Forgive me for being unbearably smug but I'm having no trouble at all in getting about this week in spite of the petrol shortage.

I'm pootling about on my push bike exactly as I have been over the last half century.

It's even better than usual as a picture on the front of yesterday's Argus showed. For while I'm normally breathing in fumes from some of the 30,000 cars a day which use the A259 coast road between Hove and Brighton, there are now sometimes none to be seen.

It was bliss to be alive on the day when the petrol shortage really began to bite.

I've been longing for this moment ever since the oil crisis of the Seventies raised false expectations that petrol would eventually run out.

For far too long we have allowed ourselves to be in thrall to cars. They provide freedom for some but at the expense of others and when there are too many, that freedom is denied to everyone.

They kill thousands of people a year and maim many more. They pollute millions more. They cause the most frightful noise and inconvenience. By contrast, bikes hardly hurt anyone and are pollution free.

Unless the fuel dispute is settled, I'm going to find some unexpected partners pounding along with me along the seafront cycle lane later this week on my morning ride into work. I hope many of them will be regulars as they see how pleasant town centres can be when cars are tamed.

I can tell them they'll enjoy it. The wind's usually behind you (on the way in at least). The track is uncrowded and if you're half asleep, the corrugated paving will soon jolt you into life. In the morning rush hour, it's usually at least as fast by bike as the cars start queuing on the approach to Brighton and you don't get stuck at any of the lights.

There are disadvantages to cycling.

It can and does rain, although the number of real soakings are reckoned by experienced riders to be only about eight a year. Brighton is a hilly town and some of the slopes such as those leading up to the racecourse seem to go on for ever. Sussex is full of steep hills.

The cycle lanes are fine but there are some disconcerting gaps, especially in the most dangerous parts of town such as in Old Steine and at the Vogue Gyratory. While cycling's quick in town and riders nearly always win the annual commuter challenge, it's slower on longer journeys.

I was once sent by my news editor to interview someone not on the phone about 20 miles away in Lower Beeding. It took me two hours and he was out.

But cycling's the most efficient way of travelling under your own steam on land.

What's more, it's free. People say you can't carry anything by bike but I take home groceries costing £60 each week from Tesco in Portslade and once, using a trailer, moved a lodger with all his wordly goods to a new flat. It all fell off just before we got there but we made it without damage to the contents, which included a bed and wardrobe.

You can keep pretty fit on a bike. I cover about 3,000 miles a year on my sundry steeds which range from a sports bike to a tandem. I can still hustle up a hill (provided it's not too long) and soaring down one at 30 or 40 miles an hour is still one of the greatest pleasures around.

Bikes last for ever provided they're not nicked and I still have one given to me second-hand half a century ago which runs as sweetly as the day it was made - that is to say, not very.