Tootling

I decided that it was time for a more determined effort to crack the art of tootling, conscious, at the same time, that determination and tootling belong to opposite attitudinal poles.
I would have to be a bit more Zen-like about this.
Tootling is relaxed cycling. As one tootles, one is not in a hurry to get anywhere. This is not a race against another cyclist, against one's own past performance, against time. It is not a challenge; though I was confronted by the fact that I had to learn to do it, that I habitually failed in it.
I would only discover the essential ingredients of tootling by doing and learning but it seemed that the first important step was not to have a clear destination.
I should set out with no other resolve than to enjoy my cycling, not leaning ahead into the future or panting to be elsewhere.
So I might have a general direction to aim at but no resolution to arrive anywhere. I might go 10 miles or 80 miles. I would decide as I tootled, not plan in advance.
Of course you can not even tootle without some preparation. You need a bike. I put on my padded underpants and put a raincoat in my pannier and filled my water bottle. I had cash so if I was hungry I could buy a sandwich in a garage or stop and have a pub lunch or a bag of crisps. No problem.
I tootled - that is, I rode casually - out onto the cycle lane down the Ormeau Road. I caught myself thrusting forward when the way ahead was clear and told myself not to do that. 'You're not going anywhere.'
That meant I had no need to pedal downhill if the momentum and gravity were carrying me along at a pleasant pace. I turned left along the river where I saw a boat race. I stopped and looked. You can do that when you're tootling.
Lots of fit young people were milling about in tight shorts and vests - rather like cyclists themselves. I thought that the boating equivalent of tootling would be 'messing about on the river.'
These were all trim and competitive people, and the club had set out white plastic chairs so that their parents, dressed for the occasion, might sit and admire them and urge them on. Men in pressed jeans and cravats shared their admiration for their children with women in big hats drinking white wine from fluted glasses.
I wondered if any of these boaters ever just played. It seemed there was no messing here.
Then I saw Andy and Fiona and their son. The boy was about 10 years old and I asked him if he had a bicycle himself. He said he had and that it had six gears. I told them at mine had 27 then quickly corrected myself to say, 'but you only ever use about six of them.'
Andy said he was thinking of taking up cycling himself.
From there I got on to the towpath along the River Lagan. This was a perfect route for tootling. You can not travel at speed here because you frequently have to stop to let children and dogs have time to notice you. You often meet cyclists coming the other way, and often, on bends on the towpath, you skirt the very edge of the river and if you skidded or collided you would go straight in to the water or, as an occasional alternative, plunge into a bed of nettles.
There were some sleek racing types out on the towpath but they must have found it frustrating not to be able to build speed.
I passed the famous lock keeper's cottage, where families sat out munching stodgy tart.
On a footbridge, a little girl with her pink bike, huddled close to the barrier to let me pass. I don't know why she was frightened of me; perhaps she is frightened of everyone.
The route then passes through Barnett's Park and the path is divided by a white line here to separate pedestrians from cyclists, though it seemed to me that cyclists were more conscious of this than pedestrians were.
I stopped again to talk to my neighbour Jan who was out walking with a woman friend.
This was proper tootling, I told myself, not going anywhere in particular, not being driven by determination to reach any particular place by any time. 'Nice sort of day', I said. 'I was expecting rain.'
'Lovely', said Jan.
Then there was a little commotion. Three speed cyclists coming one way converged near us with tootlers coming the other and each had to veer off the cycling path because I was blocking it.
It was a tootling man who had a flash of temper with the speed boys, 'It's not meant to be a race track, you know.'
At Shaw's Bridge, more canoeists were packing up their kit into vans and changing, and I had to weave through them but one, a young woman, came out of the group and opened a wooden bar gate for me.
And the rest of the path was quiet, though narrow in places. Surely some people must fall into the water here. Out towards Edenderry I lost the path, having taken a wrong turning. There are big iron signposts like totem poles painted black, but you need to know where you're going if you're to read instructions on how to get there.
