That’s one giant leap for mankind and one small step for drivers in Swindon, the roadworks capital of the world.

When history was being made last Wednesday, I was trying to get home, hopeful of catching coverage of the first ever landing on a comet on the news. But we were going nowhere.

About 300 million miles away, space travel was being made to look easy by a project that owed something to Swindon, being the headquarters of the UK Space Agency, which is part of the ‘mothership’ of the European Space Agency that pulled off the miracle.

But getting from A to B in Swindon was proving rather more difficult.

While Rosetta and its probe Philae were whizzing along with the comet at 34,000mph, on Drakes Way we were doing 0.5mph.

My passenger and I had been to a meeting together and it was my turn to drive. Otherwise I would have been on my bike, and as we crawled along for an hour between Queens Drive and Greenbridge, I pointed out that if I had been on my bike I would have already been home.

As readers of this column will know, I have recently gone through something of a second childhood by rediscovering the joys of cycling.

I haven’t had so much fun since I finally managed to get rid of those stabilizers, so now I never jump in the car if cycling is an option.

And it has never seemed a better option than it does today. Today is the day when work is scheduled to begin at Greenbridge on a torturous five-months-long project to replace the bridge and begin the modernisation of the railway line.

But before electrification comes the mortification of any motorist thinking of crossing the no-man’s-land between Swindon and Stratton.

You just know they are going to be tearing out their hair and banging their steering wheels. The scene will be the same at Bruce Street Bridges as they queue to get through there over the coming months.

And we don’t even know what other smaller digs the Swindon Borough Council Time Team have planned for other roads around the town, like their recent excavations in Northern Road, Akers Way, Drakes Way, Cricklade Road and others. But if this sounds like it is going to be a Council-bashing moan, complaining that they seem to be doing all the roadworks at once, let me say that for the able-bodied majority, Swindon has an excellent alternative.

The next time you are sat in a traffic jam, and a cyclist – possibly me – goes sailing past you, consider joining us. Let’s face it – you’ll have plenty of time to think about it.

As far as we are concerned, there is no such thing as a traffic jam, and although we may sometimes come up against the odd roadworks, it’s usually easy to find a quick alternative route, or we can get round it by getting off and walking for a few seconds.

There has never been a better time to discover the network of cycle paths that criss-cross the town, and find out how quickly and easily you can get to places on your bike.

I usually reckon that it takes about twice as long to cycle anywhere in Swindon than it does to drive, but over the next few months I’m expecting to sometimes arrive sooner than drivers, and always much happier - and I’m not even going to mention the many other benefits of cycling.