It takes Sarah Cain, a medical secretary at the Callington Road hospital in Bristol, 40 minutes to get to work. Correction: it took Sarah Cain 40 minutes to get to work – until the day we speak, when it took 16 minutes. Because Cain, who previously walked to work, has got herself a bike. “It was a bit nerve-racking,” she tells me on the phone. “It’s been years since I’ve been on a bicycle.”

But she set off early, the weather was fine and she knows the route. “I had my helmet on and a bright jacket,” she says. “I might be a bit shaky in more traffic. You see a lot more families out on bikes and that gets your confidence up a little bit.” She is determined to carry on: she knows it is good for her and good for Bristol. “I’m not going to be in the Lycra brigade, I’m just going to be your bog-standard cyclist.”

On a bog-standard cycle. Cain paid £100 for hers, secondhand, at Briscycle, a local independent bike shop. She is very happy with it – and with Briscycle. Andrew Bebesi, who runs the shop with his wife, Julianna, says it has been crazy during lockdown. “We were working really hard over the past few years and it was just about pootling along,” he says. “Now we’ve got too many bikes to fix and too few to sell.”

Moving premises to a busier street has had something to do with it, but Bebesi, who is originally from Hungary, is in no doubt that the pandemic and lockdown – less traffic, anxiety about using public transport, the need to exercise – have been the big drivers towards the bike shop boom. He refers to the time before Covid-19 as “peacetime”.

He has taken on three more people; there are six of them now. Bebesi works 16-hour, sometimes 18-hour, days; they get 70 to 80 phone calls. When he is not talking to customers looking for bikes, or attempting to book a service, Bebesi is trying to source parts. “I just managed to secure a load of chains. There is panic-buying now in the bike trade, because there is an enormous number of bicycles to be repaired.”

If you are a key worker, Bebesi will give you a service quickly; otherwise you have to wait for up to two weeks. Any bikes he gets in sell fast. “Last Saturday, we sold eight bikes in 20 minutes,” he says. “As soon as we opened the door, they were just pulling the bikes out.”

These are secondhand bikes, reconditioned with warranties, like Sarah Cain’s. Bebesi also sells new bikes – he is Bristol’s sole distributor of the GT brand. But he sold out of them two months ago and has not been able to get in any more stock. He hopes he might get some in August. 

Bebesi and Cain’s experiences are reflective of the whole cycling industry. Sport England’s figures indicate a doubling of cycling in lockdown, with the number of people riding at least once a week increasing from 8% to 16% in the seven weeks after 23 March. Steve Garidis, the executive director of the Bicycle Association, the body that represents the industry in the UK, says the numbers for the lockdown period are still being crunched, but “initial indications are that sales in April rose significantly compared with the seasonal average”. Sales of bikes worth less than £500 “appear to have been especially strong”, he adds. 

Sigma Sports, a bike shop in south-west London, reported a 677% rise in year-on-year sales of entry-level bikes for April. Online sales of Brompton folding bikes have increased fivefold since the beginning of April. Graham Stapleton, the CEO of the UK’s biggest bike retailer, Halfords, says the company has seen “increased demand across the board. Sales of women’s bikes are now outperforming men’s and there’s been a surge in demand for small-wheeled children’s bikes, too, suggesting that families with young children are also turning to cycling to keep fit.”

At the other end of the scale, my local bike shop, Sparks, a small, family-run independent in Harlesden, north-west London, is almost out of new bikes. “It went ballistic in terms of how many people came in looking for budget bikes,” says Sat Patel, who has run Sparks for 30 years. “We only hold a small amount of stock anyway and as soon as I ran out I couldn’t replenish. Being a small independent, we get a very little piece of the pie.” At the moment, he has only a couple of mid-range and higher-end road bikes available, for £700 and £1,000. 

Sparks is the only shop I visit while researching this article; it is a 10-minute ride for me. When it became clear that bike shops could remain open under lockdown, Patel initially had some concerns about his and his family’s safety (his daughter is helping out on the day I drop by). But he has a system that works: the back of the shop is closed to customers, with only one allowed in the shop at a time. 

Although he has hardly any bikes to sell, he is busy repairing and servicing. There are several bikes in the back of the shop, awaiting treatment, and a steady stream of customers. While I am there, Marco from Italy picks up his bike, the broken pedal now fixed. There is a bike shop nearer his home, he says, but the wait for repairs was too long.

Sparks doesn’t take bookings – you just show up and leave your bike in the queue. If I left mine today for a service, I would get it back in between a week and two weeks’ time, much sooner if I were a key worker. “I’ve heard stories that in some shops they’re telling people 10 weeks,” says Patel. 

