Oh how times have changed. This time last year it was impossible to get the boys off their bikes; I had to hurl myself in front of them suffragette-style just to get them to come in for dinner.
But we're living in the football days now, and the bikes have been dumped like the velveteen rabbit in concrete shoes down the canal. In fact, in my more maudlin moments, I come over a bit velveteen rabbit myself; the four men in my life would happily play/watch/talk football from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep, and it is only politeness that forces them to occasionally break off – "sorry mum" – from a gripping discussion of Bundesliga versus Premier League to discuss a subject to which I might be able to contribute. The bikes and I, I occasionally feel, are embarrassing hangers-on, too slow and needy to realise that, really, our day has gone.
This weekend, however, I have managed to prise open a football window, and into it I have inserted a bike ride. A huge amount of scurrying round sorting bikes now becomes necessary; the boys' bikes are either too small or horribly neglected, but with a bit of borrowing and pumping and oiling we've got a full cast again.
The boys are lying prone on the sofas after Saturday morning football practice; I announce my plans and, to my amazement, get enthusiasm. Our chosen route is the very recently completed Sustrans coastal bike lane between Hastings and Bexhill, and my husband has voted himself the designated driver. He and my (football-) injured middle son will drop Sam (oldest boy at 11), Noah (Sam's friend), Joe (youngest, 7) and me off in Hastings, then meet us in Bexhill. I can hardly believe I'm getting away with it.
Everyone falls a little silent as we arrive in Hastings. As EV Lucas wrote dampeningly a few decades ago: "Hastings has been very nigh to history more than once, but she has escaped the actual making of it." Forget the glorious name: William the Conqueror actually landed 10 miles down the coast at Pevensey, while the famous battle took place seven miles to the north; and although it was named one of the crucial Cinque Ports in 1155, the harbour was washed away in the 17th century. Hastings has since settled down as a fishing town, with occasional stabs at seaside town modishness.
The latest of these – a big push over the past decade to establish Hastings as the alternative Brighton – has, we can see, washed back from the high tide mark now. The seafront buildings are peeling, unloved; the seafront seems limpingly sad and neglected. "Now that you look at it, it's not all that grand," says Joe thoughtfully. We unload our bikes. The cursed pier – opened, shut, reopened, then burned down – is a reproach.
But it's sunny! The only good thing about our terrible English weather is how pathetically joyful you feel when the sun comes out, and even flaking Hastings can't daunt us; we all pedal off happily down the front which, it is clear, is fantastic for cyclists. Joe races down the lovely wide bike lane, taking great pleasure in cutting up the photographer. Behind us, Noah and Sam chunter along like old ladies, chatting away to each other and going so slowly their bikes are weaving. We are nearly clear of Hastings when the boys spot an ice-cream van and we have one of many unscheduled stops. Noah gets brainfreeze. Joe, the slowest of ice-cream eaters at any time, can't eat his because "it's too chunky". I help out – I'm a very loving and supportive mother – and finally we clear Hastings and bump our way on to the section of shingle beach that has been paved with a swanky new material called Netpave – a sort of plastic netting that holds the stones down while we speed over them.
And here a lovely kind of peace descends. The cars and the road swing away from us, and it's just us, the walkers and the dogs, all gently proceeding along the prosaically named route 2. It's a dull moniker for a wonderful dream – that one day there will be bike lanes all the way from Dover to Land's End (route 1 is a similar fantasy, running up along the east coast of the country) and the good people at Sustrans have been working like dogs to achieve it since 1994. "We thought it would be done in 2000, and then we thought 2005, but now we're talking about 2014," says Simon Pratt, Sustrans' south-east regional director. "There are a few sections in West Sussex and further along that are proving hard to organise. But you can pretty much get from Dover to Dorset now."
The smell of hedgerows, cow parsley, nettles and wild garlic trails us. The sun is out and warm on our shoulders. The cycle trail is lined with buttercups, brambles and gorse and we coast along contentedly (it's a pretty flat ride), before descending gently into Bexhill, which is decked out in full British seaside splendour. Families juggle windbreaks, buggies and grandmas, a weightlifter whips off his T-shirt to show us his oiled and glistening chest, and two boys are using the sticks of their nets as light sabers – the great British public at play.
Ahead are Mike and Ben, surprised to see us so soon. The eleven-year-olds, conscious of their advanced ages, groan and collapse on the grass as if they've been jostling Bradley Wiggins. But Joe's dander is up. "Can we go all the way to Brighton, mum? Can we go to Dorset?" Not this time. But I think I've taken back a little turf here. Take that, football!
• This article was amended on 1 July 2013. An earlier version said that Hastings pier had been struck by lightning and shut for good. The pier was burned down in 2010, but the cause was not lightning, and there are plans to rebuild and restore it.
