Real cycling

Pedtime story: Dogged by cycle-path gatecrashers

2012-01-27T10:07:00.009Z

A cyclist was knocked off her bike following a collision with a man who was walking dogs on a cycle track in Cleethorpes, the Grimsby Telegraph informs us this morning.

The woman in question had enough time to ring her bell on three occasions, but evidently not enough time to brake, so we're a bit puzzled as to how the collision managed to occur at all. What dogs was he walking? Greyhounds?

But we're pleased to see that the traditional race in the 'Comments' added to any online article mentioning cyclists - to see who can be first to irrelevantly mention jumping red lights or road tax - was won on this occasion by one Lincs4ever, coming straight in at Comment No 2.

(I'm wondering who'll be the first to say that this incident shows that pedestrians should be licensed, and pay pavement tax, and be forced to have insurance, etc.)

If the chap involved had really wanted to use the cycle path to walk his mutts, he could have followed the example of the man in the picture (top right), snapped last Sunday on the cycle track around Rutland Water.

He was 'walking' his hound on a bike with a ferocious tailwind, meaning he didn't even have to pedal: dog exercising the lazy man's way.

Or, of course, busy woman's (right).

Tranche Touring: Barmouth to Yarmouth

2012-01-25T13:07:00.006Z

I've just got back from a week cycling from Barmouth to Yarmouth. I've done two End to Ends - Land's End to John o'Groats, and Cape Wrath to Dover - so this time I did a Side to Side.

My route - about 350 miles, across the middle of Wales and England - took in mountains and fens, countless pleasant villages and towns, and rather a lot of Wetherspoons.

For instance, Bwlch y Groes (top right) is Wales's highest road, at 545m. The name comes from the noise you make at the top.

Out east, things are more two-dimensional. This (right) is near Spalding.

In between are many showcase cycle facilities, such as this wide, well-paved cycle track (right) offering a safe alternative to the busy road east out of Stafford town centre.

There are more details on my Barmouth to Yarmouth, Poole to Goole blog, but this is a quick recommendation for Tranche Touring.

The 'tranche' is the block-release, at certain times through the year, of cheap hotel rooms (£12 for one or two people!) from chains such as Travelodge or Premier Inn.

You can find details of when the tranches are released from sites such as Money Saving Expert.com.

Book in advance when the tranches are released and you can set up a bike tour very cheaply, and with the pleasant prospect of a bath and comfy private room after you've been rained on for six hours.

On the B-Y trip, my five hotel stays all came at £12 or £15 each - cheaper than a dorm bed in a hostel.

Travelodge also seem perfectly happy for you to take your bike into the room with you (above right). My tourer has more loyalty points than me.

Half time: Green light for unicycles

2012-01-15T19:44:00.005Z

We were intrigued by this traffic light on the Malton Road, on the northeast edge of York.

It's one of those curious places with a permanent green cycle signal, enabling cyclists to go through the left-hand bike channel whatever the main signal is showing.

Except the signal seems to be for the rear half of the bike only. A unicycle? A child's tagalong?

Somehow, cycle facilites in Britain always end up half-measures.

Floody hell: York cyclists under water

2012-01-07T17:02:00.007Z

The stormy weather through the week flooded the Ouse in the centre of York.

High water here is nothing unusual. Indeed, the King's Arms by Ouse Bridge is regularly inundated: a floodometer inside shows levels over the years, the highest of modern times being in 2000. (Because its cellars tend to turn into fish tanks during much of winter, it only sells keg beer.)

Nevertheless, the quick rise of water on Friday morning caught a few people on the hop.

Quite literally, when they found the riverside cycle track by Scarborough Bridge was a foot deeper than they anticipated.

Anyone following the cycle route signs from here to Beningborough along NCN65 would be in trouble. It's hard to pedal in flippers.

York being a real cycling city, nobody queries if you aren't wearing a helmet. In this weather, though, they might raise an eyebrow if you're cycling without a snorkel.

Sloping off: York's uphill downhill

2012-01-04T08:01:00.005Z

York's a pretty flat place - it's said that from the top of the Minster in fine weather, you can see at least eight hen parties - but it does manage to have among its modest slopes a Gravity Hill (right).

In other words, an optical illusion that fools the eye into thinking a downhill is uphill and vice-versa. I blogged about Britain's most famous example, 'Electric Brae' in Ayrshire, last year.

York's own magnetic scarp is on Water End, part of the newly-signed 'orbital cycle route' that circumscribes the city. It's at about 9 o'clock on the orbital, at the junction with Boroughbridge Road in Acomb.

The cyclist in the picture looks like she's going uphill, but in fact she can freewheel: looking away fron the camera the cycle track goes downhill, all the way to the where it joins the road at the top left.

Not that any of York's gradients mattered in yesterday's ferociously high winds. Whatever the local topography, you ended up going north-east, with the gale.

Spokespeak: York's bike registration scheme

2011-12-20T14:43:00.011Z

Operation Spoke is York's bike registration scheme.

Local police have their eye on several dodgy lockup-garage dealers in the area - the sort of people who advertise lots of bikes of hazy provenance on Gumtree or eBay.

(One of the suspected fences, apparently, is a teacher. If you're offered a bike that seems too cheap to be true in York by a man with patches on his elbows and red pens in his top pocket, beware.)

But it's hard to prove a bike has been nicked - which is where this database comes in.

We stumbled across a Spoke Registration Event on Sunday (top right), ambling round a deserted York College.

No elaborate bike surgery involving transponders inserted into down tubes here. All that happens is a bloke writes a code number in various places on your bike with a special pen (right).

The writing only shows up under UV light, if you take your bike into a disco for instance, or a public toilet in Hull.

Well, he said it was a code number he was writing. It could have been Ha Ha Big Nose. Probably best to be nice to registration teams, just in case.

There's a national self-registration scheme at immobilise.com, but Spoke sessions are worth dropping in on, partly for peace of mind, but also because you get lots of free yellow things (right): keyrings, spoke reflectors, trouser bands.

There may be something predictable about our young cycling nephews' cracker fillings next weekend...

You're in: York Planets trail dog's verdict on cyclists

2011-12-15T12:12:00.007Z

The York to Selby rail trail - which features a must-see scale model of the solar system - also has an intriguing sculpture on the bridge over the Ouse, a couple of miles south of York, near Naburn.

It features a Dilbertesque man made of wire, fishing from the bridge, his bike laid down behind him. He has evidently just caught a train (geddit?).

What I only spotted recently, though, was that the dog accompanying him is clearly peeing on his bike.

I rather like this; it's an appropriate comment on how cyclists and our facilities are treated generally.

Such as here, for example, on the cycle track in the centre of York, near the Nestlé factory, yesterday.

The fencing on the edge of this building site collapses regularly, providing a nasty potential hazard for inattentive cyclists on dark evenings.

Unless, of course, it's more ironic wire sculpture?

Markt man: Biking Brum's Christmas canals

2011-12-05T09:25:00.013Z

German Christmas Markets seem to be everywhere these days. We've been visiting a few - Leeds, Sheffield, York, Birmingham (right, picture Stephen Harper) - in the echt German way.

That is, on bikes, and not spending more than we can afford.

Which means not spending anything, when they want four quid for a sausage.

The Birmingham trip was an excuse to cycle the canal network, with its exciting tunnels (right) and quaint bridges.

It's a little-known fact that, compared to Venice, Birmingham's canals actually have more Somalian muggers.

So the handwritten warnings on the scruffy underpasses and abandoned-factory walls imply, anyway.

A more enticing canalside notice (right) was here, somewhere en route to Bournville.

I had no idea Birmingham was so liberal these days. First it's latte cafes in Gas St Basin, next it'll be naked saunas in Selly Oak. Now that would be authentic German.

Obviously we didn't, out of consideration for the camera-toting trainspotter in the picture (right) awaiting the flypast of a goods train from Immingham.

Canals apart, Birmingham is a horrible city centre to cycle in, with fast heavy traffic ripping along the dual carriageways, and virtually non-existent provision for cyclists.

The odd Sustrans route, such as NCN5 which passes through the Rea 'Valley' and a park by Edgbaston cricket ground, can't really make up for it.

German visitors might at least politely recognise some elements of the Christmas Market; I doubt they'd be as complimentary about the cycle facilities.

Art monitor: Bikes compulsory at Royal Academy

2011-12-01T09:33:00.004Z

With the ambiguity of the underground's legendary 'Dogs must be carried' notice in mind, I was amused to see this sign in the courtyard of the Royal Academy, London, the other day.

What about visitors who don't have bikes? Perhaps a Barclays Hire Bike will do?

Spot the unregistered bike: Anti-theft paint jobs

2011-11-25T09:00:00.003Z

Cycle theft in York is down, according to a meeting on the subject I went to this week. (Amusingly, there wasn't proper cycle parking, just a bit of chain.)

But one of the biggest problems the police face is that of unmarked bikes. There are several dodgy, lockup-garage bike dealers they have their eye on, who flog machines of dubious provenance through Gumtree and eBay using only mobile phone numbers.

When they turn up at said lockup making polite enquiries, however, none of the bikes there register on any database, so there's no proof they've been half-inched.

The local register in York is called Operation Spoke - there are regular free registration sessions - and this automatically puts you onto the national Immobilise database.

Hmm; it's no guarantee, as I know from having my Immobilise-registered bike nicked in Twickenham. The police there showed as much interest as if I'd lost a packet of fags in the pub. I never saw it again. But worth doing nevertheless.

Anyway, the owner of this MTB, spotted - literally - at York market this morning, has set up his own bike-marking scheme: vibrant yellow spattered onto jungle green.

How much use this will be in assisting the police if it gets abducted to a lockup I don't know, but it looks striking. No doubt the York heritage lobby will try to stop it.

Peak soil: Gardener's cargo bike is what I need

2011-11-22T20:42:00.003Z

This cargo bike loomed out York's fog yesterday. Presumably it's just locked up while the eco-gardener owner is on the job, rather than standing around as an ad, or serving as a planter.

I wrote a recent article for the CTC magazine on how cargo bikes are thriving in London, where they deliver faster, more flexibly and cheaper than cars. I've also featured cargo bikes on this blog related to my interests, such as beer and cake.

And a cargo bike is just what I need, to let me cycle through York's 'pedestrianised' city centre. Because, contrarily, it excludes bikes, but seems to allow plenty of motor traffic for 'deliveries'.

So, with a cargo bike, I can happily cycle through those winding medieval lanes to buy a plug from Barnitt's, on the pretext that I'm 'delivering'.

Well, a lot of the cars seem to be pulling the same trick.

Smug recyclist: York's bike-friendly dump

2011-11-21T08:01:00.005Z

An intriguing sign in York's James St.

What happens to discarded pedestrians and worn-out cyclists? Do they get dismantled for parts and raw materials?

Don't think my liver has much resale value, but the brain's hardly been used.

Of course, it means 'recycling for', not 'recycling of'. This being York, the main Recycling Facility has a special area for walking and bike access.

So you don't have to mix it with lorries and vans, like we used to have to in Southwark. That makes the business of throwing all those bottles and cans into the skip more enjoyable. ('We just, um, had a party, honest.')

Which is just as well. Science is welcome to my body, but I think the bike will fetch more on eBay.

Rebel without a causeway: Cramond Island's wet road

2011-11-18T08:20:00.009Z

Cramond Island, just five miles or so from central Edinburgh, is a kind of mini-Lindisfarne: a small isle connected to the mainland by a narrow concrete causeway.

Most of the time the causeway is under water (right).

But for a couple of hours at low tide (right), when the waters recede, it's perfectly cyclable.

Go when the surface is just submerged and you can skim over the top like you're cycling on water. (Probably best done when tide is going out.)

That said, there's no particular reason for cycling all the way over to the uninhabited islet. Except that you can, so this week I did.

Cramond, like all tidal islands, thrives on stories of careless travellers who get stuck by the tide.

Recent notable examples include a party of Facebook partyers and a man called Daniel Defoe.

No helicopter rescue needed for me. I cycled back along the waterside path to Leith, then along the Water of Leith Closed For Improvements Path to central Edinburgh, then past the Occupy Edinburgh campsite in St Andrew's Square.

This inspired me to stage my own sit-in: Occupy Wetherspoons, which I did until my train home.

Fans of cycling fords and tidal causeways can find examples at wetroads.co.uk, which lists and rates just about every example in the UK.

Scottish Parliament's cycle parking takes shape

2011-11-17T13:00:00.006Z

I was in Edinburgh this week, where the cycle campaign Spokes has just reported that there are more cyclists and fewer drivers in the city than ever.

It was hard for me to tell - I was too busy negotiating the tram-disaster roadworks in Princes St - but I was intrigued by these cycle racks.

They're splendidly situated in front of Arthur's Seat, which used to be a volcano; perhaps Arthur was too fond of the curried haggis.

The view the other way is the equally splendid Scottish Parliament building.

There I passed a happy hour spectating the Health and Sport Committee taking evidence on the Welfare Reform Bill legislative consent memorandum LCM(S4)5.1.

But the most distinctive thing is the shape of cycle racks, which have a touch of the Miró about them.

I wasn't quite sure how to lock my bike to any of them, to be honest.

Perhaps the absent-minded twisting of a few paper clips, during a particularly dull meeting of the Health and Sport Committee, was mistaken for maquettes of the new facility?

(Update: The mystery is partially solved by Tom's comment below... but only partially...)

Man and van... and bike?

2011-11-15T10:51:00.000Z

I'm not a fan of people using bikes as ad hoardings - there's little enough cycle rack space as it is in most city centres.

But this one, in Briggate in Leeds on Saturday morning, was intriguing. Why is a Man and Van advertising on a bike?

Presumably it's target-market psychology: the manandvan customer is likely to include the person who cycles everywhere - just the sort of person who would notice a parked-bike advert.

And blog about how they're not a fan of people using bikes as ad hoardings.

(Actually, it is possible to move house by bike, as I know from doing so twice this year. But it needs a trailer and a lot of journeys.)

