"You can feel the air," said Vera Westlake as she stood and took it all in at the top of the Derwent Valley. "You can feel the outdoorness of it all."

Vera was describing her experience of a cycle ride around the Ladybower, Derwent and Howden reservoirs last Saturday.

Vera's visual impairment means she can see things right in front of her and a little at the sides but nothing far away. Nevertheless, with the aid of a sighted 'pilot', she is perfectly able to help pedal a tandem for a dozen or so miles through the Peak District.

"Oh, the fresh air, the company, the lovely place, the whole thing," she said, after lunch with her 15 colleagues at Slippery Stones. "It's wonderful."

Sheffield's Visually Impaired Walking Group has 100 members, including blind and visually impaired people and around 60 sighted guides.

Last year group members and regular cyclists Charlotte and Jon Fyne decided to offer an alternative to the regular walks by organising a pack of tandem riders to steer the ramblers along the Porter Valley.

This year the Fynes elected to take the tandemists to Ladybower, along with Steve Marsden, the local CTC Cycling Development Officer (aka Sheffield's Cycling Champion), who transported tandems and several cycles to Fairholmes thanks to a van and trailer from Recycle Bikes at Heeley.

"I thought it was a great idea," he said, "because I knew the blind people who were to take part would get a huge amount of enjoyment out of cycling around Ladybower."

"Visually impaired people often don't have the opportunity to have the exhilaration of riding a bike unless it's on the back of a tandem," said Charlotte Fyne.

"And being part of something like this gives people fortunate enough to be sighted the feelgood factor. So everyone's a winner."

The tandem squadron were certainly making an impression on the other walkers and cyclists of Ladybower as they swept along, none too quietly.

"You get a relationship going when you're on a tandem," said teenager Karlos Bingham from Recycle Bikes, who was steering SVIWP volunteer Lily Gray on her first cycle ride for more than 30 years. "When there's two of you, you talk to each other and learn all about each other. Lily was good to say she hadn't been on a bike for so long."

VIPs have different levels of eyesight and volunteer tandem 'pilots' need to work out what their visually impaired 'stoker' behind them actually needs to know.

"We've just gone past a man in a Borat costume," said Steve Mardsen to Vera Westlake, his 82-year-old stoker. "He was on a bike in one of those green mankinis.

Not a pretty sight."

Charlotte advised that it's often nice for pilots to describe the surrounding landscape, Borats or no Borats, and it's also worth pointing out tricky road conditions.(At least one inexperienced tandem pilot seemed to be finding every bump and pothole, as his stoker womanfully tried to carry on the conversation interspersed with regular 'oofs' and 'woaahs').

"It's good to do something different," said Hannah Burley, the stoker in question. "It is a bit nerve-wracking leaving the steering and everything to someone else but you are involved doing this, you're not just a passive observer."

"You can feel the wind on your face, you can feel the heat and smell the water and you can feel the speed when you're going round," said Lee Teasdale-Smith. "You can sense lots of different things. The individual experience depends on what your sight is."

Eric Andrews, for example, was able to cycle on his own as long as he had a brightly coloured guide to follow on the traffic-free road, as his eyesight is fine peripherally but not so good at the centre of his vision. "It's stimulating to have a little bit of freedom," he said. "I've tried cycling in the gym but it's boring. With this you get exercise plus you're out in the countryside."

Hannah Burley, who works as a rehab officer for a charity for the blind, said: "It's a real benefit to people, because they get to do something they might have thought they would never do again and to do it somewhere where they know they'll be safe."

After his ride teenager Jonathan Heenan was ready to take his tandeming a stage further.

"I'm going away to Hereford College now but I'd like to take it up there and compete," he said.

He'd heard that the special college for people with a visual impairment boasts the chance to train as a competitive tandem stoker.

"I think one guy took it up and in two years he became a gold medallist. And if he can do it, then I can have a go at it, too…"

lIt's hoped that a regular VIP tandem riding group can be set up in Sheffield and organisers say that more volunteer tandems and tandem pilots will be needed for the next ride, hopefully around Christmas. Contact Steve Marsden on 2500613 or steve.marsden@ctc.org.uk