Floody hell: York cyclists under water

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.

Sarky comments: Comedy Greenwich bike facilities

A fabulously sunny day yesterday to bike along the riverside to Greenwich, and enjoy some of their innovative cycle facilities.

I liked the bit by the Cutty Sark, where the sign for THAMES CYCLE ROUTE is immediately followed by a sign for no cycling.


And I was impressed by the cycle track just before it, on Glaisher St. The council has kindly installed bollards to prevent cars from parking on it.

Britain's best cycling cities revealed! ...oh

My May issue of Cycling Plus arrived through the letterbox yesterday, amid the usual blizzard of flyers for takeaways and witch doctors. (I'm not joking about the witch doctors. This is south London, you know.)

Like any hack, the first thing I look at is my own stuff, to see if the subs have 'corrected' the jokes they didn't understand. (They hadn't. My copy's perfect, of course.) I'm banging on about April Fools in my column this month, and I plug Freewheeler's blog. My column's on page 36, if you're in a WH Smith some time today.

Anyway, one feature that caught my eye was C+'s ranking of the Best Cycling Cities 2010. (I posted about a list of world top bike-friendly cities a few days ago.) They say they've taken into account all sorts of stuff, not just 'facilities'. How likely your bike is get stolen, for instance (London good, surprisingly, Hull bad). Or the rain (Nottingham dry, Cardiff soaking).

But their final Top 20, according to an unspecified formula combining all these factors, certainly raises an eyebrow. Cambridge (my favourite British bike city, pictured) doesn't even make the list. Nor does York, one of the few other cities I'd happily live in as a Real Cyclist.

London only clocks in at 17th, three places below Hull (which is, to be fair, pretty good for cycling, if not for many other things, such as access to witch doctors, or having paid employment or GCSEs or two parents).

Their top five is...
1. Bristol
2. Nottingham
3. Leicester
4. Manchester
5. Edinburgh

Hmm. No doubt this will get the forums buzzing on Bike Radar, the website associated with the magazine. Wonder what Groningen or Assen or Munster might score on the C+ formula...?

More bike lane mental blocks

Perhaps enthused by yesterday's post on the unveiling of a new map of London Bike Hire Scheme stations, one reader of this blog went out to inspect the progress of the one by Lambeth North station on Baylis Road. This is what he found.


Charlie writes (and snaps): "I can't help but feel that the car with its Highway Maintenance banner that is parked in the cycle lane protected by a plastic bollard may be something to do with the construction team adjacent who are hard at work on... installing the cycle hire station.

"Luckily there was an emergency telephone number on the site fencing so Serco, who are running the cycle hire scheme, were informed of the obstruction and hopefully managed to remove the offending vehicle.


"Meanwhile it would appear that pavement cycling is being encouraged on the London Cycle Network 3 where, despite quite prominent on road signage to the contrary, someone has managed to inadvertently block the entire width of Cornwall Road with Heras fencing."

Shining example of bad design on Cromer St

This is Cromer St, part of a bike route south of Kings Cross station. It's been carefully designed to stop cars using it, by the insertion of a bollard; to stop motorcyclists using it, by the insertion of jagged flagstones; and to stop cyclists using it, by the insertion of a parking space right at the end.

(Yet again, by astonishing coincidence, the number plate is appropriate... see also here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.)

This is actually a rare view of the facility without a car parked right on top of it - where the bicycle symbol is. Google's Street View shows it as it normally appears, with a car loading up on toilet rolls and 2-for-1 party packs of Mars bars from the shop to the side. Good to see that some businesses are weathering the recession.

By-pass the lethal Elephant. Except you can't

One of the pleasures of living near the Elephant and Castle is seeing the local newspaper hoardings with headlines like TV STAR TO WED ELEPHANT WOMAN or ELEPHANT RATS ON RAMPAGE.

Not everything is so amusing though. The long-promised safer-friendlier redesign of the twin vortices that are the Elephant and Castle roundabouts are not even halfway there. Conversion of the south roundabout's detested, stinking, sewer-underpasses to overground pedestrian-friendly crossings won't begin until Christmas. And there isn't even a timetable for redesigning the north roundabout, where cyclist Meryem Ozekman was killed by a lorry last month.