Xmas every night on York's Millennium Bridge

2011-11-14T18:33:00.004Z

The festive lights get switched on this Thursday evening in York - but it's Christmas every night on the splendid Millennium Bridge, over the Ouse on the southern edge of the city centre.

The peds'n'bikes-only bridge is lit up at dusk in gradually shifting colours.

It's quite a romantic place to stop and enjoy, say, a knock-down trifle from the supermarket over the road.

It's constantly busy with cyclists (and, being York, you only have to wait a few minutes for a tandem) and dog walkers.

When a white dog passes, the lights make them glow trippily in green, pink, turquoise and lemon. Our Sainsburys trifle looked pretty psychedelic, too.

It's Shout Again time on Radio 4

2011-11-11T11:13:00.007Z

BBC Radio 4's Law in Action ran a piece this week on cyclists and the law.

It had me shouting at Joshua Rozenberg's lazily opinionated anti-cyclist ramble (cyclists all think the law doesn't apply to them, cycling is dangerous etc) and MP Andrea Leadsom's aims to bring in a new offence of causing death by dangerous cycling.

Thanks to the BBC's Shout Again facility, you can hear it for the next few days - the relevant bit starts at 21:00.

Rozenberg referred to the infamous 2007 Rhiannon Bennett case, where the unfortunate teenager was knocked down and killed by a 'speeding' cyclist . Just like the tabloids' frothing reports of the incident, he didn't mention that the young woman had been drinking, or that the collision may have actually taken place on the road, or that 'speeding' meant '17mph'.

(Dangerous on a pavement yes - but hardly on a road. And play this game: switch the circumstances of the Bennett case. Imagine a cyclist who has been drinking with his friends in the park. He then wobbles on, or possibly off, the pavement. A car doing 17mph in a 30mph limit collides with the cyclist, probably on the road, having shouted 'Move over, I'm not stopping'. The cyclist, who was not wearing a helmet, falls off and later dies from a head injury. Put that to most people and they'd say it's clearly the cyclist's fault.)

The reactions of Bennett's parents are understandable. As are those of the relatives of Eilidh Cairns, the experienced and confident London cyclist killed by an HGV driver with defective eyesight. The man responsible, Joao Lopes, was fined £200 and got three points on his licence. He continued driving, and is now being questioned by the police in connection with the death of a pedestrian in Marylebone Road in June.

Compare that to the punishment received by Bennett's killer, who was fined £2,200, and it's hard to see how - as Rozenberg's glib introduction to the radio piece suggests - cyclists are 'getting an easy ride' from the law.

The whole question of pavement cycling is trickier than it looks, as law'n'cycling blogger Joren Knibbe explains. He's the one rolled out in the programme as 'representing the cyclist', but it's all a bit clunky - it seems the programme makers, and Rozenberg, don't really have much idea what point they're making. Neither do I.

Overall, a poor effort from the Law in Action team.

Still, don't take my word for it. Listen and decide for yourself what to yell at your iPlayer.

PS The BBC reports today that a lorry driver doing 55mph in a 40mph limit and using a phone was cleared of causing death by dangerous driving after he mowed down a cyclist on the A40 last year.

PS 2 I've just found Joren's UKCycleRules blog post about how the programme turned out from his point of view. Not overjoyed, I think it's fair to say.

Real cycling is back as York scoops cycle station award

2011-11-09T11:59:00.012Z

Hello again everyone.

After a year away, engaged in such activities as cycling the Camino de Santiago, biking the Trans Pennine Trail, and being held hostage during an armed siege in provincial Argentina, I'm back and now based in York.

A cycling city. A kind of budget-price Cambridge. Which is why I'm here, not there.

York station - in the ice-cream-vernacular of press releases - has just scooped the title of Best Cycle Station of the Year at the ATOC awards, held at the House of Commons a few days ago.

It's easy to mock these contrived and meaningless awards as just an excuse for back-slapping, so let's do so.

But York station is pretty good for cyclists, with 400 hundred cycling parking spaces on a disused platform (right).

Or, if you're going to be all technical and restrict yourself to unoccupied ones, four spaces. I met one bloke who'd had to walk so far to find a rack he'd raised two hundred quid for charity.

However, long-disused bikes apparently get hoovered up, reconditioned and sold by the excellent and friendly Bike Hub project a few hundred metres away under Lendal Bridge.

(You can pick up a very decent mountain bike, or old side-pull ten-speed Raleigh, with three months' warranty for £70 - in London they'd be more than double that. And I got my derailleurs tweaked and wheel unwobbled there for a fiver, including a cup of tea and chirpy northern banter - just the cup of tea can cost that in some of York's poncier tourist shoppes.)

Access to York station from the north has been greatly improved by the opening of a new access ramp from the riverside (right, and bottom right).

In our minds, this is one of the most genuinely useful cycle facilities we've seen in the last few years.

The ramp cuts out a five-minute detour on busy roads, or a push up one-way streets, and takes you straight on to the main platforms.

It's spacious enough to do with a bike trailer full of enough stuff to run a small refugee camp, as I know from experience, and much liked by the Brompton-toting commuters I talked to this morning.

East Coast, I'm told, stepped in with extra cash and commitment when problems arose during the building, so many thanks to them for helping ensure completion of such a good facility.

At the end of the cycle parking, though, there's something odd. The near end of the racks has a recent smooth access ramp for those pedalling out south into the car park and onto the main road.

The far end also has a ramp right up to platform level - but it's fenced off and often almost impossible to get a bike past thanks to its status as 'executive parking'.

This puzzled bloke (right) did his best to squeeze through past the big posh car. We'll chase it up.

With the recently opened branch of the exuberant, real-cycling shop Cycle Heaven in the station too, and a new real ale pub opening up, the York Tap, things are looking good.

Not quite as much happens in York as in London, so I'll be updating this blog weekly rather than daily, but I look forward to being back in circulation. Like, er, a bad penny.

In Argentina

2010-10-17T01:51:00.002+01:00

I'm now in Argentina for a few months, updating the next edition of the Bradt Guide.

I've started an occasional blog at http://updatingargentina.blogspot.com

Buenos Aires has a few cycle lanes, and you do see a handful of intrepid ciclistas threading their way through the cut and thrust of the New-York-style traffic mayhem.

But in the world's sixth-largest country, I don't think I'll be doing much getting around on two wheels...

Last post: It's goodbye

2010-09-16T07:49:00.004+01:00

This is my last post here. Possibly for a few months, possibly for ever. I'm leaving London and going walkabout.

There may be occasional posts from exotic places round the world - Argentina, Stevenage, Japan, Hull Job Centre, who knows? Life is what you make of it. Except usually the instructions are missing, and the screws are the wrong size.

I'll miss this a lot: 717 posts, at least one per day, since 11 January 2009. I'll miss having the excuse for cycling round London and nosing around taking pictures and talking to people. I'll miss your comments. I'll miss you other bloggers. I'll miss the sheer exhilaration of living in a city where everything happens, everything and everyone comes to you, and it's all only a bike ride away.

I won't miss the psycho bus drivers, arrogant taxis and lawless minicabs. Or the Elephant and Castle roundabouts.

It's been a remarkable year, with the advent of the hire scheme and the Cycle Superhighways. London is certainly enjoying a cycling boom in terms of bike culture, buzz and PR; for the adventurous urbanite, there's no more exciting place in the world to explore by bike.

One day I hope to be back in London, and I also hope it's a better place to cycle. A place not just for wasp-men in sun-yellow jackets, wraparound shades, helmets and road bikes jumping lights, but for real cyclists: people in normal clothes simply going from A to B, where A and B might be shops, school, work, pub, home, friends', or even undefined, because it's just fun.

But a lot will have to change. Facilities remain patchy at best, and usually non-existent or positively dangerous. We're not even as far as the O of Copenhagen.

So now it's up to you. See you. Safe cycling everyone.

Freewheeling uphill: Scotland's Electric Brae

2010-09-15T08:00:00.011+01:00

Cycling in Scotland the other day I took the chance to do some uphill freewheeling near Ayr.

Croy Brae, often nicknamed Electric Brae, is a 'gravity hill' - an optical illusion that fools you into thinking an up slope is a down slope, and that the laws of thermodynamics are being temporarily suspended.

It's on the A719, about seven miles of gentle climb and coastal views south out of Ayr. A sign warns you of slow traffic: lots of cars can't resist the temptation to stop, let off the handbrake, and roll magically against the gradient.

There are several such gravity hills (I featured one in Aston Clinton, near Tring, in my Quirky Bike Rides book). But Electric Brae is the best one to cycle.

The illusion really is astonishing. This stretch of road clearly goes downhill into the trees, doesn't it?

Actually not, as the detailed stone plaque informs you in the lay by. In fact it's a quarter of a mile of 1 in 86 descent the other way, towards the camera.

If you stop on your bike 'down' in the middle of those trees and face towards the camera, you roll 'uphill', reaching a freewheel speed of about 10mph. (Conversely, of course, cycling the other way feels oddly strenuous for a 'downhill'.)

The strangest thing is how the illusion disappears the instant you lower your viewpoint (right), particularly when you're looking through a camera. With the surrounding hills out of your eye line, it's suddenly clear that the slope runs towards you. It's a remarkable demonstration of how subtle, but powerful, the subconscious effect is of the skyline on your mental spirit level.

Model cycling facilities at Wimborne

2010-09-14T07:49:00.011+01:00

Cycling in Dorset the other day I popped in to Wimborne's Model Town.

This is one of those 'world famous' attractions that has the term 'world famous' in quotes, which means you'd vaguely heard of it from an uncle when you were little, or from that primary school teacher from Poole you failed to chat up once.

The Model Town, opened in 1951, is a charming one-tenth size reconstruction of Wimborne as it was then, shops, houses, minster and all. You stride around the traffic-free streets, sixty feet tall, like a benign B-movie monster in search of a cycle shop.

There are two, both with miniature (but rather modern-looking MTB-style) bikes in their windows.

Crawford's (tel. 347) looks the place to buy a decent new bike for a few guineas, while Dacombe's (tel. 452) seems the place for repairs and advice, or buying an inner tube for a 2.7 inch wheel.

Not much sign of bike parking in 1940s Wimborne by the looks of it, though.

Afterwards you can cycle round the full-size modern-day town, to see if the shops are still there (they're not). It's a pleasant enough place, but when you get cut up by a white van you wish you were sixty feet tall again.

It's the only language they understand

2010-09-13T09:25:00.006+01:00

Our East of England correspondent has sent us this picture he snapped on a ride near Ely over the weekend. It instructs road users to drive and cycle on the left, not just in English but also, helpfully, in Spanish.

Here are a few similar signs we'd like to see in London. (We accept no responsibility for clumsy Babelfish translations.)

Japanese Biggu Ben no shashin o toru to, watashi no mae ni doori ni tachanaide kudasai. When having your photo taken in front of Big Ben, please don't step out backwards into the road in front of me.

Russian Если вы сидите рядом с пивом канала выпивая, то пожалуйста дайте мне комнату задействовать в прошлом If you are sitting next to a canal drinking beer, please give me room to cycle past.

Italian Cammini prego sulla pavimentazione, non sulla pista ciclabile. Particolarmente quando siete un gruppo di 24. Please walk on the pavement, not on the cycle path. Especially when you are a group of 24.

Dutch Ja, weten wij onze het fietser faciliteiten shit zijn. Geen behoefte houden vertellend ons. Yes, we know our cycling facilities are rubbish. No need to keep going on about it.

Domino effect: Pizzas by bike

2010-09-12T09:14:00.005+01:00

The branch of Dominos pizza in Queen St, in the City, does a lot of its deliveries by bike. (Delivery policies are not set centrally by the company, but locally by franchise holders.) We saw six of them stacked up the other day.

Given the current bike boom in London, we think restaurant menus should add some new pizzas for cyclists:

Bike Hire Scheme pizza Half the time, arrives as an empty plate. The other half, the pizza does arrive, but there's nowhere on the table to put it

Cycle Superhighway pizza Whatever toppings happened to be there before, only now coloured blue

Boris pizza Lots of capers but little else

2010, year of the blues

2010-09-11T06:48:00.005+01:00

Blue is clearly the biking colour of 2010: the Barclays-tinted hire bikes, the kerbside cobalt of the Superhypeways...

Now a dive shop has got into the act as well, with this icepop-coloured advert bike, spotted outside Sainsbury's in Clapham. Very nice, but I wish people wouldn't use our bike racks as free advertising space when I'm stopping off to buy a loaf.

Unless, of course, it's some sort of wry comment on the depths to which London's cycle facilities have sunk.

Hire bike pile up at Kings Cross

2010-09-10T08:00:00.004+01:00

Over 18,500 journeys are being made on London's hire bikes every day, which is even more than the number of press releases TfL send out about the success of the scheme. The latest informs us that over half a million journeys have now been made, and that 80,000 people are signed up as members.

The scheme has unquestionably contributed to London's cycling culture: it has massively increased the proportion of cyclists who blog, tweet and post Facebook updates about empty docking stations here and full docking stations there.

Kings Cross is a good place to see the redistribution process in action. Here, like herds of wildebeest at the watering hole, hire bikes pile up ready to be spread back around the city. So, shortly after this photo, I was overtaken by 20 hire bikes. Unfortunately they were all on a trailer.

Rose to fame: New coast-to-coast bike route opens

2010-09-09T07:37:00.012+01:00

A new signed Sustrans coast-to-coast route opens on Saturday, Bike Radar tells us. The Way of the Roses runs 170 miles from Morecambe to Bridlington across the Pennines, Dales and Wolds, taking in Lancaster, Settle, Ripon and York en route.

The map is now available from the Sustrans shop.

Right: Morecambe promenade bustling with walkers and cyclists

I rode the route earlier this year and took these pics, which give you an idea of what it's like. (The trip was for an article in the latest issue of Cycling Plus, October 2010, which has pictures of someone who looks like me but older in it.)

Bridge over the Crook o'Lune, and a cyclist waiting for spring to arrive

The most famous coast-to-coast route is the C2C (or 'Sea to Sea'). That 140-mile route, from Workington / Whitehaven to Sunderland / Newcastle, is said to be Britain's most popular leisure cycle route. In some ways it's been a victim of its own success, though: accommodation is hard to find as it gets booked out in advance by charity cycling throngs.

