You can read about my early years of cycling here. After those early years I had a hiatus from cycling of about 20 years. This was due to a combination of having more of an interest in cars and also the narrow garage at home not being conducive to storing a bike in a way where it was quick/easy to get it in and out. I still kept the Marin mountain bike I’d bought post-university though as it was still in good working order but it languished in a bike locker at work and then the attic.
Then, a few years ago, myself and my partner moved to a residential suburb of Oxford. We ended up with another house with a garage so keeping the Marin wasn’t an issue and we had enough room on the drive way to not need to keep the car in the garage. I actually didn’t have any particular plan to start cycling again following the move but after a few months of exploring the immediate area on foot both for food shopping and wildlife photography (plus finding the bus route into the city centre being less than ideal) I decided to give cycling another go.
Marin Bobcat Trail – It Still Lives!
At that point it had been 10+ years since the Marin had last seen any use and about 20 years since I’d last ridden it properly. The condition still seemed pretty good – the frame paint was a little bit marked, but mechanically it still seemed decent. I pumped up the tyres (still original), checked the brakes worked, greased the chain and gave it a tentative short ride through a quiet housing estate just to see how wobbly I was. I had been doing 1-2 mile runs daily at that point so I wasn’t unfit, but I didn’t have cycling fitness and my bike balance was out of practice so although the ride went ok I wasn’t entirely comfortable riding one handed. I figured I’d quickly get back my balance and so I started doing regular short rides, often to local supermarkets with a backpack to shop for food.
During the first couple of rides I noticed the brakes sounded very rough. Naturally, given it’s age, it’s a rim brake bicycle and the brake blocks were still the originals. The rubber compound had gone very hard in the 25+ years since I bought the bike and so they were basically removing rim material – fresh brake blocks easily sorted that! It was also on the original nobbly tyres so since I would mainly be doing road cycling I got some more road-oriented tyres which had the added bonus of making the bike feel way more stable for one handed/no-handed riding (it had never occurred to me the tyres could have that effect).
Over the course of the next year I made some additions: mudguards, pannier rack, road-oriented saddle, strapless toe-clips. I also got a second set of wheels as the hubs on the originals became noisy – they had never been serviced and I didn’t want to risk trying to service them myself without having another set of wheels on hand in case I screwed up (I did then manage to service them ok). We had some icy conditions during my first winter of getting back into cycling and with memories from my paper-round days of how dicey it is cycling in icy conditions I also picked up some new-old-stock studded winter tyres (which very noisy on paved surfaces, but gave confidence that I won’t risk fracturing my wrists if the temperatures drop below zero).
Despite having subsequently acquired other bikes I’m intending to keep the Marin for now for winter duties (ideal with those studded tyres still for icy conditions and also to spare newer bikes road salt) and because its slightly tatty paintwork and age mean it’s at lower risk of theft than my newer bikes when I need to cycle into the city centre (and relatively cheap to replace with another old tatty MTB if it did get nicked).
Going Hybrid – Pinnacle Neon Two
Having gotten back into cycling with the Marin I gradually started increasing the length of pleasure rides over the course of the next year as I explored around Oxford by bicycle. The Marin wasn’t ideal for longer distances though – the weight and geometry of it made the rides harder work and of a less comfortable riding position than they would be on something more road-oriented. Because I was enjoying cycling so much I thought it worth spending a little to get something more modern and a little better suited to longer distances. Since my cycling routes still included some rough ground, such as unpaved sections of the Thames Path, I figured a hybrid bike (flat bar, relatively relaxed geometry) made sense rather than a drop-bar road bike.
I kept an eye on online marketplace adverts for a month for anything suitable locally but nothing quite right was coming up (the closest was a Marin Larkspur but rust on the cassette concerned me about its mechanical condition). I then found a local-ish bike seller who actually had three bikes that might be suitable so I popped over to see him, tried the three out, and came back with a 2015 Pinnacle Neon Two.
As hybrids go the Neon Two leans a little more towards the flat-bar road bike style of hybrid which means the riding position isn’t as upright nor are the bars as wide or shaped as some hybrids. It’s also fitted with a Claris 2×8 drivetrain and flat bar shifters, where I’ve seen quite a few hybrids tending towards mountain-bike-esque 3-by groupsets.
