Boris Bikes, not a bad way to travel, but why all the faffing about?

Dragging myself out of bed this morning after four days off, I took comfort in the knowledge that this weekend I achieved an ambition.

After months of procrastination, I finally made it onto a Boris Bike.

It’s something I have been meaning to do for months, ever since they were introduced in fact, but I never managed to pull it off - until Saturday.

When they were first launched you had to register your credit card details to get  key which was then sent to you and it all just seemed like too much of a faff.

I’m put off by lengthy forms on websites so decided to wait until I could just pick one up from the docking station by swiping my card, which is what you can do now, or so I thought.

Now I have a bit of a bugbear about transport not being reliable and easy to use, and have I realised this extends to the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme.

It is supposed to be convenient, non-expensive and user-friendly, and although this was almost the case, as my teachers used to write on my school report, Boris you could do better.

My encounter came as I was walking home with my other half and we passed a docking station. Why not? was the thought that immediately popped into  our heads.

It was quiet on the roads, I had my credit card on me, we were relatively close to home, it seemed like the ideal opportunity to hop on and pedal the remainder of the way home. Not so.

I was foiled at the first hurdle.

Following the instructions on the screen I inserted my card, indicated I wanted two bikes, pressed “accept” and.....with baited breath waited for the timer to do its thing.........”We could not process this transaction at this time”.

Sigh, thought it was too good to be true, maybe it’s just teething problems, let’s try again, surely I can’t have been thwarted at such an early stage.

Card in...pin in......Bikes:2.......terms and conditions read (all 36 pages of them).......ticking timer spinning means it’s thinking about it....fingers crossed.......”We could not proce......”....OH FOR ****’S SAKE.

Why does nothing ever just WORK – especially when it has something to do with Transport for London.

One more try, this time with a different credit card, nothing, slowly my enthusiasm for trying one of these things began to dwindle, the spontaneous joy of hopping on a bike and cycling home fizzled out.

And it sounded so easy on the TfL website: “Available 24 hours a day, all year round. It's self-service and there's no booking. Just turn up and go.”

Just turn up and go eh?–  right, when is that ever the case?

I decided to give it one more go, although in my heart of hearts I knew I was just setting myself up for disappointment, and as the machine spat out my card I decided to give it up as a bad job, scratch it up to another TfL disaster.

But walking home we passed another row of bike laid out before me, their saddles enticing my backside to hop on, I decided to give it just one more go.

Maybe I had, by misfortune, struck across a rogue station earlier and my money would be good enough after all.

Card in.....terms and conditions read (all 36 pages, again)....pin.......bikes:2..........fingers crossed.....hopes once again high....success!....out popped the code for me to release one of the bikes.

ONE?????... But I asked for two.....OH FOR ****’S SAKE (again).

Anyway, a few tears of frustration later, I worked out that you had to go through the whole card-entering procedure again to release the other bike.

Why? I don’t know, but who ever said it was going to be easy?

The rest of the experience I have to say was positive, they are easy to ride and it made an interesting change to hop on a bike to cycle home, and just offload it at the other end.

So all in all, despite the initial stumbling blocks, it was a positive experience.

But I have the following “observations”:

1. Why can’t the system be hooked up to Oyster, then people could just swipe their card and get a bike without having to go through another tiresome registration process.

1. Who is going to stand next to a docking system in the middle of the street, with people waiting behind them, scrolling their way through 36 pages of terms and conditions? Come on TfL be realistic. It means most people will just click OK without having read them properly, and do there really have to be so many?

1. It could be a simpler to take one of the bikes out.

Otherwise, not bad.