That's the road to Clapham, that is. The Yorkshire village, not the London one

So Sustrans devised a series of alternatives (Hadrian's Cycleway, Reivers Route etc) to take the pressure off. The Way of Roses is said to be the last in the set.

It's a sheep, or a cow, or something. How should I know? I'm a city boy

The endpoints are close to rail stations, and you can get between London and Morecambe/Lancaster or Bridlington for a tenner each way if you book in advance. (Lancaster is only 3-4 miles from Morecambe along a well-surfaced railtrail.) Bridlington's superb station bar has been authentically restored in Edwardian style, complete with (presumably genuine) old adverts with very rude words in them.

Typical Dales scenery, this, where your only fellow traffic is likely to be tractors, horse riders, walkers, and calendar photographers

I took a leisurely four days to do the trip, overnighting at Settle, Ripon and Pocklington, where there are camp sites. It was April, so most of my mornings were spent thawing out. There are plenty of B&Bs on the way too. And pubs. You may well need them.

Brimham Rocks. Hey, yes, it does!

The first half, to Ripon, is hilly. The second half is mostly flat. The wind is mostly west to east, except if you do it that way, when it'll be east to west.

Bikes are valuable things to have in cycle-friendly York. So valuable that a group of youths tried to steal my bike while I was taking this photo

There's nothing particularly new about the route apart from the signposts: the Way of Roses is mostly made up of existing routes. (Morecambe-Lancaster rail trail, Lune Valley trail, Lancashire Cycleway, Pennine Cycleway, White Rose Route, NCN1.)

This is yer actual Stamford Bridge, east of York - and yes, it's caught out several lazy GPS users trying to get to watch Chelsea

Still, it's a fine three- or four-day traverse of some thrilling scenery, between two lesser-frequented seaside resorts. If you've done the C2C and are looking for something similar-but-different, it's well worth doing.

Most of East Yorkshire is snooker-table flat, and about as interesting. But Millington Wold, east of Pocklington, is a gem

Journey's end, at Bridlington. With its handsome old town and gaudy candy-floss seafront, there's a 1960s feel about the place. Indeed, that's probably when the pub we celebrated in was last redecorated.

Success for team visiting all bike hire stations in a day

2010-09-08T06:25:00.004+01:00

We've just noticed on Londonist the success of the 24 hour London Bike Hire Challenge.

Last Thursday, two teams attempted to visit all 336 docking stations in 24 hours by hire bike: over 100 miles of travel. (See map)

The teams, led by Patrick Bishop, were raising money for a water projects charity.

One team managed it, despite having only seven minutes available for each journey, and the doubts of critics who should know better. (Though it looks like they wisely dropped the sumo suit idea.)

(The other team had to drop out when their keys wouldn't work properly. Bad luck. I thought it was frustrating enough when my key didn't work the other day and I had to walk to the off-licence instead.)

Congratulations. And lucky that they hadn't scheduled their attempt for yesterday, when strike-busting cyclists hoovered up most of the hire bikes.

Three strikes and you're out on your bike

2010-09-07T08:29:00.009+01:00

Did the latest tube strike this sunny morning bring out more cyclists?

I can't really judge, as I'm not normally out at this time, what with the terms of the ASBO and the electronic tag and everything.

But the ASL at the top of Kennington Park Road certainly seemed packed with bikes. (See larger pic)

Actually, the Northern Line - which the blue stripe of the CS7 follows (right) - was working this morning (though with 'some stations closed').

I couldn't work out the implications of this for modal share though. I was too keen on coming back for breakfast.

Yellow fever: Skyride 2010

2010-09-06T04:31:00.013+01:00

Yesterday's Skyride, according to the event website, saw '85,000 hit the streets of London'.

Good job most of them were wearing helmets, then. Clearly the event is a lot more dangerous than I thought.

I didn't see any tarmac impacts when I trundled round with the masses though.

In fact, the road closures between Parliament Square and Tower Bridge were simply enjoyed by everyone - especially on Westminster Bridge.

Here, a mini-fad spontaneously evolved for being photographed sprawled out, fashion-shoot-style, on the car-free road surface (right).

Organised mass rides in uniform, especially ones as occasionally claustrophobic as this, aren't my thing. But for those who took part on this cool, cloudy September day, most of them clad in Sky's complimentary tabard and turning the streets yellow, it was definitely a success.

It was very crowded, as usual, with families much in evidence. All the parents'n'kids groups I chatted to were delighted with their day out, so fair enough.

I didn't see as many extravagant machines as last year; just the odd recumbent, one triplet, and a good sprinkling of hire bikes. (Other bloggers who got up earlier than me had more success, such as Freewheeler and London Cyclist.)

As well as the usual marquee shanty town offering entertainment in St James's Park, this year offered a 3D cinema experience.

You could wheel your bike inside a dome cinema tent set up on Horseguards Parade and see a five-minute promo film for Team Sky (right) that featured brief 360 degree and 3D sections.

The surround-view interludes put you right in the middle of a peloton, with uncompromising close-ups of someone's oscillating bottom.

In contrast, the 3D episodes swooped you around lots of gee-whiz perspectives of racing action, interspersed, a little puzzingly, with owls.

Most intriguing about the film however was the helicopter shot of Team Sky whizzing along, owl-free, but apparently laying out the blue stripe of a Cycle Superhighway behind them (right).

There was a bit of a bottleneck on Lower Thames Street before the underpass, giving the corked droves plenty of time to read the cheery sign: TUBE STRIKE MON & TUES SO WHY NOT CYCLE TO WORK.

Great idea, but if it's as crowded as this, it'd take about four hours.

At one point we were entertained by roadside members of the West Withering Gilbert and Sullivan Society in costume - something to do with an upcoming programme on G&S on Sky Arts.

It made me ponder on bicycle-related works that the operettic twosome ought to have written. I've got a little list:
I am the very model of a modern major road
Oilanthe
Yeomen of the Mudguard
Velo tit velo
HMS Pinarello
Ruddibus
Cox and Advanced Stop Box

Clearly it was time to peel off and have some refreshment.

Better shred than dead

2010-09-05T08:01:00.006+01:00

We had a ton of stuff to shred the other day - several panniers' worth - and took advantage of a cycle-through security shredders in Greenwich. For peace of mind we could drop the blade-fodder ourselves directly onto the conveyor.

It comes out the other side mashed up into postage-stamp sized pieces. They in turn are trussed up into bales together with similar scraps of confidential confetti in a variety of languages.

Most seemed to be tantalising fragments of text in Cyrillic and Arabic. All very exciting; it could be the setting for a Bond movie fight scene.

Appropriately the entrance gates, in the industrial estate by the Blackwall Tunnel, had shredded fragments of text too.

Helpful signs at railway stations

2010-09-04T08:17:00.005+01:00

I enjoyed this sign at Plockton station, up in the Highlands, the other day. Useful information, it says: There is no taxi rank in the vicinity of this station. There are no bus stops near this station. Good job I had a bike, then.

And this one, displayed on the window of a Northern Rail service between Harrogate and York. It lists the lengths the company will go to to protect their staff against abuse: Whether it's swearing, shouting or spitting, we will do everything in our power to stop anti-social behaviour and protect our people in the course of their duties.

Well, if it takes swearing, shouting or spitting to protect your people, that's what you have to do.

Height of folly: Biking up Bealach na Ba

2010-09-03T09:22:00.008+01:00

The road west over the hills to Applecross, on the north-west coast of Scotland, is Britain's longest steep hill. Simon Warren's recent book on Britain's top 100 cycling hills rated every one out of ten; this one rated eleven.

The hill is Bealach na Ba, usually translated 'Pass of the Cattle', but I prefer 'Cow Pass'. Bealach is the Gaelic for 'pass', pronounced rather like someone unexpectedly throwing up, which is appropriate.

The sign at the bottom - a candidate for Britain's most verbose - sternly warns learner drivers and caravans off its jackknife hairpins and vertiginous gradients.

The road was built in 1822, and they were clearly made of stern stuff then: it rises from sea level to 616m over a distance of 9km - or 2,053 feet in five and a bit miles in old money - giving it an average gradient of 7%, or 1 in 14 in imperial.

(It was listed in the Guinness Book of Records, as it was then called, as the longest steep hill in Britain for many years, before Guinness went all populist and turfed out stuff like that in favour of yummiest flavours of ice-cream, or the most unicyclists in Santa Claus outfits etc.)

It's Britain's most Alpine ascent, getting steadily steeper and steeper as it staircases up the wall of the pass, with the dramatic switchbacks at the top reaching 1 in 5.

But - yesterday, anyway - it was sheer delight to cycle up, from this tourist's point of view, stopping frequently to take pictures and swig water, and wave at motorcyclists hurtling to the summit. From the viewpoint at the top you have the magnificent skyline of the Cuillin ridge, keenly observed by people sitting inside motorhomes.

The other side - down to Applecross - is a whizzy adrenaline rush, with good sightlines, mostly easy corners, gentler gradients than the eastern ascent, and long straightish bits: five, maybe six miles of freewheel. And there's a pleasant pub in Applecross with a beer garden on the edge of the loch, and a fine view of Red Cuillin - that's the Skye Brewery beer, not the peak.

This, you see, was my birthday present to me.

Tasty: Bike to the bus cafe

2010-09-02T06:31:00.001+01:00

As we know, bus drivers can sometimes be a problem. Now, don't get me wrong - I rarely have wrong words with bus drivers, mainly because I can't understand what they're shouting at me, and I recognise that it's only the badly-behaved majority that tar the rest with the same brush - but we rather like the novelty of having a friendly encounter with a bus.

So here's your opportunity: Foodmaster, a double-decker bus converted into a mobile cafe. It serves top coffee and cakes, and hearty German sausages, and is currently doing a season in Mile End park every week (by the Art Pavilion at the end of Ashcroft Road) from Thursday to Sunday.

There's lots of bike racks, and it's just off the canal, so you can get there pleasantly and traffic-free. It therefore joins the growing list of bike-friendly cafes in London, which are appearing faster than TfL press releases these days. So if you miss it, don't worry, there'll be another one along in a minute.

View Larger Map

Going for gold: Bike paint job

2010-09-01T06:25:00.000+01:00

We stopped to admire this all-gold bike parked on Long Lane the other day. Shame about the saddle - perhaps they could source a gold Brooks on eBay?

We hope the owners are preparing an all-silver and all-bronze model for the 2012 Olympics too.

Plane speaking: Bike to London City Airport

2010-08-31T07:38:00.006+01:00

Cycling to visit an airport is usually about as enticing a prospect as dental work with a hangover, but London City Airport is an exception. It's only a few miles from Tower Bridge, and a pleasant run: you can go alongside the Ornamental and Thames much of the way, then through Canary Wharf and over the Lea bridge.

The airport is next to Victoria Dock, a cityscape built by robots for an offworld colony. With ExCel, a strange almost-transporter bridge, clean-cut alien buildings and a curious hidden beach, it offers a city-of-the-future vision from a 1960s boys' annual.

At its eastern end you cross an all-metal footbridge and duck under planes (above right). They abseil down and belay their way up the sky at unusually steep angles, thanks to the cramped runway.

You can park your bike almost opposite the terminal entrance, under cover of the concrete aqueduct that carries the DLR. The modest racks almost give you enough space to lock your bike comfortably, and look more patronised by staff than by citybreakers.

If you're travelling light and flying from London City Airport, bike is a fine way to get there - not that you'd know it from their website. Still, the bike sign is pleasingly Netherlandish.

We didn't actually go in the terminal on our visit yesterday - the coffee costs more than most Ryanair flights - but there's an excellent cafe nearby. Just to the west of here, across the main road, is Thames Barrier Park (right) which has a stylish, inexpensive cafe and coffee shop in the pavilion by the lawns.

So for a budget citybreak, cycle out to the airport, then turn back and stay in London. All the buzz of the airport, the cheapness of a staycation, and the excitement of finding your way round where nobody speaks English.

TfL promo vids: Bare-headed, or thin film on top?

2010-08-30T09:12:00.014+01:00

We spotted this TfL film crew at work yesterday, filming a lass on a hire bike trundling up and down Cycle Superhighway 3 on Narrow St.

The British film industry may be worried by budget cuts at the moment, but TfL is doing its best to rescue things single-handed, with their five lively new films promoting cycling.

Each features a different type of London cyclist, covering the whole range of Londoners that matter: two TV celebrities, two more attractive young white women, and a diversity-box-ticking young chap called Mohamed. No older, or otherwise ugly, people, obviously. Not in the target demographic, no doubt.

Still, to my mind it's good to see that only two of the protagonists are wearing helmets. This lack of lids worried BBC Tranport Correspondent Tom Edwards in his recent blog, though.

Evidently the Beeb guys are a nervous lot when it comes to headgear - and their impartiality snaps faster than a non-Snell standard helmet. For example, the BBC Radio 4 programme More or Less last Friday (listenable again until Friday 3 September) 'covered' the helmet debate.

(It surely didn't make best use of researcher Ian Walker, and then allowed the pro-helmet Angela Lee to assert opinions backed by no statistics whatever - which seems curious for a programme on statistics. Overall it was flimsy, full of holes, and gave little worthwhile coverage. Which is probably appropriate for an item on helmets.)

But the presenter couldn't help but sign off saying how he wears a helmet. (Tock, tock, as he taps his helmet, ooh, that's good use of the radio medium you see, they're trained professionals, you know.) The Beeb hackette writing the BBC website article about the same programme couldn't resist putting her oar in too, saying she always wears a helmet.

Of course, it's very unlikely that a BBC programme is likely to cause damage to your laptop or radio, when you lash out in anger at them during another superficial item on cycle helmets that uses anecdote and opinion as 'evidence'. But just in case, it's a good idea to take precautions. Protect the laptop or radio with some sort of cover. Can't do any harm, can it? I think that's the point the programme was making anyway.

