Flying with Brompton

7 September 2026

As an answer to the writing club prompt: What is your most prized possession? And why that item?

My foldable Brompton bicycle sprang to mind immediately. Really? I thought. Surely, there is something more precious, maybe more expensive or irreplaceable that I own. But nothing – not my wedding ring or some old photographs – felt quite right. It must really be my Brompton after all!

Why is that? It is not about cost; it is about a relationship. I have a relationship with my Brompton – we have been together for many years, seen many things together. Or actually, I have seen and done many things that I would not be able to without it.

I guess all my bicycles have been very precious to me. Even the ones that are long gone have their little corner in my heart, and I never forgot my relationships with them. I even knew I would love every single one of them since before knowing how to ride or having a bike! Sitting on the top tube of my dad’s bike on little village trips I imagined the freedom it would give me. It would almost be like flying.

There is my (our) very first one, the blue BMX that dad got for me and my brother. I learnt to ride with it. It made my world bigger. I could reach the rail lines at the end of the village. I could try to make the longest possible mark on the road! And, most importantly, it actually was like flying.

Then there is the red bike, which I got after pestering my dad for two days straight when he bought a new bike for my older brother for his birthday. Woah, 24 gears! Which apparently meant only 10 cogs!? It said 24! That was my first encounter with the world of marketing at 8 years old. We were now the cool kids in the village, but I do not remember caring about that. I do remember, however, how smooth it rode the first few days. Then the constant tinkering to keep the rattling away to achieve the perfect ride. And sometimes I managed to!

Then, we moved to the city. I was ten. The bikes stayed behind, and I did not have a bike for nine years. Bicycles are toys, right? You ride them as a kid, but not really to get to places as a teen or an adult, right? I found it so normal that I did not have a bike as a teenager. Nobody around had one. So many people are missing out!

Then I moved abroad for undergraduate studies. And everyone rode bicycles! On the second day there, I bought my first bike. I bought it. It felt like having wings again. Like the BMX many years ago, the Schwinn unlocked the world to me. But I was a teenager, and I wanted speed. My Schwinn handed off its duties to my first road bike, Gravity.

Gravity showed me Boston, New York and later parts of France and the UK when I moved again and again. In my mind, I can still see the fields of Brittany that I cycled through on Gravity to enjoy a croissant at a bakery in the next village.

By the time we arrived in the UK, Gravity was tired and we parted ways. And I, rather than wanting to go fast, wanted to go slow. And it so happened that it was the red Brompton that took its place.

It’s morning. I lift my Brompton from its seat, take it out of the apartment and into the lift. By the time we are on the ground floor, Brompton is assembled. And when I jump on it each morning, the little kid who rode a BMX many years ago smiles. I am flying on my Brompton, holding its lovely little ear-like handlebars, just like I was flying when riding along with my dad, sitting on the top tube. Brompton gives me all I ask of it, and I know not to ask too much. After all, there is only so much that its little 16-inch wheels can handle. And that is more than enough!