On yer bike.

Max and I don’t do a brilliant job of switching off from work; our weekends usually involve something, either sat at a computer in snatched moments between dancing runs or stock uploads or sorting out something or other while passing the unit. I work partly every day if I’m home in the week and even if we decide to do a days work together from home, it can be a bit unsatisfactory, snatched between working and doing family stuff. We both work a lot of hours, whether at the unit or from home and we don’t leave enough proper switch off time. When you add 4 of 5 weeknights taking kids to things, all Saturday driving to dancing and gym and back and Sunday involving rugby training (seriously), we don’t get enough quality family time. It could be far worse but I do miss a day out together. Or even a day in!

Anyway, yesterday we decided that the 5 homebirds would have a proper day off, once the business essentials were done in the morning.

We decided to do this. It’s been ages since we all went on a bike ride together. For ages I would use it as an excuse to work while Max and the girls went and then there was pregnancies and then Bene and all in all, we haven’t. But a few weeks ago we got sent the bike seat you can see for review and that’s made it possible. To start with Max just took him out with the girls, but yesterday we all hopped back on our bikes and went off to Ferry Meadows.

We are lucky to have a long, flat, road free place to run and cycle right by us and so a quick trip out with a picnic is far more possible than we regularly achieve. Granted I don’t really like it, it’s all a bit moanufactured and new, but it is there. While I was taking Bene for his jabs, Max and Joey got a picnic ready, Maddy grabbed a ball and when we got back, off we went.

Having been out on it a few times, Bene has really fallen in love with riding. He brings us his helmet all the time and chunters away excitedly when he’s in the seat. We stopped for picnic lunch and to play with a ball but basically he just wanted to be off again, as you can see.

He rides with Max as I’m just not confident enough to have him on mine (I never have with any of them) and just loves it. I must admit I was really dubious about a front carry bike seat, it just felt wrong, but having seen it now, I’ve completely changed my mind. Back is more conventional but truthfully, if there is any chance of an accident, wouldn’t you rather be curling yourself around you child in that split second than hoping they survived behind you?

He’s even fallen asleep in it and Max could hold his head gently with one upper arm.

We had such a nice couple of hours, really restorative. Goodness I’ve missed the sun.

I hadn’t really intended to do the review in this post but since I’ve waxed about the guppy seat anyway, I’ll finish off. We love it. It’s freedom, it feels companionable and safe, it is incredibly easy to slot on and off the bike on the front (and will fit on the back too at a squeeze, there wasn’t masses of leg room on Max’s bike) and because it is light and quite upright it doesn’t take a lot of space to store either and at £50, it feels well worth the money and will take him till he’s 2 1/2 stone, which should be when he’s around 3 I think.

He was pretty tired afterwards too. All that riding and thinking you are in charge takes it’s toll 😉 And we all had smiles on our faces. It was one of those perfect family moments we’ve not had enough of recently.

Disclosure: We were sent 1 Polisport Guppy Bike Seat and 2 helmets for the purpose of this review.

This post first appeared on Patch of Puddles.