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news
Credit Mieke Evans Woman cycles and walks everywhere for entire year
A city worker has completed an incredible challenge by going an entire year using only her bike as transport.
Mieke Evans, from London, said she has completed an epic challenge to go an entire year without using any form of transport other than her bike, reports the Metro.
Over the year she raised £3,342 for charity, cycled 6,239km, walked 1,926km and ran an incredible 450km.
Mieke, who works as an Account Manager, thinks that by going almost an entire year spending no money on motorised transport she saved between £2,000 and £2,500.
The idea first came to Mieke when she started thinking of ways to reduce her environmental impact.
She said: "I have been a cyclist in London for many years, and even though I have seen lots of people cycling, and seen the infrastructure changing, I still see a lot fewer women than men on the roads."
Mieke kicked off her challenge on January 1 2017 and she said the hardest thing was battling through the cold winter months.
She added: "Whenever I needed to get from A-to-B, there was invariably a very specific day and a very specific time that I had to be there.
"If it was pissing it down with rain – I still had to do it."
Credit: Mieke Evans, and Metro
When her best friend got married in Bordeaux, Mieke was forced to get a flight as she was unable to get enough time off work, however she did cycle to and from Stanstead Airport.
Since she undertook the epic challenge in 2017, she has continued trying to live by some of the key principles that she learnt.
"I’m always trying to find ways to live a more simple life," she says.
"Whether it’s borrowing items rather than buying things brand new, or using less plastic, I just try to have a much more minimalist life and I try to focus on the things that I care about and things that are important to me.
"It really switched my mindset into living more simply."
The year after her transport challenge, Mieke took a three-month sabbatical and cycled around Europe on her own.
Mieke said that without taking on her year long challenge, she would never have had the confidence to believe she could go across a continent using only her legs.
"It really opens up your mind to how far you can actually go just on two wheels, under your own steam. It changes you."
Latest Comments
- chrisonabike 1 sec ago
Argh! Now there's some kind of rat problem there too! Definitely no windows!
- GMBasix 20 min 16 sec ago
There are several cycle awareness courses around the country. They may not address psychology in detail, but they take drivers out on bikes. They...
- chrisonabike 38 min 41 sec ago
Yup - although as a more "distributed" / low cost kind of "good" (which the public purse pays towards) cycling will likely always be susceptible to...
- quiff 1 hour 45 min ago
I'm sure they'd ask Lime to do that too. Come and collect your bikes and my neighbour - they're in pieces.
- brooksby 1 hour 51 min ago
Ireland seems to have a lot of problems with their cycle lanes… Almost as many as England
- quiff 2 hours 11 min ago
Fair point - I was restricting myself to pedal bikes. As I've never spent that kind of money on anything though (mortgage doesn't count), it's kind...
- brooksby 3 hours 13 min ago
And finally: I wonder how many of the "more than 3,000" signatures on that petition are actually locals, who live or work there (and are not just...
- Doug_D 4 hours 49 min ago
Another book suggestion - I can highly recommend "Lost Summers and Half-Forgotten Afternoons: A Mint Sauce collection" - a beautifully presented...
- mdavidford 6 hours 40 min ago
I think you're missing an opportunity to pack even more tech into it - add accelerometers that can detect whether they're pedalling or stepping....
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30 comments
Apart from the bit where she didn't.
I'm not sure where all the nastyness (if this is a word) came from? Well done to her and good on anyone who tries to improve their life and by default the lives of those around them as a result of their actions.
I cycle in excess of 6000 commuting miles per year but even if it were a lot less I couldn't imagine not using public transport or getting a lift for more than a few weeks let alone a year. London roads are not nice and even worse in bad weather.
I tip my casquette to her!
The amount of negativity in the comments is quite disappointing.
This woman has achieved something that only a tiny number of people manage.
I cycle or walk for the vast majority of my journeys but doubt I could manage more than a few months without public transport.
Congratulations to her!
Doesn't seem a particularly notable acheivement given she's apparently here in London. I'm pretty sure there have been many years over the last few decades when I could have claimed that, but it wasn't something I considered worth keeping track of.
In London almost everything you typically need to go to is within walking or cycling distance (anything under 4 miles is generally faster to walk than bother with buses, which in any case always make me nauseous, pretty-much everything else is cycleable)
And public transport is generally awful, so that given the choice one would avoid it (when I commuted by tube decades ago it was hellish - wish I'd thought of cycling back then, though even then I'd often walk the trip home rather than face Dante's Seventh Circle Line of Hell.)
