These are the worst of times in so many ways, but maybe there has never been a better time for me to ditch the car and start cycling the 15 miles into school.

The temperature is ideal. There’s plenty of daylight. The roads are quieter than usual.

It’s also what we hope some of our pupils will now do, if the route seems safe enough, to create more space on school buses.

So it would be a gesture of support to others now taking to the saddle.

What’s more, this job has taken me along so many other new and unfamiliar paths since March, even before beginning teaching in school again and operating all day inside my own allocated “pod”.

One more change to the daily routine really won’t make much difference to me.

Abnormal is the new normal, as we all say now. Blended teaching, blended commuting - why not?  

Joining the gang

In fact, I think cycling to and from school could be just what I need to help me get through the next few strained and confined weeks of teaching.

After a day of staying safe inside my designated bubble, it will give me a deeper than usual sense of freedom at both ends of the day.  

Besides, I have long envied the summer-term cyclists on the staff.

They have always seemed more relaxed and positive than the rest of us, the early-morning air and exercise seeming to uplift and prepare them better for whatever the day might have in store.

Many of them speak dreamily of the serenity of early-morning summer cycling - the colours, smells, birdsong and occasional wildlife sightings.

For others, it’s plainly more about athletic performance, bike technology and trying to beat personal bests.

Either way, you sense the exhilaration within.

Making do 

That said, I am not sure my journey is going to go quite so smoothly. My own bicycle belongs to an older technological age.

Bought secondhand in the mid ‘90s, it is a black, little-known Bulgarian model that perhaps turned a few heads in the streets of Sofia, back in the day.

I am not so sure how it is going to feel about the daily 30-mile round trip I am considering. Like an underwalked dog, it is about 10 times further than it is used to travelling.  

One major pothole could spell the end.

How is that rusting frame going to feel about having panniers attached to it for the first time ever, loaded up to the brim and beyond?  

I am one of those rather disorganised teachers who often has a lengthy fight to fit everything into the back of a car, let alone on to the back of a bicycle.

I mean, where is a teacher’s standard-issue crate of marking supposed to go? On a trailer?  

It’ll be a laugh

But I’m hoping that even the most embarrassing of personal cycling calamities will be scarcely noticed in school right now.

Life there is going to be so uniquely strange, people so preoccupied. News of a colleague’s bicycle falling apart, or of his exercise books falling off and getting lost in a ditch somewhere along the B4027, will barely register on anyone’s radar.   

It won’t even matter much if I occasionally forget to pack a change of clothes and have to spend the entire day teaching in my rather lurid and oversized cycling onesie.

This spectacle might not bring the desired cheer to my own day but it would definitely brighten up the day for my young pod dwellers.

Stephen Petty is head of humanities at Lord Williams’s School in Thame, Oxfordshire