Three hundred and thirty miles north, in the Corstorphine area of Edinburgh, is Hart’s Cyclery. Too far to pedal from London, even for a newly super-fit cyclist, but you can tell it is busy, from the clanking and shouting, even on the phone. Now is not a great time to talk, says Graeme Hart, the owner. Can I call back after six?

Even then there is plenty of background activity, but they have locked the door – no more customers today. Hart describes the listing of bike shops as essential business during lockdown as “probably the single most significant thing in the bike trade for the last 30 years”.

The shop offers servicing and repairs as well as selling a range of new bikes, including e-bikes, which now make up about a third of sales (in numbers; it is more in revenue, as the cheapest e-bike on offer costs £1,600). Hart reckons business has at least doubled from normal times, although he hasn’t had time to sit down and work it out. “A real cross-section of people have been coming in, mostly new customers, people I’ve never seen before, rediscovering their bikes or buying bikes for the first time.”

He has even got some new bikes to sell, because the Dutch brand Gazelle has reopened its factory. “There’s a trickle of stock – you’ve got to be in there quick.”

Hart knew, amid the general doom and gloom, that his business would probably be all right. “I thought: people are still gonna want to ride their bikes, I figured kids would want to ride their bikes because all other activities were closed. So I thought it would be busy. But I didn’t expect it to be quite as wild as it has been.”

Will the bonanza last, though? Does Britain’s nascent love affair with the bicycle have the momentum to carry it over the hills ahead and become significant and permanent? Duncan Dollimore, the head of campaigns at the charity Cycling UK, says: “For years, people have said: ‘Don’t talk about Holland – we won’t cycle in the UK because it’s too hilly, it’s too wet, it’s just not in our culture,’” he says. “But we’ve had this massive social experiment over the past three months; people have had to think again about the way they travel and we’ve had the doubling of the number of people cycling. It shows there is a latent demand to do it, but only if people feel safe.”

It has felt safe, even for families, without the traffic. “That’s why it’s not just bike sales that have gone through the roof; it’s entry-level bike sales,” says Dollimore. “It’s people buying entry-level bikes for day-to-day journeys or with the kids. It shows there is a demand for it.”

But with lockdown easing and motor traffic picking up, the roads are already becoming less nice places for those on two wheels. That is why there is a need to act right now.

There is money. The Department of Transport has allocated £225m for temporary cycle space in English regions. It is down to local authorities to put in the infrastructure, such as pop-up cycle lanes to separate bikes from cars and lorries. Some work has been done. A lot more needs to happen, and fast, says Dollimore. “In another month, time will be running out – traffic will be increasing, people won’t be able to use public transport. There’s an urgent need to act, otherwise people who can’t use public transport will choose to get in the car again. Get on with it or the moment will have gone and we will have lost this opportunity to have this once-in-a-lifetime change to the way people move around urban areas.”

Back in Edinburgh, Hart agrees. “It’s obvious we can’t all drive cars for ever more. To have sustainable places to live and work, we need more people on bikes and I think this has brought that into a sharp focus.”

If the Netherlands is Dollimore’s bugbear, then Denmark is Hart’s. “There is this thing in the UK: that it’s rainy, it’s cold, there’re hills, the usual fallacies that get trotted out. Copenhagen has got an unbelievable level of cycling and it’s Baltic there.” 

Yeah, but Copenhagen doesn’t have the hills of Edinburgh, does it? “Going east-west it’s not that hilly; there are loads of journeys you can do that aren’t that hilly.” There you go: only travel east-west in Edinburgh. And if you do need to go north-south, you could always buy one of Hart’s e-bikes. (For £1,600.)

Finally, to London – and one more lockdown returnee to the saddle. Monica Reus is an A&E nurse at Chelsea and Westminster hospital. Her bike had been gathering dust and cobwebs in the corner of her flat. “I was not very confident in the London traffic,” she says. “Also, I didn’t really have the will.”

But with Reus working in a hospital during the pandemic, she worried about infecting other people on the bus or the tube. As an NHS worker, she is entitled to free membership of Cycling UK, which gives her third-party liability and legal assistance, so she dusted off the bike. “At first, it was really scary, because I’m not very good at cycling. But it got much better, to the point where I am cycling to every shift and even on my days off. I did my first 60km ride on Sunday. I do enjoy it; I feel healthier, my mood is better, I feel like I don’t need to depend on the tube and I don’t have to worry about infecting anyone or touching anyone around me.”

What about in November, when it is sure to be Baltic? “Maybe I will, with a wetsuit,” she says, laughing. Ha! I think Reus, who is Spanish, means waterproofs. But maybe not: her English is excellent. Maybe, in fact, a wetsuit is the answer.