There is a so-called 'cycle by-pass', but it's worse than useless. Especially just now, thanks to these roadworks that have just gone up opposite Churchyard Row. No notices, no alternative routes: just a dumb blockade, a mute testament to council and contracting contempt.

Comedy Cycle Lanes 3: Cardigan St, SE11

This cycle facility is in Cardigan St, in Lambeth, south London, not far from the Oval cricket ground. The car is parked legally in a marked bay.

Once you've squeezed past it, you're then in a contraflow street cycling against the traffic, such as the taxi coming the other way.

Cycling above and below the Thames at Dartford Crossing

I cycled the Dartford Crossing yesterday. Sort of.

It consists of a tunnel (for northbound traffic) and the Queen Elizabeth II bridge (southbound). In all but name it's the bit where the M25 vaults over, or dodges under, the Thames Estuary, linking Thurrock in Essex with Dartford in Kent.


Neither the tunnel nor the bridge were built for bikes. However, thanks to paragraph 27 of the Dartford-Thurrock Crossing Act 1988, cyclists have to be transported free of charge.

(A reliable source tells me this was inserted by our bicycling baronet chums in the Lords, after the evil anti-cycling House of Commons tried to push it through without pedalling provision.)

In practice this means you cycle to a control-point car park at either end, and stand around until a chap in a tie and high-vis jacket pops out and asks you if you want a lift across. A lurid, op-art Land Rover suggestive of a Zandra Rhodes migraine turns up; your bike goes on a rack on the back and you're whisked across.


The facility works 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Each Land Rover can take up to three people at a time. They have a big bike trailer for cycling groups, though they need a phone call in advance to set it up.

On both my north and south trips I had a friendly and chatty lady driver whose knowledge of the relative merits of Bluewater and Lakeside shopping centres, on opposite sides of the estuary, was detailed and comprehensive. Up on the Thurrock side I had a couple of pints in a rather shabby Essex pub populated by Fast Show characters where everything was either sticky, broken, or nailed down.

The southbound journey, across the bridge, is impressive. You're pretty high up (180 feet, my likeable cabbie informed me in between observations on the new John Lewis food court in Bluewater) and get a commanding view of the refineries, ships and marshy sweeps. Splendid, in a Netherlands sort of way.

But being in a vehicle, you can't stop, and it all flits superficially by, a glimpsed estuarial zoetrope. If only they'd built a bike lane... like they did with the Humber Bridge, which is much better because you can therefore dawdle and stop and enjoy the panoramas of mud, sand and chimneys.


Neither bike access point is easy to find by bike. Signage is sporadic and the route not obvious. Your final mile or two will be spent in narrow strips of tarmac alongside what are effectively motorways. The most convenient way to do the crossing from London is to cycle out on National Cycle Route 1, which runs virtually all along the south bank of the Thames from the centre to Dartford. (Reckon on 20 miles/30 km taking about four hours.) There are regular trains back from Dartford to London Bridge/ Waterloo/ Charing Cross (40 minutes).

And doing it all by bike has a great advantage: there is no chance of you following the siren calls to Bluewater or Lakeside and being suckered into buying a sofa.

Rubbish cycle lane

Nice bright morning, so I treat myself to an alternative way in to work: over Southwark Bridge, up Watling St past St Paul's, through the Oxbridge-college-like quiet courts and back alleys of Lincoln's Inn, and along Lamb's Conduit St, home of Bikefix.

And it was at the bottom of Lamb's Conduit St that I found, to my delight, this genuinely rubbish cycle lane.

(Larger version on Flickr.)

Comedy Cycle Lanes 2: Belvedere Rd

There's a special cycle entrance into Belvedere Rd, which goes east from the south end of Westminster Bridge past the Eye towards the South Bank Centre.

It used to be something of a joke (top right. looking east): nice planters with tropical palms, but they didn't exactly leave much space for your bike.

Now, however, they've revamped it (bottom right, looking west).

We cycled past it today, and you can see what a difference it makes.