In terms of how it rode – I could feel the difference compared to the Marin straight away – less effort and much more comfortable. The Claris drivetrain shifted nicely and was lovely and smooth. Thanks to the increased comfort for longer rides I gradually extended the distance I was riding until I was regularly cycling to places 10 miles away (Witney and Woodstock being among the regular destinations).
The Neon Two already had a pannier rack fitted, which was handy. The tyres were very road-oriented though (and a bit cheap and thin) so I got some slightly wider Schwalbe Marathon tyres for better grip on rougher surfaces (and better puncture-resistance) and I also fitted mudguards for winter.
Unfortunately, after less than a year of owning, it a careless driver knackered it.
First Proper Accident
I consider myself a reasonably defensive rider – as a driver I’d already been in the habit of paying attention to what other drivers are doing to get a feel for their predictability and level of awareness. So when cycling, for example, if I spot a car coming up to the junction on side roads I look for signs whether they’re going to fully stop and for eye contact from them and recognition they’ve seen me, otherwise I stay ready to brake/evade. When riding in cycle or bus lanes I always assume there’s a high chance drivers will not adequately check or give way appropriately before turning across them (this happens so often on the Botley road – the cycle lanes there are marked with right of way where they cross side roads but drivers still often just cut across them).
For my first two years back cycling I’d not felt I’d had any close calls (although if I’d not been ready for cars turning left across bus lanes/cycle lanes I could have easily been taken out a couple of times but I always slowed appropriately). The only minor accident I had just involved me and was a slow speed short slide on my side on the Thames Path after one wheel caught a path edging stone in damp conditions and pitched me over sideways resulting in a grazed knee and elbow.
But on the last day of January 2026 I got driven into while I was out for a ride on the Neon Two.
One of the routes I enjoy riding is taking the towpath along the Oxford canal up to the A44 and then cycling along the shared-use path (which is part of the NCR 5) towards Woodstock. On this day I fancied visiting a pub in Kiddlington for a half pint and rather than using a more direct route to Kiddlington I decided to take this more pleasant canal route up to the A44 and then cut across from Yarnton to Kiddlington. The ride there was pleasant and uneventful and I had a half pint of beer at the pub while reading my Kindle before taking the same route back.
Most of the A44 from Oxford to Woodstock has a shared-use path along side it that is part of NCR 5 however there is one little stretch though in Yarnton where the shared path has a break as there’s a stretch of residential road that runs parallel to a dual-carriageway section (separated by a verge) so cyclists use that road for that stretch. For drivers there’s a short one-way slip road from the A44 northbound to get on to this two-way residential road, after that slip-road is a BP garage and then there is a cut-through junction in the verge to rejoin that northbound lane. I’m always careful to watch for drivers exiting the BP garage as most drivers exiting the garage are wanting to use the cut-through to rejoin the dual carriageway and so their attention will start to split. If it doesn’t look like they’ve spotted me I’ll slow right down.
On this day I was cycling about 14-15mph southbound on the resident road and as I approached the cut-through there was nothing moving out of the garage. Unfortunately when I was about half way across the cut-through junction a car rapidly exited the garage going diagonally across the road directly to the cut-through (rather than doing it as a two step “join road, turn to junction” manoeuvre) and hit me. I remember being aware of him just as he exited and thinking “his road position is rather close to me” and then my next memory is realising he was actually driving at me and that I had no chance of avoiding being hit. Then I found myself sitting on the ground with my ears ringing and everything sounding a bit quiet for a couple of minutes with a sore right leg. To give the driver some credit he did at least stop, check on me and stay with me, he apologised and admitted fault (he was looking at the dual carriageway and not treating this road as two-way) and then he gave me and my bicycle a lift home.
