Learn English on a Bike Ride (comprehensible input)

Learn English on a Bike Ride (comprehensible input)

Come along with me, Chris from Instant English UK, as I hop on my bike in Barcelona’s Raval neighbourhood and cycle all the way to the Forum for a refreshing swim in a beautiful outdoor saltwater pool. Along the way, we’ll stop to see an important sightseeing spot, bump into a friend who joins the ride, and of course—I’ll be teaching you real English naturally in context.

This video uses comprehensible input, which means you’ll learn English the natural way: through real-life situations, clear explanations, and visual context that makes everything easy to understand.

Join my online community (group classes and online course) here : https://linktr.ee/admin

🗣️ In this video, you’ll learn:

🚲 Useful grammar and vocabulary for riding bikes and exploring a city
🌆 How to describe landmarks, streets, and scenery in natural English
👥 Phrases for meeting friends and doing activities together
🎧 British English pronunciation, rhythm, and intonation in context

This is a fun, relaxed way to improve your listening, vocabulary, and fluency—while joining me on a bike ride through Barcelona!

📌 Perfect for intermediate learners (B1) who want to learn naturally, without boring textbooks.

#comprehensibleinput #instantenglishuk #britishenglish #learnenglish

which obviously it’s quite a cone. But yeah, some some idiots here. Look, if you’re not having fun while you’re learning English, you’ll never ever be fluent. And I know what you’re thinking. How can English be fun? Well, firstly, you need to put down that textbook. You’ve done enough grammar. You need to try and do something you enjoy in English. Like, think about your hobbies. Do you play football? Play football in English. Do a bit of painting in English or watch movies in English. Well, that’s what we’re going to do today in this video. We’re going to learn English with my passion, cycling. You are going to come on a bike ride with me and learn English along the way. Firstly, let me tell you the route we’re going to take. We’re going to go from here, the San Antony Market, which is very close to my flat, my apartment. On the map, you should see the route we’re going to take. We are basically going to travel from west to east of Barcelona. We’re going to make some iconic stops along the way and show you a little bit of the city. And finally, we’re going to finish at one of my favorite spots to take a dip, to go for a swim, and that is Forum. Before we get going, let me introduce you to my vehicle for the day, my trusty steed. This is Brenda in all her glory. Now, let me teach you a little bit of English about bicycles. So, this part here, this is called the frame, right? The bike frame, which holds the bicycle together. This frame is made of metal. Up here we have the handlebars which you grip, right? You hold to steer the bicycle in the direction you want to go. And on the handlebars you have the bell, right? This is to warn people that you are coming. I am ringing the bell. Down here we have the wheels, right? The front wheel and the back wheel. On the back wheel, you have the chain. This is the chain. It’s a little bit dirty, but this goes around and it makes the wheel go forward. And here we have the pedals. You push the pedals and it moves the chain, which again moves the wheel and you go forward. This is the saddle where you sit. If you’re going quite quickly, of course, you want to be able to stop. How can you stop? you have to use the brakes. So basically you pull on the brakes and they will stop. And if you want to go at different speeds, you can use the gears. The gears basically change how difficult it is to ride. Here we have the kickstand which basically allows you to prop the bike up and it doesn’t fall over as you can see right now. Okay, that’s everything for right now. Should we get going? Let’s go. It’s actually this way. I forgot. Now we are cycling. There are a lot of people on the street today because it’s a Saturday. On the road again. Now we’re on the cycle path or you could also say the cycle lane. Either is fine. All right, I’m going to pull the brakes, slow down because we are at the traffic lights. You can see that those are the lights and now they are red. Oh, they’ve just turned green. So, we can go. People are crossing the road. Why are they crossing the road when it’s on red? That’s bad. Very bad. Do not cross the road if the lights are on red. It’s dangerous. Don’t do it. There’s no rush. There’s no rush. All right, coming up to the main road now. Stop. There’s another cyclist. Someone who is cycling. They’re actually wearing a helmet. You can see they got wearing the helmet, which I should be doing cuz that’s a lot safer. I am in the shade right now. It’s a little bit darker and I can escape from the sun because today it is very hot. It is boiling hot or you could also say it’s sweltering. But yeah, it’s nice to be in the shade. And we’re going to pull up onto here, come onto the pavement, and show you something. Just taking a little break here in Universat, which is basically University Square. Uh you have a lot of skateboarders around here, and obviously a lot of universities. The other thing you have around here