Nick Herbert: Hills or not, cycling’s growing in popularity

C ycling has been a key element of Britain’s sporting success, so I was interested to read that Chris Froome, our second winner of the Tour de France, is a car aficionado as well as a top-class cyclist.

This rather challenges the idea that people who love one form of transport hate the other. In fact, more than four-fifths of cyclists also own a car.

And unlike, say, Brighton - which has one of the lowest proportions of car ownership in the country - in an area like the South Downs we rely on motorised transport.

Hills or not, cycling is growing in popularity. I recently learned about Hassocks Community Cycle Hire, a scheme that rents bikes to locals and tourists alike who want to enjoy the surrounding countryside.

So many will have welcomed this week’s news that the South Downs National Park Authority, in partnership with West Sussex County Council, is to receive a £3.8 million grant from the Government’s Linking Communities Cycle Fund.

The money will be used, alongside £1.3 million of local contributions, to create car-free access to the South Downs via railway station ‘gateways’ and directly from large villages within and near the National Park.

Thirty-five miles of new cycle routes will be created. West Sussex county councillor Derek Whittington has been championing new routes, for instance one that will link Barnham to the South Downs Way largely off-road.