So I'm pleased to see TfL is not capitulating to the helmet correctness lobby.

If they could broaden out from their emphasis on bright young people though I'd be even pleaseder. An attractive young woman on a bike is a pleasant sight. But a healthy cycling culture needs more than flowing-haired models pedalling small dogs in baskets. It needs schoolkids, and pensioners, and business suits, and dumpy tired-looking middle-aged people too.

Speaking of which, if TfL needs another extra, I've a bit of time available right now.

The cream of cricket: What a mess at Lord's

2010-08-29T10:35:00.009+01:00

Sooner or later, every pannier I have ends up smelling of sour milk.

Because sooner or later, despite the lessons of history, I'm tempted to transport a pot of cream. And sooner or later, trapped under something heavy - a bottle of water, say, or a folder full of job rejections - said container explodes, transforming the pannier in a white-out instant into a milky Chernobyl. Ortlieb becomes Prypiat.

My lactose-emulsive cataclysm came yesterday, cycling to see the final England-Pakistan test at Lord's. (No cycle parking at all, but some handy hire-bike docking stations.)

Possibly under the weight of my picnic lunch, possibly following an over-enthusiastic baggage search, the tub of Tesco's double lavishly self-destructed.

'Suitable for pouring, whipping and cooking', it says on the tub. It should add 'unsuitable for carting around in over-stuffed bike panniers'.

I spent the first hour of play mopping up fugitive lagoons of cream from me, from the concrete floor, from fellow spectators. It was like a bomb in a Dulux factory, a new shade in the Exxon Valdez range, snowdrift with a hint of stale Camembert.

I flushed out the pannier in the gents with an OCD rigour but it still reeks, inevitably, of baby sick.

What a terrible, sad, needless, sticky mess; a mess that can never be properly cleaned up; a day that will be grimly remembered by all those involved. And that's just Pakistan's batting.

Remember, when transporting hazardous foodstuffs by bicycle, there is a line you shouldn't cross, a mark you shouldn't overstep. Same goes for Pakistan's bowling.

Cambridge, cycling paradise? Rubbish!

2010-08-27T06:34:00.003+01:00

Cambridge may be touted as England's so-called 'real cycling capital'.

But in fact its modal share of bike journeys is still low, as this photo proves. Despite the expensive riverside cycle path, only ONE person-journey is being made by bicycle, compared to TWO on a boat, FOUR in a narrowboat, and two cows occupying valuable space but carrying NO passengers.

Anyone trying to convince you that the town is some sort of 'cycling paradise' is clearly deluded.

And take this valuable Brompton, left outside the Co-op in Newnham.

It's not locked. Obviously the place is so full of thieves, bandits, brigands and cutpurses that locks are useless.

Instead, the owner has had to leave it with not one but TWO guard dogs, who viciously wagged their tails and tried to lick us when we approached.

Things are so bad there they've had to create a new website, Cycling Sorted, to cope with everyone's suggestions for improvements to the cycling infrastructure.

So, cyclists, avoid Cambridge at all costs. I'm grateful to be back in London, I can tell you.

Centre stage: New blog from City Cyclists

2010-08-26T06:22:00.001+01:00

Cyclists in the City is a new blog dealing with the idiosyncrasies of bikes in the Square Mile. It promises to be strong on practical campaigning and on data interpretation.

The first major post is about the City's contraflow cycle lane experiments, and how to make them work better.

More signs of Cambridge's cycling culture

2010-08-26T06:06:00.003+01:00

A fine array of roadworks signs here. In amongst them you'll find a sign helpfully explaining that cyclists, unlike motorists, have through access as usual.

You have to be a voracious reader to fully appreciate the signs, but then this is Mill Road, in Cambridge, so perhaps drivers are more studious here.

Sadly my camera lens wasn't wide angle enough to include the other signs with the bibliography and footnotes.

Cambridge milky way: Starlit bike path

2010-08-25T08:53:00.010+01:00

We were rather taken by this starry bike path. It leads east out of Cambridge towards Newmarket.

By day (right) it's your average roadside cycle track. But by night, lighting units (below right) set in the tarmac twinkle into action.

They're labelled 'Astucia'. The website says it supplies intelligent road studs, which sounds more like someone's fantasy than traffic illumination equipment.

They've only been here a couple of weeks and we're told they're not solar - like similar units installed in other cycle paths in Cambridge - but luminous, whatever that means.

It seems to us a very good lighting solution (right). We much prefer this to floodlighting, whose shadows create more problems than the lights solve. But these twinkly lights form an easily followed constellation (with Mars-like red versions to show stop lines at junctions) and don't intrude outside the range of the bike path itself.

And they're clearly better than nothing (right).

They're also rather romantic. If you find the Hubble Space Telescope romantic.

Still, anything that can make Stow-cum-Quy and the A14 a must-visit romantic destination on a dark night is OK by us.

Cambridge overtakes London in safe-cycling signage

2010-08-24T08:05:00.012+01:00

Cambridge can claim to be England's real cycling capital. It's signs like this that show why.

It's the roadworks on Hills Road railway bridge just south of the station. (Roadworks which, incidentally, are for installing bike lanes.)

The cones have narrowed things down to make overtaking unsafe, so the sign instructs motorists not to overtake cyclists.

And it works. We got no hassle from drivers. In fact, we could enjoy the view at leisure from the top, which is one of the highest points in East Anglia.

It took a bit of activism from excellent local group the Cambridge Cycling Campaign to persuade the council to put up such signs for similar works a couple of years or so ago, but this time round it went up without prompting, we're told.

Compare the Cambridge situation with Waterloo Bridge in the capital (right). There are similar works there, but no such signs - and little consideration from buses or taxis. Perhaps Cambridge could lend a couple of its signs to London once those bridge works are done.

Train man: Bike path on a railway

2010-08-23T07:21:00.002+01:00

We were intrigued by this sign on the seafront bike path running north from the resort of Bridlington, on the east Yorkshire coast.

I've seen some genuine shared railway/bike facilities, where bikes actually do ride right along the railway line itself. (On remote narrow bridges in rural New Zealand, for example, outside Pukerangi in Otago.)

Obviously this is just one of those seaside-prom sightseeing jobs, though. The train itself was further up, and was full of passengers on mobile phones saying 'Hi, it's me, I'm on the land train'.

Railing again: Bike parking at Tate Modern

2010-08-22T07:06:00.001+01:00

Tate Modern used to have a perfectly good bike shed to park in, which everyone ignored because the railings outside the entrance were more convenient.

Now, the bike shed has disappeared as part of the development works to the south of the main building. So the railings are now the only place you can park your bike anyway, legitimised by a sign.

Which is fine, but slapped wrists to Tate for removing the bike section from their how-to-get-here web page. They used to be cited by the LCC (still are, actually) as a good example of an attraction whose website encourages you to cycle there.

Not any longer. There's info on getting there by boat, tube, bus, taxi, car, coach, camel - OK, I was lying about the camel. But nothing about bikes, not even hire bikes. (There are three fairly convenient docking stations, which surely ought to be pointed out on their website. What do they think those lines of identical bikes are? An installation?)

Talking of which, Marcel Duchamp was a keen cyclist, of course, as we know from his Bicycle Wheel of 1913. It was originally going to be an entire bike, but he left it fastened by only one D-lock to a rack in Waterloo.

Update: The Tate Modern website has now been updated (though only with info about hire bikes). Maybe they've been reading this blog.

Let's twist again: Britain's bendiest road

2010-08-21T08:01:00.009+01:00

One of Britain's strangest roads is in Rothesay, on the Isle of Bute off the west coast of Scotland.

The Serpentine Road was built when the town boomed as a Victorian resort, its ten hairpins enabling the horses to carry building materials up to the manor house on top of the hill. Or so the bloke in the pub down the bottom told us, anyway.

A curious biking experience either up or down, it's much more exciting than the much-vaunted 'crookedest street in the world' Lombard St in San Francisco. It's twistier, and it's two way, plus you don't have all the gawping tourists.

London's twistiest bike path is on the Ornamental Canal just west of St Katharine's Dock by Tower Bridge, while the twistiest road in England is said to be Zig Zag Hill, part of the B3081.

But neither offers what Rothesay (right) offers, which is superb Victorian architecture, a restored Victorian public toilet in posh marble, stunning views, and a fish and chip shop owned by relatives of Lena Zavaroni. Ha! Take that, San Francisco!

Google's Street View vehicle heroically ascended the road, and on one of the views you can see a cyclist pushing wearily upstairs.

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Cycle clip: Bike racks on a fast ferry

2010-08-20T06:15:00.000+01:00

Some of London's most thrillingly situated bike racks are here, on the Thames Clippers fast ferries. They're commuter services, but take bikes (though we've never seen any, apart from ours).

For sightseers, the £12 rover tickets give you unlimited travel on the Clippers all day after 10am, from O2 in the east to Millbank in the west.

Both the O2 and Tate Britain have some of the free ping pong tables set around London this summer - they'll be taken down after this weekend, so hurry.)

Talking of hurrying, the best bits are east of Tower Bridge, where the boat bombs along like Donald Campbell in Bluebird just before closing time. If you do put your bike in the racks, it might be an idea to lock them, just in case.

Ferry 'cross the Mersea

2010-08-19T06:57:00.004+01:00

We're big fans of little ferries that take bikes; the Thames has a few out west (at Twickenham and Shepperton, for example).

But we were pleased to discover this one that runs between Mersea Island and Brightlingsea. It's not far from Colchester, but a long way from spray-tans and white stilettos, in Essex's marshy southern flatlands.

Mersea Island itself - pronounced 'Mersey', though this ferry was never celebrated by a 1960s pop combo with an irritatingly overplayed song - has interesting bustling-harboury stuff to the west, seafood stalls and all.

Finding the ferry, which runs from the easternmost point of the island, is quite an adventure, and involves asking locals for directions down unmarked tracks and across unsigned shingle beaches. Luckily we speak a related language and could make ourselves understood.

It runs a scheduled service until 5 September (11am, 1.30pm, 4pm from Brightlingsea, returning 15 mins later from Mersea), and also runs on demand in this period with a phone call (07981 450169). It then runs until 31 October by phone appointment (01206 302200). Fares are a couple of quid plus a quid for a bike - for which price you can also get yourself a credit-crunch special fish and chips from the cafe in Brightlingsea.

From Brightlingsea to Colchester you can go largely along the river, through pleasant places such as Wivenhoe (right). With its wide traffic-free riverside path, nautical feel, and trim wooden-board houses, at times it feels like a smart suburb of Copenhagen. Then you get to Colchester.

Every docking station in a day? Fat chance

2010-08-18T08:53:00.008+01:00

Today's Londonist alerts us to some people who aim to visit every London hire bike station in 24 hours on 2 September. Patrick Bishop and colleagues will be raising money for a drinking water charity and therefore will be doing it a, erm, sumo suit. (They have a Facebook page.)

They'll need to visit nearly 400 docking stations with a time per station of only about seven minutes, which sounds ambitious. Chances are several of their intended stations will be full (right). Not to mention the recent welter of reported technical glitches, which will probably see all their 400 rides being charged to my key.

There's more charity-stunt-ride fun this weekend in London, when the seven-person conference bike going from John o'Groats to Land's end passes through London. Here they are at the weekend, looking for cycle parking at Manchester Piccadilly (from MadHeadCyclist's twitpic; more photos on their Facebook album).

I look forward to seeing them barrel down a Cycle Superhighway...

Dirty work in east Yorks

2010-08-17T05:34:00.002+01:00

England is full of mucky place names. The sort that gleefully fall foul of US-based profanity filters, and which are gleefully collected in certain mischievous websites.

(I'm surprised that particular website didn't mention Shitterton Farm in Dorset, though.)

Still, I was pleased to cycle past this road yesterday on a jaunt up the east coast south of Scarborough, just north of Flamborough Head.

Hire ambitions: Good and bad experiences of the bike scheme

2010-08-16T08:06:00.004+01:00

The Beer Hunter has been challenging himself to visit as many hire bike docking stations in a day as possible without incurring any charges. On Saturday, he told the Borisbikes forum, he managed 61 in eight hours, through an enterprising mix of jogging, cycling and orienteering.

We like this idea of docking-station challenges and will be watching with interest how the 'record' develops. We might even have a go ourselves.

It all sounds great fun - if the system works. Which hasn't been the experience of another poster to the Borisbikes forum, who claims they were incorrectly billed £30 for nine 'free' journeys.

Are these teething problems or gum disease? As they say, only time will tell. And as my mum would say, well in that case give time a couple of beers or something, and get it to tell us now.

Seeing red on Serpentine pavilion's bike-seats

2010-08-16T07:31:00.001+01:00

Hyde Park, with its benign chaos of walkers, strollers, skaters doing fancy footwork round lines of cups, and tourists trying in vain to head for Buckingham Palace, is always fun to cycle round.

And the Serpentine Gallery is always enjoyable to visit, with its free exhibitions (the current one being a random-feeling selection of works and photos from Wolfgang Tillmans, until 19 September).

But there's a curio we've not seen before in the Pavilion, a cafe-bar and ping-pong venue flooded with blood-red light that's open until 17 October. The seats by the bar are like saddles, and the footrests are like pedals. You can spin them round as you sip your only slightly overpricey beer or cappuccino. You can tell the pav was designed by a Frenchman.

Mamils, Whirls, Cowpoos and other cycling acronyms

2010-08-15T07:19:00.000+01:00

The Mintel report that explained the boom in bike sales as middle-aged men buying expensive road bikes has been picked up by the wider media.

As we mentioned here last week, Mintel’s report said the number of bikes sold was in fact going down. The ‘boom’ in sales is in value, not numbers.

But it hasn’t stopped the story taking off. The BBC website, for example, introduces us to the acronym ‘mamil’ – middle-aged man in Lycra.

