Cycling with kids: How to make rides fun and safe
Kids are amazing. They’re full of energy and inquisitive about the world around the. Until suddenly they’re not. Every parent knows that tired kids can rapidly become grumpy kids. Add into the mix that the same can happen when kids are hungry, and things can start going sideways in a hurry.
## Kids love to cycle!
Getting on a bicycle, and travelling along under their own power is an amazing sense of freedom and independence to any child. In fact, it retains that feeling into adulthood.
As a result, it’s usually easy to get kids to want to go on a bike ride. But the real decider is _where_ to go. Obviously, children can get very excited, and that can make them unpredictable. That’s especially true for younger kids. So how do you keep them safe AND allow them to have fun?
## Safety
Safety comes first, before fun. After all, it won’t be fun if your kids are forced to mix with heavy motorised traffic, and have to dodge cars and lorries!
Safety starts with carefully selecting _where_ you go cycling. That could be the park around the corner, or it could be further away. Regardless, there are several points about safe cycling routes for children:
1) They don’t have to mix with cars, or have cars alongside
2) There are no obvious danger, like sheer drops alongside
3) The route surface should be fairly good to excellent
## Fun
Children don’t need much encouragement to have fun. However, if you sit and watch some kids make up a new game to play, you’ll notice they probably spend more time creating rules than actually playing the game. Children _like_ rules, provided they feel the rules are fair.
See also Wild Atlantic Way - Day 13
A fun bike ride needs rules, too – for their sake, your sake, and the sake of everyone else using the route. The first rule I reinforced with my kids is to be mindful of others. Equally important is keeping left, though young children can struggle with that, and close supervision may be needed.
> Top tip: use coloured armbands for youngsters who struggle to remember which side is left. That way, all you need to call out is “Move to the armband side!”
## Rest
Children usually benefit from regular rest breaks. However, simply telling them “We’re stopping for a rest” may not go down well when they’re hyper-excited, and raring to go. This is where it really helps if you know the route well. That way, you’ll know where things along the route are that can be used to distract them.
For example, tell them “We’ll cycle until we get to where the fairies live, but then we _have_ to stop to say hello, else they’ll be sad”, if you know there’s a particularly lovely bit of nature up ahead. When you get to that point, have the kids move off the trail, and challenge them to find any fairies.
## Competitions
Almost all children love competing to some degree, but especially when cycling with kids of varying ages, having normal race won’t be fun for any but the eldest. That doesn’t mean you can’t have competitions! For example, use two visual elements next to the route as a start and stop marker. Next, challenge the kids to see who can cycle that distance the _slowest_ , without putting a foot down, or falling over.
See also Fat bloke on a bike, by Paul J Parsons
Also have competitions like who can count the most bicycles of a certain colour, or who can spot the first magpie.
## Nature
Sadly, we are increasingly disconnected from nature. Before the ride, have a notebook and pencil for each child. In each notebook, set age-related challenges. For example, young kids have to draw a line for every bird they see. And older child may have to identify two types of birds, and one type of tree.
> Most people tend to look _**at**_ trees and vegetation. Challenge your children, and yourself, to try and look _**through**_ vegetation instead. That simply means do not focus on the part of the vegetation nearest you. Instead, try and focus on the barely visible parts furthest from you, behind all the other vegetation. This will take a while to get right, and even longer to become a habit. Those that manage to do it will reap the rewards, as they’ll start noticing far more wildlife. This is a very useful life skill to acquire.
## Food
Children’s bodies work somewhat different to ours, and they can burn huge amounts of energy. On bike rides, it can be very useful to have several “mini picnic stops” along the way. During such stops, they can snack on pre-cut apples, various other fruit, or whatever you feel is appropriate.
The idea is not to fill their tummies at each some stop, but instead to just keep their energy levels going. Depending on the length of your ride, you may want to have a main picnic stop. Just bear in mind that getting them going after a meal might take some time.
See also Why do you ride?
## Tired legs
You will know the children best, and will be able to plan rides suitable to their abilities. You should however have a plan for what to do if they’re too tired to continue. This is where something like a Trail-Gator becomes invaluable. It’s a device that connects a child’s bike behind yours, raising the front wheel off the ground, so you can safely tow them along.
## Traffic-free routes
There are many traffic-free cycle routes around the UK. This collection is the best, most detailed on the Internet, with routes grades for surface, café stops, availability of toilets and child-friendliness, plus much more. Each route also has a current weather forecast, info on how to get there, photos of the route, plus an interactive map.
### Share this:
* Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
* Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X
* Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
* Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp
* Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
* Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
* Click to share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads
* Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
* More
*
* Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
* Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
* Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
* Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
*
### _Related_
