Studies from Purdue University in the US have shown that regular cycling can cut your risk of heart disease by 50 per cent. And according to the British Heart Foundation, around 10,000 fatal heart attacks could be avoided each year if people kept themselves fitter.

Cycling just 20 miles a week reduces your risk of heart disease to less than half that of those who take no exercise, it says.

Lose weight by riding your bike

Loads of people who want to shift some heft think that heading out for a jog is the best way to start slimming down. But while running does burn a ton of fat, it’s not kind to you if you’re a little larger than you’d like to be.

Think about it: two to three times your body weight goes crashing through your body when your foot strikes the ground. If you weigh 16 stone that’s a lot of force!

Instead, start out on a bike. Most of your weight is taken by the saddle, so your skeleton doesn’t take a battering. Running can wait…

Avoid pollution

You’d think a city cyclist would suck up much more pollution than the drivers and passengers in the vehicles chucking out the noxious gases. Not so, according to a study carried out by Imperial College London.

Researchers found that passengers in buses, taxis and cars inhaled substantially more pollution than cyclists and pedestrians.

On average, taxi passengers were exposed to more than 100,000 ultrafine particles – which can settle in the lungs and damage cells – per cubic centimetre. Bus passengers sucked up just under 100,000 and people in cars inhaled about 40,000.

Cyclists, meanwhile, were exposed to just 8,000 ultrafine particles per cubic centimetre. It’s thought that cyclists breathe in fewer fumes because we ride at the edge of the road and, unlike drivers, aren’t directly in the line of exhaust smoke.