This blog does not feel particularly aligned to either elastic copolymer fabrics or seven-grand Pinarellos, and so suggests the following Real Cycling acronyms as more in line with our experience:

WHIRL Wears Helmet, Ignores Red Lights

COWPOO Celebrity On Wheels, Photo Opportunity Only

PRATFACE Politician Riding Around Town, Followed by A Chauffeur on Expenses

BIOGRAPHER Blogs Instead Of Going Riding And Posts Hackneyed, Endless Rants

CLONE Cycle Lane Of No Effect

I'm sure you can come up with even worse.

Paint your wagon: Patriotic bike decor

2010-08-14T08:07:00.001+01:00

You see lots of bikes in London with very snazzy individual paint jobs. This one we spotted the other day in Bermondsey Square (home of London's coolest bike shed).

We're not quite sure what the network map here is, but if it's anything to do with the rail network, that seems reasonably useful. It might just be a wiring diagram for the dynamo, I suppose.

The evidence of the crossbar suggests that it's owned by a patriot...

...and the chainstay, that it's a royalist.

(NB The opinions expressed on this bicycle do not necessarily reflect those of the blog.)

Solving the full / empty docking stations problem

2010-08-13T05:46:00.003+01:00

As I was cycling home up Baylis Road the other night, I was infuriated to see the cycle lane blocked again by this parked c...

Oh. Well, I suppose this one had a decent reason. Of course it's a hire bike shuttle car plus trailer, moving bikes from full docking stations to empty ones.

There's quite a bit of this going on at the moment, as shown by yesterday's post. Possibly lots more to come.

Which raised a sensational suggestion from one of my fellow Southwark Cyclists last night. How about rewarding people who cycle 'against the tide', helpfully?

For instance, if you cycle from a docking station which has (say) less than two free docking points to one which has less than two bikes, you get 25p credit put on your account - something like that.

It would not just help solve the problem of redistribution vehicles clogging the roads. It would also be a great job creation scheme for those with time on their hands, and help fill the streets with cyclists, which as we all know makes it all safer.

I think we should start a campaign.

Killer map: Docking station use visualised live

2010-08-12T08:24:00.005+01:00

Spatial analysis researcher Oliver O'Brien has produced this interesting live map that visualises current hire bike docking station use.

It's updated in real time from TfL data and shows if docking stations are full (red) empty (blue) or the half-full ideal (purple).

It vividly illustrates the tidal flows of commuter use through the day. Central stands fill up (and frustratingly offering you nowhere to dock) and peripheral ones empty (frustratingly offering you no bike to take out) with the process reversing in the evening. (Thanks to Werner for alerting me to this.)

Oliver's blog Suprageography has other examples of visualisation stuff he's been working on, from Mancunian history to London tube use.

Barriers to enjoying the CS3

2010-08-12T07:44:00.005+01:00

The launch of the Hire Bike Scheme has seen the Cycle Superhighways pale into relative insignificance. Which is just as well. Or perhaps it's just that the blue paint is fading faster than expected in several parts. Anyway, I took a spin along CS3, Barking to Tower Gateway, the other day.

The bit along Cable St is good (though of course it's only a blued-up and smoothed-over version of the mile of separated cycle track that was there already).

At Limehouse Basin the strange contraflow maze is still entertaining topologists, with surprising gems like this Continental-style wrong-side-of-the-road challenge here.

Also at Limehouse Basin is a swing bridge. If you're unlucky, it's swung when you arrive, and you have to wait a couple of minutes while river traffic shuttles between basin and Thames.

Now, the devious blogger might take a picture of it in this state, and make a cheap crack about the CS3 not being continuous when it has this barrier across it. That would be unfair.

No. The actual barrier across the CS3 is further on, here in East India Dock. If you can find it after the blue paint mysteriously runs out for a few hundred yards.

If you're not sure which way to go, simply get a camera out and pretend to take a picture. Within seconds, a security guard will rush out and shout clear, firm instructions for you to clear off or he'll call the police, pointing the way helpfully with his fist.

This blog nabs hire bike thief

2010-08-11T06:34:00.004+01:00

A hire bike thief has been caught, TfL tell us, thanks to this blog.

Last Saturday we posted a picture of a hire bike we'd spotted suspiciously situated in a canalside garden in north London, with its logo painted out (right).

TfL's sleuths - the TfL-funded, 30-strong MPS Cycle Task Force - saw the blog and moved into action faster than you can say Bicycle Repair Man (right).

Within two hours, TfL's press person Silka tells us, they had swooped and made an arrest. A man has been cautioned on suspicion of theft. (Apparently, it was a display model rather than a street model, but had still been nicked.)

So if you see anything suspicious - such as a man riding a bicycle wearing a cape with his underpants on outside his trousers, or even a hire bike where it shouldn't be - help the fight against evil by reporting it to the hire bike website.

Mid-life crisis fuels bike boom - not cycling?

2010-08-10T07:28:00.008+01:00

The Telegraph puts an interesting spin on Mintel's new report on the UK bike market.

The paper, which seems quite keen on cycling these days, portrays this as a boom time for bike sales, driven by middle-aged blokes splashing out on £7,000 road bikes to recapture their youth.

It also ends on the cheery figure of 10 per cent of the population cycling 'almost every day'.

There are a couple of less optimistic notes in Mintel's abstract of the report, though. The rise in the value of sales was caused by a weak pound: the number of bikes bought - despite the popularity of cheap bikes under the Cycle to Work Scheme - was down 10 per cent.

(Electric-assist bike sales are on the increase, but that's not real cycling.)

Mintel report that "Cyclists can be divided fairly evenly into the one in eight adults who ride regularly (once a week or more often) and the similar proportion who ride occasionally (less often than once a week).

"Non-cyclists are most likely to be deterred by the perception that it is too dangerous to ride a bicycle on the road."

Ah, those damn perceptions again. Nothing a blue line can't paint over!

Bike hire scheme encourages you to bank at... Nationwide

2010-08-09T07:00:00.002+01:00

Another candidate for 'inappropriately sited Barclays London Hire Bike Scheme docking station of the week': this one's at Cheapside, in the City.

More bikes on drinks labels. Sweet

2010-08-08T09:53:00.006+01:00

Bicycles on wine labels are pretty common, as previous posts (1, 2) have mentioned.

However, there are also teetotal drinks labels featuring bikes. We spotted this one on a bottle of Monin Syrup in a cafe-bar the other day, for instance. It's a standard element of many cocktails, evidently just the sort to pep you up as you cycle from Paris to Roubaix circa 1903.

But 'gum'? Have we been getting it wrong? Is it to drink, or fix your tyres with?

Games people play with hire bikes

2010-08-07T11:23:00.006+01:00

On myLondonCycle they're encouraging you to play a Twitter-based game with the Hire Bikes.

Whenever you take one out, you tweet its number and use a particular hashtag. So by searching Twitter, you can then track the progress of individual bikes - er, or people. Check in whenever you use a hire bike, it urges you, so "everyone knows where you are cycling".

I'm not particularly a fan of surveillance. But maybe such surveillance could help explain how this hire bike got here. We spotted it in a back garden overlooking the Hertford Canal by Victoria Park the other day. There might be a perfectly reasonable explanation, though the amateurish way someone's spray-painted out the logo on the wheel trim raises suspicions.

Of course, there's disappointment for those using a stolen model. Many parts are non-standard and impossible to maintain without specialist equipment. (The valves, for instance, use special locks; you can't take a normal pump to them.)

A draw for cyclists: Poster exhibition at LT museum

2010-08-06T08:37:00.012+01:00

There's an nice exhibition of illustrations promoting cycling in London at the Transport Museum in Covent Garden until 22 August. (The museum is ten quid to get in, with children free, so this exhibition could be the excuse you need to go.)

It shows the best entries from a competition run with the Association of Illustrators. As always with these things, much of the fun comes from disagreeing with the judges' decisions, because the ones you like are clearly much better.

Many of the entries go for the kaleidoscopic, with a bold collage of cycling-is-eco-fun images. Galia Bernstein's Go Green, for example (right), the image used to publicise the exhibition; although curiously it doesn't contain any green.

Ms Bernstein may be making a point, or perhaps she just liked the Barclayesque, turquoise feeling to the city milieu.

Mia Nilsson's third-prize entry (right) goes for a similar approach, perhaps inspired by the trunk-route and branch-line network of the Cycle Superhighways. Or perhaps not.

The first prize went to Rachel Lillie's Good for you Green for London (right), though there were several others that caught my eye.

I was rather taken with the 1960s-kids'-book humour of Mithila Shafiq's Going to Horse Guard Parade [sic], with a soldier giving his horse a lift on a tandem; like the London Bike Hire Scheme, I'm not sure that the promotion of equestrian bike-sharing will significantly increase the capital's modal share of cycle journeys, but it makes me happy.

I liked the sideways humour of Marco Viale's Bikali, with the eight-armed Indian deity astride a bike. Yes, you often need eight arms in London: two to hold the handlebars, two to signal, two to hold the coffee and bacon roll, and two for gesticulating to drivers.

The illustration I'd most want on my bedroom wall is Charis Tsang's Taking in the View (detail, below right), a skyline panorama from Primrose Hill in sunny, relaxing 1930s poster style that promotes the space and freedom of cycling through subtlety rather than thumping a biodegradable tub.

The funniest one is Jamie Wieck's The Joy of Cycling, a risqué parody of the 1970s book The Joy of Sex. Typefaces and line drawings are authentic, even down to that bloke's period thicket of a beard, and the bike puns are almost laugh-out-loud. (I'll even celebrate his comedically straight-faced instructions to you to 'always use protection' and 'practise safe cycling' and wear a helmet.)

Plenty to enjoy, and they've got a Hire Bike on display too. For those going there by the real thing, there's a docking station right outside the south exit on Tavistock St, and another in Wellington St, possibly forming London's closest pair.

And hooray for the Museum: the find-us section on their website prominently features directions on how to get there by bike.

Now that's a real cyclist

2010-08-05T08:14:00.006+01:00

The Telegraph's Anna Tyzack eulogises the Bike Hire scheme this morning, perhaps a bit generously, but is worried about her cyclist status:

"Even though I go to work by bike, I’d be reluctant to describe myself as a cyclist. I don’t wear Lycra...

On several occasions I’ve been hissed at by officious fluorescent-jacketed cyclists at traffic lights. Once I’d forgotten to switch my lights on, another time I’d been going too slowly, and last week a man on a racing bike took umbrage at the bag of books in my basket (“You crazy idiot, get a rucksack!”)."

Anna, don't worry. You're welcome here.

Keep an Eye on this: Call to ban bikes from South Bank

2010-08-05T06:38:00.003+01:00

At the moment, you can cycle along the side of the Thames for its most picture-postcard stretch, past its most iconic sights and bridges: from Vauxhall, past the Houses of Parliament, right underneath the Eye, under the Jubilee Bridge, past the Royal Festival Hall, under Waterloo Bridge with its bookstalls, by the National Theatre with the free summer Watch This Space events, and along the grand spacious riverside boulevard to the Oxo Tower.

You're not really supposed to, but in practice you're allowed, as Kennington People on Bikes entertainingly reported yesterday with comprehensive illustrations.

It's one of the world's great big-city cycling trundles, and ideal on the new Hire Bikes. It's that riverside bit in the picture here.

But the debate over whether it should be allowed it all (and it seems 'tolerated' at the moment rather than being 'legal') has been grumbling along for years. And as SE1 reports, the latest draft strategy to 'develop' cycling suggests it should be forbidden between the Eye and the Oxo. Both support and opposition is vehement and about 50-50.

Opponents say the alternative inland route along Belvedere Road (right) is much safer and more convenient.

Many people (including lots on Lambeth council, who control the Vauxhall-Westminster stretch) want to allow cycling, but have it lightly policed on a 'reasonable behaviour' basis. That seems the most sensible solution to us, preserving comfort for pedestrians but also access for sensible cyclists.

Or we could cordon off territories either side of a Peace Wall like they did in Belfast, one side for pedestrians and the other for terr- er, cyclists, and put up loads of bold murals. That could become a tourist attraction in its own right.

Anyway, today's picture of a cycle hire docking station is the one on Belvedere Road, where you'll have to cycle if the ban eventually goes ahead. The ones round here are usually full in the evening - not ideal if you're looking to dock your hire bike and you're late for your event.

Free to go: Dr Bike tomorrow at Oval, Clapham

2010-08-04T09:38:00.007+01:00

Dr Bike sessions are pretty regular things round London: council-subsidised roadside stalls where you can stop off on your morning or evening commute.

You get your bike checked over, and any simple maintenance work such as brake adjusting or gear tuning, all done for free.

There are two (extra ones, by popular demand) tomorrow in Lambeth on Cycle Superhighway 7: a morning one at Clapham Common from 7.30am-9.30am, and an evening one at the Oval from 5.30pm to 7.30pm.

We were at last Thursday's very well-attended Oval one (above and right), and it's the best site we've seen for a Dr Bike: right on a major commuting route, and prominently visible to cyclists stopped at the lights just beforehand, giving them plenty of time to see the stall and decide to stop.

It's also the ideal application for an underused, and not particularly otherwise usable (below), triangle of concrete sheared off from casual use by three fast main roads. So we think this is a good candidate for a semi-permanent, or at least more regular, showpiece Dr Bike location.

These are popular. The wait for a free mechanic can be half an hour in peak time. While waiting, you can stroll across to Oval station and pick up your free Evening Standard to read cover to cover. Still leaves another twenty-seven minutes to fill, though.

So we think a session here could be a candidate for a bike-powered smoothie-maker stall, catering for the captive market of cyclists queueing for their free work to be done. There's a small fortune to be made by someone. As ever in life though, it helps if you start with a large one.

Helmets can't save Melbourne from knockout blow

2010-08-03T07:31:00.015+01:00

The teething problems of the London Bike Hire Scheme continue. The editor of the excellent London SE1 website found himself charged £150 for 'non-return' of a bike he'd returned, while further organisational and software woes are catalogued on lovingboth's blog.

But, as Paul Martin of Brisbane commented here yesterday, London is a roaring success compared to Melbourne's Bike new Bike Share Scheme. It has only logged 70 hires per day at a cost of $A5.5m (about £3.1m).