Yes, every now and then there will be some logistical cock-up or out-of-routine long-distance journey (i.e. out of London, in Brexitland or somewhere equally forboding) that means you _have_ to take a train or something, but it's not particularly improbable to get through a single year without that happening.
We all live in Brexitland now.
Well, yeah...can't argue with that.
Some of us have cunningly got Passports from EU countries. Hooray! I see it as my Freedom Pass.
Sorry mate but this is bs unless you live in the centre. In the suburbs things are further apart and drivers are a lot faster and angrier.
An incredible achievement in my book, especially in this day and age when people of all ages take the easy/lazy option. Big kudos to her!!
Sorry mate but this is bs right back at you. I've lived in London all my life, and I don't know what you mean by 'the suburbs' or 'the centre' (generally London is divided into three - centre, inner, and outer), but it takes about an hour to cycle to the far side of London, and most things I need to get to are 3-6 miles away, which is walking distance.
Drivers are generally unpleasant and often threatening, sure,which makes it much more tiring than it should be to cycle, but when walking they don't really affect you so much, and there aren't that many things that aren't in walking distance.
What are these great distances to which you refer? Where is it you have to go that is more than 4 or 5 miles away?
And no ill-will to her, because anyone not driving is fine by me, but it irks when things one does without even thinking about it are labelled 'an incredible achievement'. To me that just shows how strange the world has become.
So fluffy one, where, in your mind, is Brexitland? Everywhere outside of the centre of the universe that is London?
Why are Brexiters so thin-skinned? Get a grip!
(Or maybe it's just provincials who are super-sensitive and you are outraged at being associated with Brexiters...either way you do understand the concept of 'a joke', right?)
Inner London had the lowest pro-leave vote in the entire country (much lower than Scotland, which actually had quite a high leave vote, contrary to myth). The irony being I'm less determinedly pro-remain that almost anyone I know round here, have even fallen out with people who were too vitriolically anti-Brexiter for my taste (they aren't all racists, and there's a greate deal to dislike about the EU...just on balance I think leaving is going to cause significant economic loss).
It's nevertheless a simple fact that this country is increasingly geographically-divided, and the Brexit vote bought that out. I'm not at all happy discovering I'm an elite out-of-touch overlord by virtue of just being a Londoner, but apparently that's how it is, so I might as well embrace it.
Clearly she never needed to go to Homebase for roofing felt or bags of cement.
Maybe she has a trailer.
How often do you require these items?
Not at all unusual, my Mum & Dad (who lived until their 70's and 80's respectively) never owned a car and cycled everywhere, even to do the weekly shopping. They lived a long distance from the nearest bus and train stops so rarely took those (saved them money too).
Still quite an achievement though!
Wonder where she left her bike at the airport?
I would not be expecting it to be there when I got back. Unless she took it with her ?
I think I'd rather leave my bicycle, locked up well of course, at an airport for a few days than all day at a train station, let alone overnight.
It's not like a "go to" destination like a Uni campus, especially in October, or a mainline train station. Less people to randomly walk pass like a train staion or a city centre. I'm guessing there is a bit of distance from housing estates.
The car parking is, I believe, fantastically expensive, so you can piggy back on that extra security.
And the police are shockingly heavily armed and very suspicious.
Good job!
I'm puzzled why this has taken over 2 years to hit the 'news' though.
I know so many people who only cycle and walk. Not particularly impressive.
Yes it is. It’s impressive for all of them. Just because the article only mentions one person doesn’t mean others are excluded.
I don't agree. It's trivally easy to do it without even conciously being aware of it...if you are somewhere like London. I'd be impressed if they were in some remote rural area where every amenity was a 10 mile cross-country trek away.
The point is she made the effort and that should be applauded.
I can't think why anyone would want to belittle someone's attempt at reducing their carbon footprint.
Well done Mieke!
Who's belittleing? Just depressed that such a thing is now considered an 'incredible achievement'. It merits a thumbs up maybe, but making such a big story out of it is weird.
It may not seem like a big thing to people like RoadCC readers who cycle regularly but to Metro readers it might just be what they need to read to make them think about using a bike rather than the car or public transport,
It won't though - by presenting it as 'an incredible achievement' it will just reinforce their view that this isn't something that 'normal' people could consider.
You mean, in Brexitland?
Snowflake!
Oh we are resorting to name calling now are we? Well I am going to take my ball in.
I prefer 'brexthickland'
Never catch a train or bus?