are these. So these are bicycles that you can rent by the minute from the local council, the local government and basically you can cycle them to different points in the city. There’s a QR code here and you scan that with an application which allows you to remove the bike and go for a bike ride. All you have to do when you’re finished is basically dock the bike. This is the dock, the place where you park the bike, and it will make a noise like included, which means that it’s parked and you can leave it there and forget about it. Normally, I like to rent these bicycles because you can take them from one part of the city to another and you don’t have to worry about your bicycle being stolen because you’ve docked it and that’s it. The other thing I like about these bicycles is that they are dirt cheap. They are dead cheap. They are very cheap. I think it costs around 20 cents per minute, maybe even less. All right, let’s head off. Let’s get going again. Let’s get back on the bike path or the cycle lane. On the road again. [Music] All right, we’re heading back on the cycle path. You have to look where you’re going. You have to check for other cyclists. A lot of a lot of traffic lights today. Look, we’re stopping again. Stopping at the traffic lights again because it’s on red. The pedestrians can cross. This is a crossing, right? This is where the pedestrians can cross. This is what you call a junction, right? Because there are different roads crossing each other. So you have these roads going straight on and you have this road going through the middle. So this is what you call a junction. And that’s why we have the traffic lights because they allow cars to cross without crashing. We are about to enter one of the busiest streets in Barcelona. The street with all the shopping. Okay, now we have got to the busiest street in Barcelona. This is where they have all the shopping. As you can see here, got loads and loads of people. All right, here we go again. It’s on green. Here we go again. So many traffic lights. Oh, he’s jumping the lights. He’s jumping the lights. He’s going to go through the lights. So, when you jump the lights, it basically means you go through when it’s on red, which is quite dangerous cuz you might get hit by a car. We’re going into an area now called a champ. I used to live here. So, I used to means in the past I lived here in this area, in this neighborhood. Now, I do not. Now, now I live in Raval. Raval is basically one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Barcelona and I decided to live there. I like a bit of drama. I’m a bit sick. I’m a little under the weather, which is a nice idiom to mean you’re sick. I have a cough. Specifically, I have a dry cough. I’m going to jump the lights. Oh, that was a bad idea. Nearly died. Oh, we’re coming up to a nice little spot here. First landmark. Don’t know if you can see it yet. Can you? Oh, now you can see it. Now it’s coming out. Gorgeous, isn’t it? What’s that? [Music] I’m going to go on the other side and try and get a better angle of it cuz the sun is shining. Oh. Oh, look who this is. Who’s this? Just bumped into a friend. Unplanned. Totally totally unplanned. Totally spontaneous. Who are you? Oh my goodness. I can’t believe this. He’s being sarcastic and that’s not very nice, right? Remember, some British people can be sarcastic. How you doing this? Yeah, good, bro. How you doing? Good to see you. Yeah. All right. So, Charlie’s showing off his bike. This is not my bike, actually. This is This is a mountain bike, right? My bike. And then this one is more of a a road bike or a city bike or a city bike. So it’s a little bit nicer. You got the saddle again. It’s very This one’s a little bit harder than my one. You got very very thin tires. Oh, this is what I didn’t mention before, right? So you got the wheel and these are tires. In the USA, you have this spelling of tire. And the UK, it’s this. You can use either. Doesn’t really matter, but just let you know there’s a little difference in the spelling. Just before I bumped into Charlie, I was going to show you the ark. So, I’m gonna go on the other side and give you a nice lovely view of it. Okay, right now it looks like people are setting up some kind of festival here. They have a lot of events or festivals. I think tomorrow it’s actually a festival about Brazil. This must have been sort of the gateway into Barcelona. But yeah, it’s a gorgeous little arc arc to triumph. All right, now we’re cycling. We’re continuing on the route back on the cycle path. This is one of the good things about Barcelona. There’s loads of cycle paths everywhere. [Music] You want to get this every weekend drive around and make videos. Did we go down the beach or straight across? I was going to plan to go straight across, but I I don’t mind. It’s up to you. Charlie is checking his phone to see if he has any messages, calls or matches on Tinder. Loads of matches. Too many matches. All right, now we’re going up a hill. Oh, we’re climbing up a hill. We got to change the gears. Changing gears. Oh, we’re going downhill now. Going down a hill. Better pull on the brakes. Whoa. Getting some serious speed. All right, we made it. Now we are entering a new neighborhood and I I am in a really high gear