The reason? Victoria's state laws require cyclists to wear a helmet. So, unless you happen to be wearing a helmet already, which is unlikely for those of us who aren't security guards with a suitcase of money shackled to a wrist, you can't hire a bike.

Melbourne's real cyclists demonstrated to draw attention to the problem. They rode bare-headed, and received tickets. (Pictures from the Auckland Cycle Chic blog.)

Mexico City recently scrapped its helmet laws specifically because of the introduction of its own hire scheme, and London's scheme is unhelmeted very deliberately.

(Indeed, some TfL people have hinted to us that some of the forces behind the scheme see it as helping to ensure against compulsory helmet laws in Britain - and note how many people in Bike Hire, Superhighway, and ooh-isn't-London-cycling-nice ads are not wearing lids. Quite a few.)

Now, to me, it's clear that helmets should continue to be legal in the UK. If you want to wear one, that's your choice, and you should be allowed to do so. Just because I don't want to wear them, I don't see why I should foist my opinions on you and make them illegal. Same goes for combovers, or knitted ties, or replica Premiership shirts with 'LAMPARD' on one side and a beer gut on the other. It's a free country.

But compulsion, no. That's not real cycling. My position on helmets? Anywhere except underneath one. Let's hope others learn from Melbourne's headache.

Anyway, today's London docking station pic is Vauxhall, which is hidden excitingly underneath a tunnel. Is this London's most sheltered hire point?

Low ceilings here, though: don't bump your head. Cycling can be ever so dangerous, you know.

Bike Hire Scheme: Initial figures prove... er, something

2010-08-02T00:02:00.002+01:00

TfL have just published a few figures about the Bike Hire Scheme's first weekend:
• 21,000 people were signed up for membership as of 4pm Sunday
• There were 6,403 journeys on Friday; 5,364 on Saturday; and 2,485 by 4pm Sunday
• The top hire site on Friday was Bankside Mix (81) followed by Newgate St, St Paul's (59)
• The top hire site on Saturday was Wardour St (88) followed by Hop Exchange, Borough (71)
• There are 315 docking stations live, with 5,000 bikes available

They don't say how many of those 5,000 bikes have dodgy rear wheels thanks to overtightened brakes. (I'd guess about 2,000 from my experience.) But the above figures conclusively prove the scheme has got off to a superb start.

Or possibly that it's a bit rubbish. I don't know what to compare them with. But whatever the case, they no doubt prove you were right all along.

Anyway, you can probably guess the location of the docking station pictured.

Bike hire scheme encourages you to bank at... HSBC

2010-08-01T05:22:00.000+01:00

With the Hire Bike Scheme up and running, we can spend the next few weeks doing the interesting stuff: discussing interestingly-located docking stations, best free sub-half-hour routes, and so on.

Here's a candidate for the most inappropriately situated docking station, given the sponsors of the scheme... (it's on Southwark St).

Barklays: Hire bikes and dogs at Critical Mass

2010-07-31T09:22:00.010+01:00

It so happened that yesterday, the launch day of the London Bike Hire Scheme, was also Critical Mass day.

Inevitably, a few CMers turned up on hire bikes, prepared to pay for their hire by taking the machine out beyond the half-hour limit for free use. To a Yorkshireman like me, that's heroic stuff.

The Mass went round Parliament Square, with the usual cycle-brandishing schtick that has become a provocative, and to me rather irritating, symbol of CM.

And, to enormous cheers, someone managed it, semi-ironically, with a Hire Bike. He's a strong guy: those bikes weigh a ton.

I like semi-irony. You can claim it was either serious or joking afterwards. That's why I'm semi-ironic half the time, and only semi-serious the other half, though obviously that statement is tongue in cheek.

Anyway, we were glad to see the Hire Bike Massers were obeying the TfL guidelines and not putting a dog in the front carrier, which is expressly forbidden.

You need a proper basket for that, as this chap at the mass last night demonstrated.

Yappy, dirty, unruly, annoying: yes, a few people on the Critical Mass can be a bit tiresome. But the vast majority are simply normal cycling folk like you and, er, me. And the Jack Russell here was just as well behaved.

Hire Bike Scheme: First day full report

2010-07-31T08:21:00.008+01:00

We had a full day of wheeling round London on the new hire bikes yesterday. Our second impressions are much as our first: there are many teething troubles, some urgent but straightforward to fix, others more challenging and long-term. But we're still very positive about the way the hire bikes will add to the capital's cycling culture.

First, the urgent but straightforward-to-fix. There are too many bikes with overtightened brakes whose rear wheels hardly go round - about half of them, I'd guess. Some stands had few, or no, bikes with acceptably smooth rear wheels. This must be addressed over the weekend, or else a large proportion of the bikes aren't usable.

Second, and potentially more challenging, is the problem of cycle flows. During the afternoon, every docking station we saw had both bikes and docking stations available.

But in the evening rush hour it was different. Round Elephant and Castle, presumably because of commuter flows outwards, the docking stations were empty of bikes. We had a quarter-mile jog from this one, at Hampton St, to the next station with available bikes. (At least the information screens telling you where to find the nearest available bikes were mostly working.)

Conversely, the magnet-stations around the South Bank were all full. This is more serious. If you can't dock your bike you can ask for extra free time somehow (I never quite found out how in my rush to redock) and cycle to the next station with free docks. This wasn't easy at the South Bank last night, where the six nearest alternative docking stations offered a total of one free space, which had gone by the time I got there.

It was all rather exciting; I've always wanted to go orienteering. I found a vacant space near London Bridge eventually, almost a mile away, but it meant a long jog back to my intended destination, and that did rather defeat the point of hire bikes.

(Yes, this full docking station in the picture is in front of the Gherkin, not the South Bank. I didn't have my camera during my South Bank exercises, and anyway the pictures would have been too blurred.)

This, we expect, will be sorted out eventually. It's trickier than taking a spanner to a few thousand back brakes, though. The transfer-trailer wagons that scoop up spare bikes and ferry them back to empty docking stations will be very busy in the coming weeks as TfL work out how the flow patterns work. We pioneers are also guinea pigs, and there could be a few more unscheduled jogging sessions for some of us.

I didn't know the hire bikes were going to keep me so fit.

A few other niggles too: some docking stations weren't letting you take bikes out (St Paul's); some screens weren't working (Godliman St); sometimes the docking post didn't register your bike as docked even when you couldn't get it out again.

But it's remarkable that the scheme is working to any extent, given the Boris-induced schedule it's been put together to. We're pleased to have it working, even if it is only eighty per cent right at the moment.

And all those provisos apart... we still had a great time shuttling round between all that London stuff: free outdoor concerts, cafes, museums, sights, and surprise table tennis at the Barbican. There was a camaraderie among the first-day pioneers, and lots of smiling double-takes from passers-by.

We're convinced the scheme will bring a new dimension to exploring and commuting round London. Several times yesterday we were shouted at by blokes in vans and taxis - not telling us to get off the effing road, as usual, but giving us thumbs-up and saying whoa, nice bike, how do I take one out?

And every docking station had curious and bemused groups of tourists and locals poking about the stands and prodding the screens, asking us what was going on and then nodding thoughtfully.

Problems? Yes, lots. Inevitably. But we still think it's a very promising start.

Hire Bike Scheme: First report

2010-07-30T07:43:00.025+01:00

We were there at our local docking station by the Elephant and Castle at 6am this morning at the very moment the London Bike Hire Scheme launched.

It's mostly good news. The member-key system works fine. Taking a bike out is easy and quick: you don't have to log in, you just stick your key into a slot, release your bike and cycle away.

Redocking it automatically checks it in: you don't have to log out or do anything. The bikes are fine: a bit low-geared perhaps, and the front-heavy handlebars can feel like you're pushing a wheelbarrow full of cats; but they're comfy, straightforward, and hop-on-hop-off easy to ride. There's no lock: so what? Use the next docking station. And no helmet: quite right too.

For £1, about the third of a cost of a muffin or coffee on station concourse, you can ride the bikes for any number of half-hours in a day free.

We breezed around in delight between various docking stations on the south bank this morning between 6am and 7am. We only spotted two other pioneers riding hire bikes in that time, one of whom was the editor of a certain local news website.

We spotted several snappers and film crews, though, some of whom spotted us before we could escape, so you may see us on TV tonight.

Over 11,000 people have signed up for membership keys, though only 4,000 have activated them.

And there are about 4,700 bikes currently available at the docking stations, of which there are 284, 330, or 360, depending on whether you believe the Evening Standard, TfL yesterday, or TfL on Tuesday.

Some people will complain that the hire bikes will mean untrained people with no idea about British road rules careering dangerously about the streets. People such as TfL-licensed minicab drivers, for instance, who no doubt think that's their prerogative. Well, tough. Share the road and play nicely. It's ours too, you know.

Bikes that need to be redistributed from full docking stations to empty ones are conveyed by trailer pulled by electric cars like this one.

Now, the teething problems. Some of the bikes have had their brakes overtightened, so that the back wheel hardly goes round. Pedalling one of these feels like going uphill, or cycling home after a particularly large and convivial dinner. (This affected several bikes we tried at the Southwark St station, and the one I took out at Ontario St.)

The problem with this is that if you take a bike out, find it's stiff and then re-dock it, you have to wait five minutes until you can take another one out. So pioneers are advised to check the back wheel spins OK before putting your key in to take the bike out. Otherwise you'll have five minutes to fill, and presumably in London docking stations are like bus stops and you're not allowed to talk to anyone.

And, inevitably, some tedious whinger had put stickers on some bikes complaining about Barclays sponsoring earthquakes in the third world or something, which involved extra work for some TfL people this morning going round unsticking them.

Working out where the live docking stations are isn't yet totally reliable either. We couldn't find out from the docking station terminals we were at this morning because they didn't appear fully operational, though the SE1 website's report on the launch at the Belvedere Rd station, Boris Johnson and all, evidently had no problems.

There's the printed TfL map - but it was compiled a while ago and it shows some docking stations that haven't been built (such as the one on Lambeth Bridge).

And the online TfL map shows the updated locations of docking stations, but some of them haven't actually gone live yet (such as the one on Albert Embankment, just down from Lambeth Bridge, which was covered with tape and not yet in service this morning).

But these will be fixed. For the meanwhile we're delighted to see the scheme up and running. We think this has added a fun and creative new dimension to London's bike culture and we're all for it. There's more of this to come.

Update 8.50am: According to Dave Hill's blog, 12,000 people have now signed up as members, 6,000 membership keys have been activated, and 5,000 of the bikes are available at 315 working docking stations.

New views: Trixi mirrors on CS7

2010-07-29T08:23:00.007+01:00

Cycle Superhighway 7 has given us the UK's first glance of Trixi mirrors, installed to give drivers of large vehicles a view over their blind spot - the corridor down their left where cyclists become as invisible as me trying to get served at the bar.

They are named after Beatrix Willburger, a Swiss girl killed by a lorry turning left. Her father has since promoted the use of the mirrors at junctions.

There were 31 of the mirrors on the two Cycle Superhighways for the launch last week, with 37 ultimately being trialled in London over the next six months. This is the one on CS7 by Clapham Common.

The mirror technology needs some tweaking. I could only see someone who looked like me, only older. And more bulbous. I wouldn't serve him at a bar.

Book review: Bicycle Maintenance

2010-07-29T08:13:00.004+01:00

Bike maintenance is like a language: you learn it by doing it, not from a book. Except that without the book you won't know what to do in the first place.

Being able to look after a bike is a valuable skill, especially when you see what some bike chains charge you for a service - fifty quid for really, really basic stuff you can do easily at home in an hour. (Anyone who's ever been rushed two hundred quid for a basic survey on a house, which tells you things you could have worked out for yourself like how many rooms it's got, will know the feeling.)

Bicycle Maintenance is a new guidebook which tells you all this stuff. Clearly laid out in a magazine style, it covers the literal nuts and bolts, from simple cleaning and maintenance, through cable and bearing replacement, up to truing wheels. (This is the imperfect subjunctive of bike maintenance: too tricky for normal people in practice, but it's reassuring to know the theory.) It's written mainly from the mountain bike perspective, but addresses road bikes too (with their different gear shifters, for instance).

Getting confidence fixing bikes does need experience. The section on fixing punctures is fine, for instance, but the only way of learning how to put a tyre back on with your fingers, without needing tyre levers, is to do it: it's a craft. Adjusting indexing and gear ratios – which the book also covers comprehensively – is presumably the same, though that's a bridge too far for real cyclists like me. A wobbly bridge at that.

This looks a very good reference to have on your shelf. Bicycle Maintenance, by Guy Andrews and published by Dennis, is available from Amazon for £8.99. You may well see it in shops like Tesco and WH Smith, and it's also on sale through magbooks.com.

And no, if you buy it through that link, I don't get any commission. And no, I don't want to hear from anyone telling me how to set up affiliate links and sponsored advertisements to plaster my blog with in order to earn untold riches.

TV seeks cyclist: Bike programmes on BBC iPlayer

2010-07-28T09:02:00.009+01:00

BBC4 last night had a bike-themed evening of programmes. Two of them, conveniently for those of us who don't have a television, are available for the next few days on iPlayer.

The Bicycle is a half-hour history-of-the-bike, but concentrating on the Edwardian period - the Golden Age of the Bicycle.

And in the hour-long Ride of my life: The story of the bicycle, Rob Penn treads a giant carbon footprint over most of the G7 as he assembles his dream bike.

With TV-programme logic, instead of simply ordering his Brooks saddle or Campag parts over the internet, Rob has to buy them all in person in a journey of discovery etc.

En route we also get an enjoyable history of the bicycle. Nice to while away a spare hour with, while you're on hold trying to phone your bank, perhaps. It's all feelgood stuff, and we're reassured several times that today is the beginning of a new Golden Age of the Bicycle.

Hmm. Perhaps iron pyrites would be more appropriate.

Rush hour: Sign up for the bike hire scheme now

2010-07-27T09:20:00.006+01:00

There's still time to register for the London Bike Hire Scheme. As it isn't available to casual users for another month, becoming a member is the only way to try out the scheme when it launches at 8am on Friday.

