Before and after stories

I have been in Utrecht now for three and a half years, it's flown by, we've had Brexit, sold our house in the UK and suffered the drop in the pound, but still found a great house in Utrecht which we now own. We've been in the new house for a year and a half, we've renovated the kitchen, the kid's bedrooms and the living room, but there's still plenty to do. The drop in the pound meant that we chose the biggest we could afford, but one that needed renovating.
I am a member of an International women's social club in Utrecht and they have an active membership including a bi-monthly newsletter thing. I've done various pieces of writing for them, and have been asked to do something for an issue around sustainability about cycling here.
I thought it would be interesting to concentrate on what makes cycling so accessible here and actually pretty much a necessity. It's almost a given, you move here, at some point, you will need to get a bike of some description, even if you use a wheelchair. Even if you are blind, before you know it, you could end up on a tandem or something on two or three wheels with a co-pilot for your eyes.
Feeling the wind in your hair and the satisfaction of getting around pretty effortlessly and cheaply on roads that encourage you to be there, has to be a good thing.
It's far too long ago for me to remember how I felt cycling here when I got here, plus I was already a cyclist in the UK and the UK in the 80's was not as different to here then as it is now; there was definitely more cycle provision in NL, but it's long before the wide sweeping smooth two way cycle paths in red tarmac that you see today. The roads were less busy everywhere. I grew up in a city size town in the UK, the first few years I rode on a tandem with my father through the rush hour and we lifted the tandem onto a train every morning. In those days, trains in the UK had guards wagons full of post sacks, sometimes so full of post sacks the bike was just chucked on top. When there were no seats left, the guards wagon was also sometimes fine to sit on the post sacks, it was somewhere I was comfortable and familiar with.
Trains or roads, were places where I knew my place and the rules. When other female friends my age would go white when I told them of the roads I would cycle. I traumatised my best friend once when we were about 15 by getting her to cycle round one of the biggest roundabouts in the town where we lived - It intersected a major A road, the A4 and was probably about 100m across from one side to the other, but I knew how to take the lane and had the confidence and experience. I'd cycled way bigger way more often in Reading on the back of the Tandem years before with my Dad. Drivers didn't always like cyclists then, but it was more like they had a sense of not coming too close. I've heard it discribed as like people are with spiders - give them space, big objects being scared of these smaller things that were actually very squash able, but tough somehow.
Most women I've met never remotely grew up like I did when it comes to roads and travelling on public transport. Most women I know might have had interestering or unauthodox lives too, but not in the same way I did.
Saying that women in the Netherlands do enjoy more freedom of movement than I remember being available in the UK to women. Travelling alone late at night was to be avoided. I had worked out that actually being on a bike at night was pretty safe; cyclists being invisible is not always a bad thing. You silently make your way, one minute you are there, then you are not, people don't have time to think, ooo a woman on her own late at night.
If you get on your bike in Utrecht and ride into town at any time up into the wee small hours, you will come across other cyclists all the time and many of them will be women and women cycling on their own. It's just transportation. Same on buses and trains. There is an expectation and people expect that places should feel safe and be useable by all.
Back the UK, slowly during my adult life, things like guards and guards wagons on trains disappeared, buses, well, standing around a bus stops doesn't feel particularly safe last thing at night, or walking around on a deserted train station. Public transport in the UK didn't respond to people feeling less secure like you'd expect, no, they just spent less and cut more. Eventually those that could, got a car and those that couldn't got a taxi or a lift from someone who could.
The actual chances of being attacked are usually very small, it's not the likelihood, it's the feeling. That's only partly true, if you ever have had the misfortune to be attacked in any way, be it by a man or by a person in a vehicle, the first thing they ask you is "what were you wearing?" "What were you doing?" in other words what were you doing to provoke them to attack you? So, we are taught that prevention is better than cure, and the simple way to avoid danger is not to be there in the first place. This is ridiculous in the context of life say, in Utrecht. Where you go out, meet friends, do stuff, go to night school, whatever you are doing, then go home. Just like if you were a man. Why if you do that as a woman and a man takes advantage, is that your fault for being there in the first place?
I would rather be alive than right any day, and I've lived by that code up to now. It's saved my life on the road many times; I can tell instantly by the way a car is being driven if, even if I have right of way, I won't get it. I'm usually right, and if I'm not, I get to nod when they stop and wave politely "thank you for not killing me today".
I defiantly, loudly and relentlessly defend my right to move freely, but I too, know my limits. But my limits aren't the same as your's or necessarily anybody else's. From place to place, country to country, you have to be smart, adaptable an willing to compromise. At least, that's what i think, based on that idea - it's better to be alive than right.
So, I am looking forward to some other before and after stories from other women who arrived in Utrecht. They got on their bikes and have been biking ever since.