Grinding along on the summer bicycle trail

SURVIVING THE SUMMER / Caroline Murphy: 'What's an angle-grinder, Daddy," a child asks. "Well, it's a sort of a saw, and it's quite useful sometimes," is the adult response.

"Useful" is one word for an angle-grinder. But to us, it represents the hero of the hour, a life-saver and manna from heaven. Let me tell you, an angle-grinder is a great thing to find in a stranger's ice-cream shop when you are 130 miles from home, 40 miles from your B & B, and you have to break open your own bicycle lock.

We have this thing about cycling holidays. Well, I have. I'm not sure why, it's not as if I cycle very much - perhaps twice a year around the tiny park beside us (and that's in a good year). But I always thought I'd go further some time. Up on my bike I would get, surrounded by my happy brood, and off we would go. We wouldn't have to be going far. A single day outing would be fine.

But at the back of my mind I have dreams of bigger things - a real live holiday featuring our family clan, hostels, and multi-mile trips along highways and by-ways. Of course, the highways would not be high - rather they would all be lovely and flat, and preferably wind their way along riverbanks.

This year, circumstances conspired to allow us inch our way along this planned path. The last of the brood was on two wheels. Three of the six were missing in action in Irish college, and we had to visit one of them. I saw my chance - a cycling holiday!

Before this summer, we had only tried it when on a short break in west Cork. I knew it was going to be a food-dominated few days, but had no enthusiasm for walking off the excess.

So, because at the time we had a big station wagon, I persuaded a doubtful other half to throw his old bike into the back. Then, whenever we were at the top of a hill, I'd say: "Will you stay here for a while? I'll just get a bit of exercise free-wheeling down this hill. Follow me in a while."

Needless to say, that same other half was absolutely scathing about my à la carte attitude to what constituted suitable terrain for cycling and exercise. But strangely enough, after he caught up with me a few times, he did begrudgingly offer to let me read the papers while he "took the bike off my hands for a while". The memory of that rather successful little jaunt left me with the ambition to go one better and do it with children in tow.

And so to last week - two adults, three boys, four bikes and off we went to Waterford to visit the other boy, who was staying in Ring. A visit to the beach for him and his pals was the promise.

All was fine until, about three miles short of Dungarvan, one small boy was feeling sick. No problem - hadn't we the bikes? Out they got.

"Fresh air," I said. "You all cycle to the beach from here - and I'll be back in a while with the boys from the college."

But when we eventually met up, we heard scary tales of a hazardous two-mile cycle along a narrow, twisty road with heavy traffic.

No matter. They had made it. And tomorrow we would have our pick of traffic free, flat, pretty laneways. The dream would become a reality.

So, after having fun on the beach I came to help pack up the bikes and head for the B & B. But could we unlock the bikes?

Well, not very easily - because the key we had was not the one which fitted the particular lock chosen to protect the bikes from unwanted attention.

Bicycle security chains are quite sturdy. They withstand hands trying to prise them apart and pens trying to pick their locks. They just lie there calmly while bike owners knock on the doors of mobile homes, walk up to hotel receptions, check out the staff in the ice-cream stalls, and ask strangers for help in sawing through a security chain - without any proof that the

bikes being protected by the same chain belong to the people doing

the asking.

It was an embarrassing and fruitless process - until finally, after we had practically given up, we met a lovely man emerging from his shop.

"Well an angle-grinder would do it for you," he said, "if you can get the bikes over here to me."

And so that is why hubby, 14-year-old and I were last seen carrying four bikes, locked together, the length of a major beach car-park, over to the ice-cream shop and the ESB-powered angle-grinder. If you were there, thank you for not calling the Garda..

And yes, by the way, we did find some flat, pretty, traffic-free roads the next day. So we still believe in cycling holidays - our way.

Caroline Murphy is a broadcaster and mother of six