so I am pedalling like a madman. See like I said we’re entering a new neighborhood now. We are now in a place called Hoblin now which is quite well known to be a very sort of industrial area. Well it used to be an industrial area. There used to be more factories here. Now they have been converted into apartments or flats. I need to pull over and adapt the camera a little bit. Just need to uh we got some construction work going on. I did tell you this area is very uh industrial and a lot of things are being converted. So they are doing some construction work. And this is a crane. Well, there’s actually two cranes. All right. This is a handsome man. A very handsome man next to an even more handsome man. Oh yeah. Oh, I am now blushing. I’m blushing. I’m going red. What’s your favorite neighborhood in Barcelona? Which one do you like the most? Ooh, wow. It’s a difficult question to randomly walk around. Maybe Gracia because it’s very beautiful. There’s lots of cool cafes. It’s more quiet. There’s more Spanish and Catalan people around which is nice. Bit less touristy. Yeah. To live it has to be a champ. I think not rebell. No, I don’t think so. To live at Champlay because you it’s right in the middle so it’s super accessible to everything. It’s very walkable. It’s very convenient. There’s lots of great supermarkets around and I love a great supermarket. I am going to overtake Charlie. As you can see, I’m going past him now. I am overtaking him. I have overtaken him. I overtook him. And we continue on on our journey to the beach. Journey is different than trip because journey is about how you get there, right? My journey to work, my journey to the office, my journey to the beach, it’s about how you get somewhere. Whereas your trip is about the place you go to, right? I took a trip to France. I took a trip to Spain. But journey is about your route, how you got somewhere. So that’s the difference between journey and trip. We have been cycling for about 20 minutes now. We have been cycling for 20 minutes. We are going to cycle for another 10 minutes. So, it’s not too far now. It’s not too far away. Something very important I just spotted here. A bin. This is a bin. And then you have some barriers around some road works. So, basically, the builders are doing something to the pavement, maybe something underground. So they put some barriers up so people do not fall into the hole. Behind me you can see some cars and they are sort of parked up. This is what you call a petrol station in the UK and in the US they call a gas station. These are the petrol pumps. You have different types of petrol as well as diesel. Diesel is usually for vans whereas petrol is for cars. Sometimes people might also call the petrol station the garage. Here in the UK you can say garage or you can also say petrol station. What are you saying? Charlie has just whizzed past me. He’s just gone very fast past me. Okay, now we’re going to turn right. We are going to turn right and go straight down the road. Go straight ahead. Now we’re going to turn left. We are turning left and we’re going to get back onto the cycle path. Charlie is now pedalling. Hot. It is boiling hot. It is bloody hot. Bloody is British English for very. It’s very hot. It’s bloody hot today. All right, we’re just getting off now. Just getting off the bikes. Charlie, do you want anything to uh to drink? No, I’m okay, thanks. Actually, a Coca-Cola Zero. Coca-Cola Zero. Lovely. I got it. I’ll look after. All right, Charlie’s going to get the bikes. I’m going to go in and grab some drinks. Not sure if I can film in the shop, but I’m going to do it anyway. All right. What we going to get? What we going to get? So, Charlie said he wants Coke Zero. Let me see if there’s a Coke Coke Zero up here. There we go. I’m going to grab him a Coke Zero. And for me, what do I want? Um, going to grab a water and a Nest Tea. H, this one’s actually quite nice as well. Yeah, I’m going to go for guana. Guana guana from Brazil. Going to get a can. This is a can, by the way. A can of uh Coke and a can of guana from Brazil. And I need a bottle. Not a bottle. Bottle of water. All right. There’s loads in here. Oh, it’s freezing. All right. A bottle. A bottle of water. Gracias. All right, I’ve got the drinks. Let’s go down to the beach, shall we? Charlie is putting the drinks in his bag. Charlie is closing the zip of his bag. On the road again. Here we go again. We’re off. We’re off again. Weaving through the people on the pavement. All right, swimming time. We’re going to go for a dip. We’re go for a little swim. We’re going through the gates and we are entering the swimming pool zone. Here you have our final destination. So yeah, let me show you around a little bit. Show you this uh swimming pool area. Some pillars that sort of demonstrate 5 m. But yeah, this is it. This is the final stop. We’ve made it to the swimming area and I’m going to jump in. You want to see my amazing diving skills? Check this out. All right. So, thank you for watching. Hope you enjoyed and you’ve learned something. Let me just check. Just checking no sharks or anything. It’s all good. All right. Thanks for watching. Make sure you subscribe and I’ll see you in the next video. Okay. Bye-bye. He made it. How majestic.