I thought I was getting back onto the path by crossing the main road and bridge, forgetting that I had already crossed the river on a little footbridge. I was walking down a wet incline with my bike to the river on my cycling shoes and discovered then that they had no grip and I skidded and then found I had nothing to hold onto but a bicycle that was depending on me to keep it upright. Back on the bike and tootling ahead, I noticed that some of the people and dogs I passed were familiar.
One was a man with four little copper haired dogs that scurried around in his train while he spoke to his bookie on the phone.
You can pick up a lot from people's conversations just by tootling past them.
But the logic pressed in on me that the only way I could be overtaking people I had met before was if I was going back the way I had come so I turned round again.
You can do that without fretting when you're tootling. This wasn't lost time on a planned journey; it was a tootle.
Following the river I could get some sense of the area I was passing through from the sounds that drifted to me, an ice cream van or church bells, and from the litter and graffiti.
There were poop bags hanging from a fence in one place and another display that seemed to be the remnants of the sort of floral bouquets that people leave at the scene of a road death, though it was hard to imagine how someone might have died in such a quiet place.
This path took me into Lisburn at the Island Centre.
Trying to recover at the path - though hopefully still in the spirit of tootling -I met another cyclist, on a tourer laden with front and back panniers.
'Have you come far?'
'Just from the ferry.' He was trying to work out the best way to get to the campsite in Banbridge.
'The nearest way is just to take the A1.'
He was going to spend the next two weeks cycling in Ireland and had covered much of the country before.
I waved goodbye, half regretting that I had not urged to head for the west.
I found the last stage of the towpath and then had to choose which direction to take.
The A1 was a right turn just to my left. I was back in traffic and negotiating the Sprucefield roundabout. It was a bit difficult to tootle round that, and then I turned south to Hillsborough.
There I bought a sandwich in the Mace.
One woman at the till was singing to her friend, 'you always hurt the one you love.'
And I took my picnic out the road towards Comber.
The challenge now was to find a nice spot to sit down and eat. And though this was a lovely country road over drumlins, practically every attractive stopping spot was someone's front gate or too close to one for me to sit there and not feel intrusive. Any patch that looked manicured would be private.
And there were lovely views of the sunlit hills and fields around me; there never seemed to be a view I could just sit and enjoy.
I was discovering the drawbacks of the unplanned picnic.
Wherever I stopped, I was going to look like a tramp. People in cars going past would ask themselves, 'Now, why has he stopped there?'
But so long as the spot I chose was visible and out of their way, they wouldn't need to fret or be tempted to disrupt my piece with a horn blast.
I found a scruffy corner by a gravelly path, facing a gap in the hedge on the other side of the road and a valley falling away. I was at the top of a drumlin. I sat down and swallowed half a pint of water and unpicked the cellophane from my sandwich.
So how was I getting on with the tootling? If I had been a racer, I would have had my milometer on the handle bars and I would have been able to calculate the measure of my achievement and compare it with past exertions. But how do you quantify a tootle?
Well, I was relaxed and enjoying my sandwich. I didn't feel as if I was in a hurry to get home. I was now on the return lap with only about 12 miles to go, so there was no need to think of camping anywhere for the night.
The only real threat to my tootle now was that I might be tempted to speed up and get home quickly. There were a few steep hills in front of me and it is hard to climb casually.
No tootler can be blamed for puffing up a hill. But the proper spirit of a casual excursion requires that the descent on the other side be enjoyed as a gentle roll. So long as pride in physical achievement doesn't overwhelm the prospect of enjoying the view and the soft sounds of the countryside; so long as you're still noticing things and even chatting away to yourself, wondering why there are so many evangelical churches in Carryduff, for instance, then you're still tootling. But just once succumb to the thrill of speed or the frustration that makes you want to press on and get home quicker, and this is no longer a tootle but a race or an ordeal.
At the Carryduff roundabout I have many times before felt the relief that my journey was almost over and I have clunked up the gears to fly down the hill, feeling more as if I was moving through wind than over land, exhilarated, looking forward to a pint or a bath.
But this time I held my nerve. I let the bicycle carry me and did not urge it much beyond the speed my own momentum gave it.
I tootled.
Not perfectly, not all the way to the front door; not absorbing all the sights and smells -- who'd want to? -- but more than I had before.
I was getting better at this.