We live in a city in the UK – Sheffield. It is fairly hilly city for the UK. Although in other parts of the world I imagine it would be regarded as quite flat.

The thing with hills is that they create daily dilemmas in our car-free-dom for how to move around. But why I hear you ask? Well the main reason is that going up hill makes your body work harder – which is a great feeling – but does mean you sweat.

What this means is that the choice of walking or cycling – or possibly public transport – to get around does involve the dilemma of sweat versus speed. Although with the steepness of some of the streets walking up then is not so much slower than cycling them.

Our house is quite well up one of Sheffield’s hills so you know that if you have cycled when you get back home you are going to need a shower. This is all fine of course but it does mean that you need to think about whether whatever you are doing is more in need of speed or not being sweaty.

On many occasions I do choose to walk as unless I need to go a more than a couple of miles walking is often more straightforward. When I add in getting my bike out, using my panniers instead of my normal bag, plus the possible need for change of t-shirt on arrival – walking often wins.

It’s a nice dilemma to have in car-free-dom – walking or cycling – without the hills cycling would definitely be a more frequent choice. There is of course the possible e-bike option but that’s a whole other dilemma to consider.