There are mornings when the daily commute feels less like a journey and more like a sentence handed down without the option of appeal. The Channel Islands, bless them, have a remedy — and it involves a scooter, a skipping rope, and a healthy disregard for one's dignity.
From 18 to 22 May, Better Journeys Week returns to Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man, inviting workers to leave the car on the drive and try something — anything — else. Walk. Cycle. Take the bus. Or, for the truly committed, skip.
Yes, skip. As in the playground pursuit one assumed had been retired sometime around the introduction of long trousers.
A campaign with a wink
Formerly known, rather dryly, as Alternative Transport Week, the rebadged project keeps its environmental conscience but has clearly decided that a spoonful of silliness helps the medicine go down. Organisers are urging islanders to "keep things fun" by "scooting or even skipping to work" — and to share the resulting spectacle on social media.
It is, one suspects, the first transport campaign in living memory whose success can be measured in giggles per mile.
Participants are encouraged to post their chosen mode of locomotion online throughout the week, on the cheering theory that doing so can "turn routine journeys into more positive, rewarding experiences". The week also encourages businesses to get involved, with suggestions ranging from step-counting competitions to sponsored bus passes and "cycling buddy" schemes for those who'd prefer not to wobble through the lanes alone.
For commuters who genuinely must drive, the advice is sensible rather than scolding: share the trip if you can, and bundle errands into one outing rather than several.
'Engage with our environment'
Rollo de Sausmarez, the project's chairman, makes the case with a gentle eloquence that this correspondent finds rather hard to resist.
"We all know that our islands are beautiful and travelling by bike, bus or foot allows us to experience our islands in a way a car doesn't," he said. "Better Journeys Week helps us to engage with our environment and the world around us whilst we commute, rather than rushing past it."
He added: "We invite all islanders to enjoy their island homes in this way by taking part in Better Journeys Week."
It is, when one stops to think about it, an awfully good point. The Channel Islands are not a stretch of motorway. They are coastline, hedgerow, the sudden surprise of a sea view between two cottages. None of which is best appreciated through a windscreen at twenty-five miles an hour.
A modest proposal
Whether the great skipping experiment will catch on beyond the islands remains to be seen. One imagines the City of London is unlikely to break into hopscotch any time soon. But there is something quietly heartening about a community asking itself, in all seriousness, whether the morning commute might be improved by a bit of a bounce.
Reader, it almost certainly would.
