Although I consider cycling my primary mode of transport, you may be surprised to know I have also owned a car for eight years.

Like most young adults, as soon as I had passed the driving test (and it took me three agonising attempts) I wanted to own a car.

I bought what I could afford – a small Fiat Uno which had serious problems from the outset and I really got my money’s worth out of the RAC on that one.

Now we own an estate, and, apart from the odd weekend in Cornwall, it’s primary use in life is to move muddy bicycles around.

You see we don’t treat that car well, heck... we don’t even want it.

It is needed for business and that’s it. But interestingly, with the onset of the hot weather it has gone on strike. It decided it would start overheating once it reached 30mph.

So, off it went to the local garage... and it hasn’t been seen for a month.

So, how are we coping?

Well, typically, as soon as you are without the thing that you take for granted, numerous obstacles pop up to remind you what you’re missing.

We have had to rearrange deliveries, we have paid for taxis (a rare occurrence) and we have managed to persuade friends and family to run around on our behalf – all in the name of business.

But personally, we have not missed it.

Well... that is until last Sunday when we were given two lovely sofas for our newly decorated front room.

‘Hmmm...’ we said to each other while scratching our heads over our dilemma; ‘How do we shift those without a car?’ Fortunately, we are also quite lucky to have an oversized bike trailer which pulls up to four hire bikes at a time.

Now it was going to be put to the ultimate test; could it cope with a couple of sofas?

Tentatively, we loaded one on and set off across North Oxford.

It was that time of the evening when many locals had had a few cold beers and were sitting outside pubs enjoying the evening.

There were double takes aplenty, and we even raised cheers from some surprised Jericho residents.

Being without the estate has really made me reassess our need for a motor vehicle. You see, even when faced with the ultimate challenge of home improvement, we have managed to find a way to do it by bike.

I have started to look into car share schemes, which I think are a great idea for irregular users of cars, but which wouldn’t be feasible considering what we would be using it for. Unfortunately, they don’t even have tow bars, which would enable us just to own a trailer.

So, even though we would love to leave the sad old estate to its retirement it has to come back.

Business necessitates it, even though, as I have realised, personal life doesn’t – even when you’re doing up a house....