It only costs £3 - which isn't even the price of the not even a full pint most London pubs try to fob you off with - and you get a magic key providing instant hire through the post the next morning. (Assuming your posties haven't had to switch from bikes to trolleys and are therefore a day late.)

Some 5,760 people had signed up by Monday evening, TfL have just told me. So by Friday's launch, there will be well over 6,000 members. As there are only 6,000 bikes, that could make for an entertaining stampede when it all goes live.

To add to the excitement, we won't know exactly which docking stations will be live until the morning of the launch. The TfL website has a map which will be updated with working docking stations on Friday morning.

I'll be first in the queue at our local docking station. We're very positive about the scheme. I bang on about it in my Cycling Plus column this month.

One handy use for the hire bikes, even for regular cyclists like us, will be as emergency machine in case of mechanical breakdown. Having to carry a spare wheel - like this chap, spotted on Kennington Road the other day - will be a thing of the past.

Dunwich Dynamo 2010: Full report

2010-07-26T08:45:00.031+01:00

Here's the full report on the Dunwich Dynamo, the annual 120-mile mass night bike ride from London to the Suffolk coast, which took place on Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Saturday
7.30pm Arrive at the Pub on the Park, London Fields, Hackney. The building appears to float in sea of cyclists. Perhaps a thousand are here already, waiting for off. I rendezvous with three chums doing it with me.

All London bike life is here, from team whizzkids with kit the colour of rainforest toads, to tribally tattooed and pierced radicals on fixies. Most though look like Sunday leisure riders out for a pub-lunch spin on their everyday bikes.

There is, to me, a pleasing amount of people in normal clothes, barometrically demonstrated by the amount of bare-headed young women in summer frocks and slingbacks on shoppers. There are folders, recumbents, tandems. I'm doing it on my touring bike, whose comfort over distance I can trust. I see lots of people I know.

But no beer for us: too busy chatting and joking, and picking up our routemap and coach tickets back.

8.30pm There's no 'start time'; the DD is not organised as such. It's more of a routeplanned, and very long, Critical Mass, than a race or a tour. But most people set off between 8.15ish and 9ish. We follow the crowds pushing off on the half-hour, an insect colony on wheels creeping through Hackney. Lots of banter with lairy, but jokey, Saturday-night locals.

10pm The iconic sight of the DD: the long line of strobing red lights on the long straight main road in front of you, as the bikesnake eats through the Epping Forest blackness.

We stop at a pub for water in and out. This really is a mass event: we've been part of a peloton all the way from Hackney, cyclists stretching to the event horizon both ways.

11.30pm Stop for 'breakfast' at Great Dunmow, 30-odd miles out. Three hours so far, but still only a quarter of the way: this is a big ride.

It's chucking-out time in the town centre. Bleary-eyed young men and shouty girls in cheap-chic clubwear chase taxis under the streetlights. All the time, to their bemusement, cyclists are barrelling through the main street.

Some lads on BMXs chat to us amiably. They're in the relaxed post-cider and mid-cigarette stage. We're swigging Tesco value fizzy water and gobbling Jaffa cakes and bananas with the opposite effect in mind.

Sunday
Midnight This ride is the most extraordinary experience. It's not quite pitch dark: there's a full moon, organised specially for the ride date every year. The milk-grey clouds smear its light out, hiding the stars, but provide a thermal blanket that makes for a perfect cycling temperature. Everyone's bare-armed. There's a tailwind and we're all flying.

The world is ours. We're on silent country lanes, devoid of motor traffic but thick with bikes. Navigation is a formality: you simply follow the line of red lights in front you. Behind is a similar line of lights in white, curving like a constellation on the way you've come.

Because there's no start time or official stages, and people stop where and when they want, you're always overtaking and always being overtaken. Perhaps there are clones and we're in a bad sci-fi movie, or perhaps we've been passed by that same guy five times already.

1am The only navigation challenge of the entire night: how to find the 'lunch stop'. This near-halfway eating opportunity, in a hall in Sible Hedingham, has been specially organised to feed a thousand nocturnal bikers. There are handwritten signs and some people standing on corners pointing, but hundreds of us get lost and have to backtrack.

The hall and its gardens are a shadowy and spotlit chaos of bikes laid flat on the ground and people processing sandwiches. It's still T-shirt mild.

3am This is surprisingly pleasant. We're rolling along at an easy 12mph, chatting. We overtake steadily and are overtaken steadily. We talk and joke briefly with others as we pass and are passed. The world is dark but it's all we know and it belongs to us.

Every few miles, chillingly like when you pass a hearse, there is a cluster of two or three people at the roadside, illuminated with ghostly elusiveness by a bike light. They're mending a puncture. There's a light-holder and a pump-pumper and sometimes a morale-booster. There but for the grace of the bike gods...

4am I'm still tussling with my cycling chum Dave's probability poser. Someone tells you he has two children. One is a boy. What's the chance the other is a boy? Not quite intuitively (depending on the framing of the question) it's one in three. But the boy was born on a Tuesday - what's the probability now? Supposedly this changes things and it's more like one in two. (More)

I don't get this at all. And I can't claim mitigating circumstances. We don't actually feel tired or sleepy. It's just a lovely steady ride. Dawn breaks gently and we begin to see the cottagey detail of the villages we're going through.

5.30am Another stop - tea? breakfast? - at a picnic site by a cool dawn lake outside Coddenham. We feast on Jaffa cakes and bananas and toast ourselves with carbonated table water. The only litter bin is inside the gents' toilet. I put the banana skins in the bin. It's full of them.

When the cleaner arrives later on today, all the cyclists will have passed, and they'll just find a bin containing seven hundred banana skins. What will they think has been going on? Banana-skin flashmob, perhaps.

7.30am Eureka. The first signpost to Dunwich. Seven miles seems nothing now. The last few miles are across Dunwich Heath, a change of landscape so abrupt from the rolling Suffolk countryside that it feels almost tropical.

We can see cyclists coming back the other way. Most have done their beach stuff and are cycling a few miles to Ipswich to get the train back. Some are actually cycling back to London.

8am Arrive Dunwich beach. I'd expected to feel overwhelmed, exhausted, emotional; in fact, we're very pleased to have finished, but feeling, well, pretty fresh, actually.

The place is overrun with cyclists. The cafe is stockaded by queues. I've still got plenty of food in my panniers though. We find a spot on the shingle beach, lay our bikes flat, and strip off for a swim in the uncold, pleasant sea. The grey waves are exhilarating in their cool liquidity.

9am-1pm Getting home is the only big problem of the DD. Train spaces are obviously limited. Some have lifts from loved ones to whisk them and bike back home in a big hatchback. For the remainder - 730, we are later told - there is a coach service back, which transports your bike in a series of furniture vans, wadded tightly in between blankets.

Having breakfast, swimming, snoozing on the beach, getting the bike organised into the van and finding our coach seat takes all morning. Finally, approaching 1pm, we pull out of the car park to start the journey home.

3.30pm Arrive back in London, at Smithfield's. The intricate unloading of the bikes takes place in the meat market. We reclaim our machines and cycle home via meals and goodbyes and bumpings-into of more people we know. Time, I rather think, for a bath and an early night.

Final words
This was the first DD I've done; it was a fantastic and unique experience, for me the most enjoyable non-racing mass-ride there is. Better than London Skyride, with its corporate oppression; better than Critical Mass, with its confrontation and tribalism. Even with 1,400 people this year, the biggest ever, it still feels a cult, something special.

The business of cycling from dusk to dawn through dark country lanes, for 120 miles, in a cascade of over a thousand other people on bikes, is slightly weird, but it's a great and utterly memorable thing to do.

To reiterate: it's not a race, it's not for charity, it's not sponsored and it's minimally organised. You don't have to register for anything and it's free. It's just hundreds of people going for a bike ride. One of the greatest rides of your life.

Dunwich Dynamo 2010 route (EveryTrail, thanks Nigel)

DD 2010: Best ever?

2010-07-25T19:06:00.004+01:00

The fantastic Dunwich Dynamo 2010 was surely a candidate for the best ever.

Tailwinds all the way, warm dry T-shirt weather even in the depth of night - and the buzz of being part of something huge, spontaneous and still unspoiled. Over 1,400 cyclists, the most ever, doing a 120 mile bike ride. Not for charity, not for competition, but for sheer fun.

I've just got back and I'll put up a more detailed report tomorrow. But right now I think I need a bath.

Dunwich Dynamo tonight

2010-07-24T08:40:00.003+01:00

Dunwich Dynamo tonight. They're expecting 1400 rides for the 120-mile night ride to the seaside at Dunwich, the biggest ever. Perhaps it can't be described as a cult any more.

It leaves from the Pub on the Park, Hackney, 8pm ish. No more coach spaces back, apparently, so you'll have to be inventive if you want to join on impulse... or you could just come along to watch the Grand Depart.

Report tomorrow, punctures permitting.

It's Barking: Bike lanes blocked by blank signs

2010-07-23T11:11:00.006+01:00

It's always frustrating when cycle tracks are blocked by roadworks signs, such as this example on the A13 just east of Barking.

Still, they're there for a good purpose. We need the signs to give us directions and information.

After all, if you didn't have signs, you'd just have chaos, with nobody knowing where to go.

A good sign is concise and clear. These signs don't waste a word.

Just west from here is the start of the new CS3, from Barking to Tower Bridge. Obviously, being a Cycle Superhighway, the cycle track is different from the sort of nonsense you see here.

Instead of green nonsense, it's blue nonsense, as we'll see in tomorrow's post.

Sign on for the Bike Hire Scheme today... if the system will let you

2010-07-23T08:33:00.005+01:00

From today, you can sign up to be a keyholder for the London Cycle Hire Scheme, which starts on 30 July. For the first few weeks only keyholders will be able to use the bikes. After that it goes live to casual users.

Signing up to be a keyholder costs three quid, and enables you to access the hire bikes a day or a week at a time. They key is sent to you in the post.

We're very enthusiastic about the cycle hire scheme, and were up early this morning to sign up.

Apart from the sort of irritations put in by dozy techie people - such as your address being forced to have three lines in, so that the second two of mine are 'London, London' - the process is quick and easy.

You simply fill in a few forms, give your credit card details, and... oh. How do I contact the 'system adminstrator'?

Duck special: Low headroom in Lee Valley

2010-07-22T06:39:00.007+01:00

Is this the lowest-headroom cycle bridge in Britain? It's on National Cycle Route 1 following the Lee Valley north, in Walthamstow marshes.

The cycle path ducks under a railway bridge at Coppermill Lane and leaves you just five feet of headroom, or 152cm - that's about the minimum required width for a cycle lane.

(The minimum required headroom for underpasses according to TA90/05 appears to be 2.4m, or an inch or two under eight feet.)

This young lady has obviously had practice.

Dynamo hub: DD this Saturday

2010-07-21T07:35:00.001+01:00

It's the Dunwich Dynamo this Saturday night: the annual 120 mile night ride extravaganza to the seaside with up to a thousand others. Not-for-charity, not-organised, not-for-profit, not-Sky. (Smiley face.)

Against my better judgement, and going against EVERYTHING I believe in, I've booked myself a coach back. So now, having paid £14 quid and coming from Yorkshire, I'll have to do it to get my money's worth.

If you want to book a coach back you can still do so (it's near the bottom of the Southwark Cyclists Dunwich Dynamo info page), but it's the latecomers' price of £26. Value? Priceless.

Plus ça change: Bikes through the ages at Rapha

2010-07-20T07:35:00.004+01:00

Even if you're a real cyclist who considers the Tour de France a good ride spoiled, we recommend nipping into the Rapha cafe, the über-stylish racers' pop-up in Clerkenwell that we've blogged about before, this week.

While the Tour is on - this week, then - they have a fabulous exhibition downstairs of racing bikes for every decade through the 20th century. (It's actually in celebration of the 'centenary of the Col du Tourmalet', an age geologists might dispute.)

The remarkable thing is, of course, how little bikes have changed since 1900. The single front brake on the century-old model is pretty rudimentary, but otherwise with a respray it could be a trendy single-speed next to you in today's ASL, Brooks saddle and all.

As the decades roll on, gearing technology develops from alarmingly crude levers on the rear seatstays, but otherwise the most noticeable change is the choking algal growth of sponsors' logos.

And the handlebars of this bike - from the 1910s - show the cutting-edge technology used by the club racer of the post-Edwardian years.

Boris's blues: Cycle Superhighways launch this morning

2010-07-19T12:05:00.012+01:00

The Cycle Superhighways were officially launched this morning in a marquee on Clapham Common.

Freebies offered to passing cyclists included excellent coffee, a Dr Bike maintenance tent, and complimentary water bottles.

Funny, though: the water bottles were superbly branded with 'Cycle Superhighways' on the outside, but when I examined the contents, there was nothing but hot air.

My views on the Woeful Woadways are well known: they're blue paint on the road, no more. A recent BBC website feature agreed.

But in the Speeches, David Brown of TfL made a valiant effort to justify the multi-million pound expenditure on the cobalt-coloured calamities.

He drew our attention to the 84 new ASLs, 37 Trixi mirrors, 17,500 hours of cycle training, led rides every borough, changes to junctions at Stockwell and Kennington, traffic calming at side junctions, 5,000 new bike parking spaces, and all those subtle resurfacing improvements, such as around drain covers.

Brave try, but all the manhole-margin facelifts in the world can't disguise the fact that nothing significant on the roads has changed except the blue paint.

Still, after a reassuringly dull speech from a Barclays rep - reassuring because I don't want a comedian looking after my mortgage, thank you, I want a reliable plodder – you could sense the relief when Boris stepped up to the plate.

And he didn't disappoint. Whatever you think of him – and I don't think many US profanity filters would allow me to write my opinion here – he is a real cyclist, as well as being a charming, funny and witty speaker. It wasn't so much a speech as an appearance on Just a Minute.

Yes, he'd cycled here, at "the pace of an elderly French onion seller", obeying all the traffic signals and "stopping like a pillar of salt at the lights". Yet it had taken him just 35 minutes from Islington, during which time he had overtaken a boy-racer several times in an open top sports car.