He’d hit my right leg and the right side of my bicycle with the front right of his car sending my bike sideways and me in a somersault forward landing on the adjacent verge. Fortunately I didn’t sustain any fractures but my right leg was very bruised and sore (it swelled up noticeably) and had a 6cm full-thickness laceration on my inner thigh where the impact had driven my leg on to the nose of the saddle (which had to be sutured with both internal and external stitches). Walking was quite uncomfortable for a couple of weeks, I had nerve pain at nights for 3 weeks messing with my sleep and it was also about 3 weeks before I was able to tentatively start cycling again using the Marin.
I initially thought the Neon Two was repairable (wheels only slightly out of true, rear derailleur hanger slightly bent) but on closer examination I realised the rear triangle of the frame was also bent out of alignment so the rear wheel is not pointing straight and since it’s an aluminium frame it cannot be economically realigned (and will have been weakened too). Since there’s no sign of cracking in the paint on the affected frame parts so my plan is to see if I can re-dish the rear wheel enough to make it rideable and then use it for local supermarket runs and rides into the city centre (as it won’t bother me if it got nicked), but the damage means it is weakened (so I’d avoid off-road riding or long distance), won’t ever ride as it should and I cannot sell it on or give it away (except for parts) as the frame is considered scrap.
Return to Drop Bar – Cannondale Topstone 0
During the year or so prior to the accident I’d watched a couple of videos on YouTube for tips on things like servicing wheel hubs. That lead the YouTube algorithm to start suggesting a few other bits of bicycle content to me. I had no interest in bike racing but occasionally it would suggest some content about bicycle accessories/upgrades which caught my eye and that eventually lead to me regularly watching The Wild Ones podcast from CADE Media. It’s a podcast I’ve come to really enjoy as the three main presenters – Francis, Jimmi and Emily – get on really well together, are enthusiastic, have a laugh and often get side-tracked on to non-cycling stuff too. They’re passionate about as many people enjoying cycling as possible in whatever form it takes, although their focus is on road and gravel bikes rather than hybrid or mountain as that’s what they’re most familiar with. Their content about drop-bar bikes had started to get me thinking (even before the accident) about getting a drop-bar bicycle as a third bike as I’d been doing increasingly longer rides which a drop-bar bike might be better suited to than the hybrid.
My musings pre-accident were leaning more towards a road bike – I’d learned a bit about gravel bikes from the podcast but since they are a relatively recent and more niche style of bike they were rare on the local online marketplaces and the few that did come up were way over the budget I had in mind (especially as I wasn’t sure how well I’d get on with drop-bar after all these years). My reasoning thus was that because I had the Neon Two for mixed-surface rides then having a road bike with skinny tyres would be fine as I’d only use it for long road-only rides. However after the accident knackered the Neon Two’s frame I now had the dilemma of whether to replace that with another hybrid (and then get a road bike at a later date) or replace it with a drop bar. I had the Marin still for mixed-surface riding but it still sucked for distance.
Then, as luck would have it, a secondhand gravel bike came up for sale locally in a frame size which ought to suit me and, while the price was a little higher than the budget I’d had in mind, it could handle mixed-surfaces like the knackered hybrid at the same time as delivering me a drop-bar ride. I went and took a look at it, had a brief test ride and bought it!
It’s a 2021/2022 Cannondale Topstone 0 gravel bike in “Champagne Gold”. It has an alloy (aluminium) frame with a full carbon fork and at the time it was Cannondale’s highest specified alloy-based gravel bike (they did have a more expensive carbon frame-based variant too). You can read more about it here.
Adjusting to riding a drop-bar hasn’t been too bad. Getting the right saddle and handlebar positions is taking a little bit of trial and error but I think I’m getting close. And although this gravel bike has a more relaxed geometry than many road bikes it’s still more leant-forward than on the hybrid or mountain bike so my body is taking a little while to adapt. But I am loving riding it and am happy with the choice. Thanks to a spell of sunnier weather I clocked up 65 miles on it during my first week of ownership.
If I can’t get the Neon Two usable again I’m not going to replace that with another hybrid as this gravel bike can handle road and rough surfaces easily (better in fact), plus I’ve got the Marin to use for the city centre use an snowy/icy weather where I wouldn’t to risk this more valuable bike. Assuming I don’t get unlucky again I can see this bike serving me well for years to come.