This week I would like you to consider, if you will, my wife’s bottom.

I don’t think I’ve ever written about it before, but… well, you can’t put these things off forever.

The bottom in question could be said to have undergone an epiphany in the last few weeks, because I have finally persuaded my wife to join me in taking up cycling as a hobby, and so far the bottom isn’t complaining.

For years my wife refused to get on her bike, citing the classic excuse that people - and especially those with female bottoms - invariably resort to.

“Cycling gives me a sore bum.”

What she really meant was: sometime in the dim and distant past, after once riding for hours, it got a little uncomfortable, so she made up her mind that nobody had yet made a saddle big enough or soft enough to provide the necessary protection for the now-famous bottom.

As serious cyclists will tell you - and I have been telling her for years - bottoms are more likely to be suffering because a saddle is too big than too small.

It’s not often that my wife admits that she was wrong and I was right, but after buying a new (secondhand) bike and giving it a try, she has reluctantly accepted that I may have had a point about bottoms and saddles after all.

I am also being proved right about hills, which is the second excuse people use for not getting on their bikes.

If you want to reap the benefits of cycling, you have to get used to the fact that you can’t go far without having to pedal uphill.

But that’s the reason God gave us gears.

Fortunately, most modern bikes have more gears than some politicians have brain cells, and - rather like a certain orange president - it’s amazing how low they will go.

Besides, the joy of cycling is that for every little struggle uphill, you are rewarded with a downhill, to say nothing of the satisfaction you had from reaching the top.

Excuse number three for would-be cyclists who are stuck on the couch is: it’s dangerous, and it is true that you do need your wits about you.

But being unfit is dangerous too, and while there are a few crazy drivers on the roads who have no concern or respect for anybody but themselves, we are grateful that the vast majority are considerate, courteous and careful.

It also has to be said that while some people are quick to knock Swindon, one of the things it has going for it is a magnificent network of cycle paths that mean you don’t have to venture out into the traffic very often, and perhaps barely at all if you are prepared to take a less direct route.

These days, many of those paths are full of potholes, but they are still an asset that we should make the most of, and should invest in.

The moral of all this is: let your brain make the decisions, not your bottom, and don’t let other preconceptions put you off.

And this coming weekend is the time to find out more because Swindon Cyclefest is taking place at the County Ground athletics track on Sunday, between 9am and 4pm. I am volunteering to help out at this free event, and there will also be plenty of experts to talk about getting back into cycling.

The organisers are trying to get across the fact that there are lots of different types of bike, and one to suit everybody, so there is a saddle waiting for you.

And that’s the bottom line.