Fine line black tattoo of five bicycles in a row across the inside of a forearm, with a plaid shirt blurred in the background.

Five bicycles in a row on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Five small bicycles are drawn in a horizontal row across the forearm, each shown in profile with a simple outline frame, two wheels and a visible saddle and handlebars. The linework is thin and even, with the ink appearing dark grey to black and no shading or colour. The bicycles are spaced evenly and sit centred on the forearm, with a blurred plaid shirt and dark shelving in the background.

Fine line Forearm Bicycle Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ruth had counted the cattle grids on Carrick Gap so many times she could feel them through her boots before the wheels reached them. The first bike had been a green roadster with a wicker basket that rattled over every rise, and it had died on the descent to Thornby with a seized pedal and a sulk. She had walked the rest of that round with the bag on her hip, cursing the sheep under her breath.

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The second was a hand-me-down from the Hewitsons' boy, all bent spokes and a saddle patched with gaffer tape. The third she bought off a man at the Kendal market for eleven pounds and a promise she would never mention him to anyone. The fourth had a motor she was told not to use and never did, because the point of the Gap was the climb, and the climb was the point of her. Each one had carried the same letters over the same wall.

By the spring the fifth was ready, a plain steel frame she had built up from a box of parts at the back of the sorting office. It was lighter than the others and quicker on the bends, and she resented how easily it took the hill. On the last morning of her round she stopped at the summit cairn, where the wind always came in off the west, and sat on the wall with the bag open on her knees.

The letters were for people who had moved away years ago, and she had been carrying them up the Gap anyway, out of habit. She wrote the date on the back of the last one in pencil and slid it back into the bag. Then she freewheeled down towards the valley with her hands off the bars, letting the fifth bike find its own speed.