I like to clean my bicycle, I like to clean…………….

I have now owned my beautiful bicycle for quite a while. I looked at it the other day and thought “Good grief that is one mucky bicycle!”. I was spurred into action. After hunting around in the shed, I found a suitable bucket and soft brush, some raggy looking cloths and most importantly, enthusiasm!  As I don’t have any proper bicycle cleaning soap, I opted for hot water and fairy liquid. Now I know that’s not ideal but I resolved to give it such a good hosing down afterwards that you wouldn’t know I used Fairy liquid.

I and spent a good hour brushing the dirt and grime off wheels, spokes, frame, mudguards, lights, on board gadgets, basically everything.  I should also mention that due to the silly short days at the moment, it was dark. To get any light on the job I had to activate the motion light in the garden. As I am the most forgetful and clumsy person I know, I naturally flailed the hand holding the brush/cloth and covered myself in dirty water. I’m a genius aren’t I?

Anyway, about an hour after beginning the flailing and cleaning came the really fun bit. The Hosepipe!!! I don’t know about you, but the novelty of a hosepipe that has one of the guns on the end provides me with endless entertainment. I pretended to be James Bond for a while. I also attempted a bit of Light Sabre action but just got myself very wet. Eventually, I have decided that that most fun ‘play pretend with the hosepipe’ game is Robin Hood. The water jet is a very convincing arrow.

I digress. Essentially, my bicycle was spotlessly clean. If I’d been a car valet, I would have gold star for detailing. How proud I was. So proud, I forgot to take pictures. Shame on me. I did take pictures of how it looks today though. This is 10 days cycling on London roads. It only rained for 2 of the 10 days.

As I’m sure you can imagine, this makes my heart sink just a little. Here’s a close up of the filth around my seat post and back breaks.

It is not a pretty sight. Finally, what the bottom half of my bicycle looks like close up.

So, my question to fellow cyclists is this……do you have to wash your bicycle every week like a car? If you do, I’m going to be walking around a lot more.