Bryony Gordon visits a motorcycle training school that uses the feminine touch to teach women how to ride
The headquarters of Alison Grade's motorcycle training school is unlike any other driving centre I have seen. Set in her south-west London home, it is festooned with neon-pink, high-visibility riding bibs and cerise T-shirts emblazoned with her company's logo. It is all fabulously feminine. That's because Alison's company is called Girls Angels, and its rider training programme has been designed by women, for women.

Girls Angels is the result of Alison's own frustrating experience of getting on two wheels. While working in television production two years ago, she decided to get her motorcycle licence after becoming irritated by London's public transport system. She found the training she received less than encouraging and not entirely female-friendly. But worse was to come when she finally went out to buy a bike: "Nobody bothered to discuss seat height with me, which is a fantastically important issue. If you're over 5ft 6in, which most men are, you can pretty much buy any bike on the market, but a lot of women aren't that height and don't have that luxury. If I'd known then what I know now, I wouldn't have bought the bike I did."

When her bike needed servicing, she found that mechanics would be dismissive. "I don't know whether it was because I was female, but it got me thinking that it would be so nice if a woman could learn to ride a bike in a relaxed environment and ask all the stupid questions that boys already seem to know the answers to."

And so, last November, Girls Angels was born, with the aim of teaching women a "safe but fun" way to ride. "It's not just about instructing them to pass the test," says Alison. "It's about showing them how to enjoy riding motorcycles."

Girls Angels already has 12 bikes and scooters and, judging by the full "trophy board" (it is a ritual for those who pass their test to sign their L-plate and stick it on one of Alison's kitchen walls), a high success rate.

That's probably because Girls Angels provides perfectly tailored training for women. Alison, 32, believes "women learn in a different way to men. Most guys have at least sat on a bike before — and any experience is valuable — so they tend to be quite happy to start up the engine before they've worked out where the brakes are. But women want to digest every piece of information about where the controls are. They're a bit slower to get moving, although once they get there they're just as good. But at some point you are going to have decide who goes through the Compulsory Basic Training, and in mixed classes it's usually the boys. We didn't want to do that because it feels really uncomfortable, and what we are about is providing a supportive environment in which to learn."

The Girls Angels instructors are male and female — European law states that anything else would be discriminatory — but Alison doesn't think it matters. "It's not about the sex of the instructor, it's about their enthusiasm and how they relate to the people they are training. As long as they care passionately about bikes and can share that with their students, their gender really doesn't matter."

Her instructors are also briefed to dispense advice on how to buy a motorcycle. Alison believes "there's a reason why someone wants a bike licence, and that's to get a bike at the end of it", and she doesn't want anyone to receive the pitiful information she was given.

Soon after it opened, Girls Angels started to receive calls from men who were desperate to receive the school's unique, machismo-free brand of teaching, so Alison set up a brother company, Angels Rider Training, to cater for them. She has since had a number of male celebrites through her doors, including Emerson, Lake and Palmer guitarist Greg Lake, and Footballer's Wives star Christian Solemino.

Happily, the blokes don't seem to mind wearing the aforementioned pink bibs, despite the fact that they have given rise to a girlie nickname, as Alison explains: "Other training schools and examiners call us `The Pink Ladies'. But the bibs make us far more visible on the road because they are so different from the yellow ones that learner riders usually wear."

Alison also provides her female students with wonderfully feminine but stringently safe protective gear for their training, including a lovely waisted jacket in which, as she says, you could happily go to a bar and meet your friends. "I've seen a woman riding a scooter wearing LK Bennett heels and a skirt so tight that she could hardly sit on the seat properly. We strongly believe that you should get the right kit, and there is some nice stuff out there."

Alison's customers come from as far out of London as Berkshire and Essex, but she hopes that over the coming years she will be able to franchise the company across Britain. For Girls Angels, it seems, the future is bright. Bright pink, that is.

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