We will one day be a family that goes cycling together. We will tour the seafront, bump along the South Downs and puff our way up Ditchling Road.

My husband has been going on about this for a while. He says it would revive our sense of adventure, give the children more of an interest in their environment and be excellent exercise for all of us.

He has a point, although our five-year-old, Eve, still needs stabilisers and our extra large toddler, Max, can barely squeeze into a child seat.

There is also another problem. I don't have a bike. I did have one, a Raleigh Shopper, but I left it in a neighbour's garage 15 years ago and I never went back to collect it.

It might still be there for all I know but I have no intention of reclaiming it.

It was heavy and ugly and my legs still bear scars from when the chain came off and I got muddled up with a mudguard. My abiding memories are of pushing it up hills because I couldn't get into first or second gear.

My husband was once an avid cyclist. He tells me he used to think nothing of cycling 20 miles in a morning, stopping somewhere scenic to eat his ham and mustard sandwiches, then cycling all the way home again.

Of course, that was well before we had children - and well before he knew me.

He bought a new bike a few years ago but he rarely finds the time away from work, or his many domestic duties, to ride it. I feel, in part, guilty about this.

The one time he went out during the summer with a super-fit cycling friend, I was petty enough to point out that he should have been at home tackling our unshifting mountain of laundry.

Last weekend, to whet my appetite for our future adventures, he suggested we take a short walk along the Cuckoo Trail cycle path in East Sussex.

It was a beautiful autumn morning when we set off along what used to be a railway line.

The sun sneaked through the tall and leafy tree branches, creating pools of warm light, and the children had fun gathering fallen acorns and dodging the cyclists. We got Max out of his three-wheeler buggy and then could not persuade him back in it.

After half a mile or so, we found a bench to sit on to enjoy some sandwiches and cakes I'd bought at a baker's.

"I don't like egg mayonnaise," said Eve, rejecting her sandwich instantly. "I'll just eat crisps."

"You liked them last month," I said despairingly. "I've got coleslaw in mine if you . . . "

"Yuk!"

"Okay, okay," I said, not wishing to disturb the peace of our surroundings or create a spectacle for passing cyclists. "Eat your crisps and have two apples."

I then produced the cakes, Chelsea buns, which I thought we'd all like.

But both Max and Eve declared them: "Yuk!"

Indeed, Max was so upset by the cake option that he flew into a rage.

I knew the only way to calm him down would be to buy him one he did like.

So we forced him into his buggy and trotted back along the trail as quickly as possible.

My husband saw this an opportunity to strengthen his case.

"You see . . . (puff, huff) . . . this would have been . . . (huff, puff) . . . so much faster if . . . (pant) . . .we'd been on bikes."