Boris had everyone laughing, though he made me laugh most when he said that by coming via the CS7 he'd arrived in "every possible comfort and style".

He spent half an hour or so doing interviews – Boris sure gives good headline – and finally cycled along the CS7 back to the city.

So: it was a good morning all round, with all the self-referential activity you expect at cycle jamborees these days: bloggers, local radio journos, small-time TV crews and PR hacks, all interviewing each other. I rather enjoyed myself.

All the great and the good were here. Plus some rather mediocre cycle bloggers, snagging whatever free things they could. Speaking of which, I got a gratis chewy cereal bar, too - result! So the Superficial Cycleways have done something positive for me after all!

Cycle Superhighways launch podcast

2010-07-19T01:00:00.000+01:00

In this special podcast for the launch this morning of the Cycle Superhighways, we talk to a bike shop and to three London cyclists to see what they make of the new blue stripes on the road. Boon or bluewash? Hear what they have to say...

Hear podcast (5min 41sec, MP3, 3.9MB)

Bib, bib: It's the Ealing Skyride

2010-07-18T17:14:00.010+01:00

Blimey. Superficial Cycleways, Bike Hire, Skyrides - it's all happening this July.

Ealing was the venue for a big Skyride today, winding 11km or so round parks and back streets, all closed to traffic. It was plied with people of all ages enjoying the freedom and individuality of, um, wearing the free yellow corporate Skyride bib.

For long stretches we were going up bus lanes contraflow-style, which was quite exciting.

It was rather fun: heavily marshalled, but in a friendly sort of way, very well attended, and very well organised. If only Sky had been as organised about paying me when I used to do freelance work for them.

Not everyone was happy - one resident (below right) made their feelings plain, and a few impatient motorists ignored the STOP / GO signs of the marshals at crossing points.

('Nowhere to park'? Rubbish! Only one side of your street had parking bollarded out. You can walk across the road, can't you? Come on, it's only mild disruption for one half-day a year.)

Anyway, most locals seemed perfectly happy with the bikefest. Some families had put up garden chairs on the pavement outside their houses to watch the parade pass by with a small picnic.

The big Skyride, of course, is the one coming on Sunday 5 September round central London. It gives you the unique opportunity to cycle traffic-free round say Buckingham Palace, something you can only normally do, er, every Sunday.

I'm not very enthusiastic about the big central ride. In fact I'm wary of the whole organised-ride schtick - such cottonwool protection is only any use if great efforts go into making roads safe and fear-free for cyclists the other 364.5 days of the year.

But we think these local Skyrides (such as Hounslow's last year) are a good thing. They give nervous cyclists, families, and the curious, the chance to enjoy roaming around car-free and at leisure. So long as it's only one small, initial, part of the picture, we're for them.

This family, on a four-person school-run bike specially made at St John St Cycles, wasn't nervous at all. The only thing they're uncertain about is how much they'll get for it on eBay. It's for sale there, apparently. Try something near two grand.

Ready for launch: CS7 starts tomorrow

2010-07-18T07:00:00.015+01:00

The Cycle Superhighways launch tomorrow, and the last-minute preparations were being done on CS7 yesterday when we cycled along it from Tooting to Southwark Bridge.

Many things about the Superficial Cycleways are very good. Unfortunately these very good things aren't actually the cycle lanes.

The information posts - such as this one, being installed at the start by Colliers Wood tube - are excellent. They're easy to find, well designed and full of useful information: local street maps, overall route diagrams and useful phone numbers.

They also have possibly ambitious timings which suggest you'll only take 30 minutes to get from Clapham South to the City. If you're as easily distracted by south Indian food as us, you can double such figures in the restaurant quarters of Tooting.

There's even a 'north' pointer set in the pavement at the bottom, so you can reorient yourself after a bus knocks you off your bike.

There's also a great many new bike racks in the southern half of the route, in the M-shaped 'Camden' style. Quite a few of them even have enough space between them to park two bikes per rack.

The chaps installing the info post joked that the pink logo of the bike rider is based on Boris Johnson. As the rider appears to have no grip on any steering mechanism, perhaps that's appropriate.

There are also lots of banners going up along the route, declaring the sponsorship of the routes by Barclays.

We think this is a splendid idea, as it adds yet another useful piece of route labelling. You need this a lot on CS7, where the blue stripe disappears constantly under parked cars, and the blue squares in the middle of the road are submerged by buses.

We'll be reporting from the official launch at Clapham Common tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, have a look at the video report on CS7 by Green Party assembly member and real cyclist Jenny Jones, who sticks up for cycling in a genuinely useful way.

Cycle-park juggling at the National Theatre

2010-07-17T12:33:00.003+01:00

This precarious triple-parking was at the National Theatre a couple of nights ago.

There isn't enough cycle parking there anyway, but when there's an especially good (free, outdoor, picnic-friendly) Watch This Space event (such as the brilliant and hilarious juggling stylists the Gandinis), then all the handrails get filled up with bikes too.

Whoever parked this bike must have a few circus skills, too.

Relief from CS7: Gently amusing pics for Friday

2010-07-16T07:45:00.006+01:00

It's easy to criticise the Cycle Superhighways. Which is why we all enjoy doing it so much.

But it's time for a rest before Monday's launch officially unleashes the Cobalt Calamities on the world. So here's four amusing, non-Superficial-Cycleway-bashing, pictures from my photographic slush pile.

Cycle parking in the City is thin on the ground, but there are some places where you can improvise. This statue of Cigarette Packet Man isn't quite as alluring as the naked ladies of the fountain near Tower Bridge, but it's handy for Shoe Lane library.

While this - which reminds me of those student graduation projects for a 'radical new design of bike' - adorns the entrance gate to Regents Canal towpath on Lisson Grove in Islington, just down from the Beatles' Abbey Road crossing.

And this is the Bicycle Magic shop in Greatorex St, near Brick Lane, in east London. We like this.

Clearly it's been inspired by real life, such as this cycle path in Greenwich.

But there are worse examples out there. As we shall find out on Monday...

Keep having to brake on CS7? Could be a dodgy Cable

2010-07-15T15:28:00.004+01:00

I blogged yesterday about the problems of legally parked cars blocking the Superficial Cycleways.

Illegally parked lane-blockers are even worse - as the Kennington People on Bikes blog reports today.

I've a good mind to write to an MP to complain. Perhaps that Vince Cable bloke, as he seems pretty astute... oh.

Cycle Superhighways: Long to rain over us

2010-07-15T08:33:00.004+01:00

Only four days to the launch of the first two Cycle Superhighways. As this picture of CS7 on Kennington Park Road shows, the way the cycle lane has been integrated into the existing structure skilfully reflects the local surroundings. In a puddle that appears every time it rains.

Cycle Superhighways are coming - underneath parked cars

2010-07-14T06:15:00.001+01:00

The official launch of the first two Cycle Superhighways is on Monday, so it's nice to see CS7 taking its final shape.

This stretch of the Safe, Direct and Continuous new magic carpet for cyclists is on Southwark Bridge Road.

As the mayor Boris Johnson said when the Superficial Cycleways were first announced, "these are routes where the bicycle will dominate"!

Cycle Superhighways: Time of the signs

2010-07-13T08:49:00.005+01:00

The direction signs for the two Superficial Cycleways being launched on Monday, are already up.

Most of them are covered in black plastic bin liners for now, which is possibly a comment on the standard of the facilities they advertise.

But on some signs, the ferocious winds of the Southwark Sirocco and Wapping Willy-willy have torn away the covering, giving us a sneaky glimpse of what's to come: in just 40 minutes, you'll be Barking.

What a scorcher! Sun encourages lasses on bikes

2010-07-13T07:36:00.005+01:00

Mixed messages from the Sun yesterday in their Woman section article 'How cycling keeps the flab away'.

The peg is presumably this Sunday's Skyride in Ealing, with the massive central London one coming on Sunday 5 September.

Nice to see such positive images, but not the 'peddling' tips (why is that nobody can spell 'pedalling'?) from Victoria Pendleton, or someone purporting to be her.

Her advice is all about training, speed and fitness. It's about hills and pain and 'upping the pace'. It's about 'making a long ride less boring'. Oh, and it's dangerous of course: a helmet is a 'must-have'.

No, Victoria, that's not real cycling. That's racing. Real cycling is about Tesco, not Tourmalet.

Fortunately the picture at the top of the article is more encouraging: a young woman on a town bike, in a summer dress and high heels. (Someone called Kelly Brook. Sorry, no idea who she is. Was more interested in the bike, which pleasingly has mudguards, chainguard and basket.)

The Future Now: Cycle training on a Hire Bike

2010-07-12T06:54:00.008+01:00

I had a spin on a Hire Bike on Friday. Southwark Council residents (like those of other boroughs) can claim a free cycle-training lesson, and you can opt to do it on the same bike that clueless tourists will be using to plough into taxis on the wrong side of the road when the scheme opens on 30 July.

Riding a Hire Bike
First, the bike. They're solid and smooth, easy to step on and off off, steady and comfortable to ride. Saddle heights have a scale on the seatpost so you can remember your number for speed of setting next time. They cope with heights from about six foot six to five foot, so basketball teams or female Chinese gymnasts might have to make their own arrangements.

Your luggage sits in the small front rack, which makes the already weighty handlebars a bit more so. TfL guidelines tell you not to put animals there. It would just about take a Jack Russell, though they'd soon chew through the bungee cord.

A sign on the top of the stem reminds you not to go up the inside of lorries. We hope there's a complementary sign inside that HGV cab from Lithuania that scythed horribly across me at the Elephant the other day.

Brakes are pretty good, and the three-speed hub gears silky and sensibly low-ranged. One oddity is that the twist-grip changes gears the continental, 'wrong' way round, so domestic users may find themselves perpetually changing up instead of down and vice-versa.

Cycle training
Second, the lesson. I was pleased to see that Craig, my affable and expert guide from the company Cycling Instructor, was a real cyclist: no helmet, ordinary clothes, and a tatty old shopping bike.

I'd strongly recommend claiming cycle training even if you, like me, are a confident road user. The main point is that most cyclists don't use the road assertively enough. Accidents happen when cars are at your side, not to your rear (well, unless you're dealing with a psycho, like that bus driver who tried to ram me in the City last Friday, or the one who undertook me crazily outside Morley College on Saturday). Amigos, ¡no pasaran!

And, like me, you're probably not claiming enough road space. For instance, when waiting at a junction with oncoming traffic to turn right, you're waiting too far over to the right, then getting squeezed between the oncoming traffic, and traffic going straight on that you've therefore allowed past.

In once sentence, the lesson of the lesson would be: Claim the centre of the lane, and don't get put off by hooting or shouting. Or, if you're allowed a second sentence, intimidatingly revved engines, verbal abuse, or missiles.

Women are much more likely to take cycle training than men. The blokes, apparently, think it's a bit juvenile, and smacks too much of boyhood and Cycling Proficiency adverts with Keith Chegwin (right and below right).

So I have a suggestion. The cycle training lessons should be rebranded for men as Super Advanced Cycling Mega-techniques for Power Commuting. With the content staying exactly the same.

After all, it's the same trick TfL have pulled with the 'conversion' of existing cycle routes to 'Cycle Superhighways'.

More thin stuff on CS7

2010-07-11T07:32:00.001+01:00

Final preparations for the launch of the first two Superficial Cycleways, CS3 and CS7, are moving on apace. And it's good to see forward-looking, pro-bicycle facilities such as this, on Keyworth St at the back of the Elephant.

The mandatory cycle lane - which drivers are not allowed to enter - has taken up most of the space here, leaving only 60cm for motor vehicles. Perhaps it was laid out with the pencil-thin electric solo transport vehicles of the future in mind.

Meanwhile, luckily, no driver of a conventional width vehicle is going to ignore that by, say, swooping into it when forced to do so by a car coming the other way.

Sewage and sundials: Bike path by the Olympic stadium

2010-07-10T08:05:00.006+01:00

The Greenway, a traffic-free path from Bow to the splendidly named Beckton Alps, makes a more interesting bike trip these days thanks to the Olympic construction.

The Greenway's chief architectural claim to fame has always been the majestic sight of the Cathedral of Sewage, Bazalgette's pumping station disguised as a Byzantine palace, a sort of Victorian Katie Price in brick.

But now the Games are coming, and the Greenway is being spruced up. Outside the Cathedral there's now one of those nifty sundials where your own shadow tells you the time if you know the month, or vice-versa.

And the Greenway runs through the 2012 Olympic Park, or as it is currently, Building Site. It means the path is currently chopped in two, with an awkward but exciting detour through the works. You'll get lost, but the chaps in hard hats will helpfully put you through the right corridor and round the right JCB.

The path affords a splendid view of the stadium itself, the growing velodrome, water stadium, and all the rest of the site. There's a sort of visitor centre too, ViewTube, in orangey-yellow metal containers, which has fine coffee from the Container Cafe downstairs and a viewing platform upstairs.

The cafe has a sister, the Counter Cafe at Roach Road, a few yards north of the western end of the Greenway. This is worth dropping in on too: it has an informal yard with lots of seats, tables and bike parking, very nice Anzac biscuits - and entertainingly decorated urinals. Bazalgette would surely have approved.

Bend ahead: Another quirky student bike design

2010-07-09T07:20:00.010+01:00

This curious invention was featured in the Daily Mail yesterday. A student designer has devised a sort of bike-with-brewer's-droop that folds around lampposts and self-locks to them.

Hmm. Looks a bit cumbersome to us, and doesn't protect the wheels. In bike parking solutions, simple is usually best. We think Anthony Lau's Cyclehoop, and a couple of decent locks, are more practical.

Still, it's good to encourage novel approaches to bike security, because theft is a big problem. We also learned yesterday from BikeHugger that, when the original Star Trek series was being filmed, Leonard Nimoy - with Spock-like logic - used a bike to beat the lunch queues. William Shatner - with Kirk-like excitability - got so fed up being beaten to the burger and fries that he stole the bike.