mother lived with it for years and I recognised the symptoms. But I always felt talking about it was taboo, especially within the black community. And personally it just felt too self-indulgent to admit it.
“Getting on a bike helped. Partly I’m sure it was the endorphins, but also it was something about using it as an escape, and to claim back my time, and have something that belonged to me alone. I’m never going to claim that cycling is a cure-all – I just know what works for me, after nine years of cycling under my belt. Sometimes the last thing I’ve wanted to do is get on my bike, which I’ve found really difficult. But cycling is a relationship like any other, and the great thing about being part of a community is that when I’ve blogged about this sort of thing, people in the same situation have got in touch, which is brilliant.”
One question Walker is constantly asking is: “Where are the brown and black faces in cycling?” After getting an entry for RideLondon, the capital’s popular festival of cycling, Walker was dismayed to see very few cyclists of colour in the crowd, despite the opening events kicking off in Walker’s home borough of Newham – historically deprived, but very diverse.
There needs to be, she says, a shift further up the cycling food chain towards meaningful diversity and not just box-ticking, more inclusive advertising, and greater understanding of some cultural attitudes to cycling. “My great uncle Harold used to ride a bike in Trinidad,” she tells me. “He was a handyman and did everything by bike – he had a ‘beater bike’, completely wrecked, so no one would steal it. It got him from A to B, but everyone took the mickey out of him because you’d only ride a bicycle if you were poor. The real status symbol would be a car, because that would mean you had money.”
This is why, Walker says, she’s trying to do “stuff at a grassroots level”, like co-running a women of colour cycling group – and calling out discrimination the moment she sees it. “I’ve been the token black woman on a panel, and the token woman on a panel, and the token black face, too, on panels that have been, you know – pale, male and stale. I have to call it out.
“I was at an event In March, and during the Q&A I had to say, ‘How many people in here already ride a bike? How many people in here already enjoy the benefits of cycling?’ Everyone put their hands up. It was like an echo chamber. You’re already one of the gatekeepers, so give seats to people outside of that.”
But always being the public face of black cycling, while important, can be exhausting. “To constantly be called upon to talk about diversity and representation carries a weight. For the book I talked to Ayesha McGowan, who is on a mission to become the first professional female African-American road cyclist. She’s the same; she put herself out there to ‘be it’, because ‘she couldn’t see it’. But at the same time we agreed that it’s not the only thing we can talk about. You know, it’s that perception that being black is your profession.”
When she feels the weight of this, and when her fear of public speaking becomes too great, Walker finds it helpful to revisit her reasons for taking the job on in the first place. “I take myself back to when I got back on my bike at 28, not seeing anyone [I identified with], and how shitty that felt as well. Any platform that I get now, I can’t afford not to use it, so I use it.”
So, if Walker had to sell cycling to me, how would she do it? “I’m not trying to be the poster child for what cycling can do for you, but in my book I try to use the experiences that I’ve had on and off a bike, and turn it all into a positive.” Ultimately, it seems to be about self-care. Walker’s own self-care revelation came at a high price when, at the age of 33 she woke up one morning to find one half of her body completely paralysed.
She’d had, she found out later – after completing a day at work – a transient ischemic attack, or mini-stroke. Walker is now convinced that it was a combination of her depression, being a carer for her unwell mother, and staying at her job “often until midnight” that brought the stroke about, and now she’s careful to look after herself.
“It’s important to do the self-care thing, but that can be tricky, because it’s often sold as a luxury item – the way cycling is sometimes – and that sticks in my throat. I still have my ups and my downs. I’m not going to lie and just be like, everything’s coming up roses, and it’s all good. I still have the moments. My mum’s been in and out of hospital recently, and sometimes that knocks me.
“But I’ve recognised to look out for the signs and to take time for myself. If I need to take myself out for a while, then that’s what I will do. Going for a ride on my own, or with my friends, or just disconnecting. That’s self-care.”
And what advice would she give to anyone interested in cycling but afraid of the harassment?
“Get yourself a crew. Solo rides are great, but a crew can be like a security blanket, and give you the freedom to ride. There’s something really lovely about having friends to cycle with. You encourage each other to carry on riding, and be a support network for each other.
“The friends I’ve made through cycling are my second family, and this is the sort of thing you miss if all you’re looking at is adverts for high-octane, high-endurance, powerful, fast cycling.”
Does she still get harassed now when she rides alone? “Yes! How I react obviously depends on the situation and how confident I feel about my personal safety. Sometimes I’ll bite my tongue and carry on cycling, because it’s like, ‘I’m enjoying myself and you’re not claiming any of my time out of what I’m doing today.’
“Sometimes I open my mouth and say something back, because I want to hold someone to account for their actions. Because if I do – if I ask why they’ve called me that name, or why it’s cool to wolf-whistle at me, or to shout something inappropriate about my legs because I’m cycling in a skirt – they’ve got nothing. Then I leave them to think about that.”
Does that always work, I ask. Walker shrugs, and helps herself to another biscuit. Outside, the sun comes back out. “There have been some hairy moments,” she says, “but you just have to ride on and focus on your destination, that’s what I say.”
Back in the Frame: How To Get Back on Your Bike, Whatever Life Throws at You by Jools Walker is published on 23 May (£14.99, Sphere). Buy it for £13.19 at guardianbookshop.com
