Obstacles to persuading people to cycle

I was at a very convivial meeting last night - thanks Andy and our sponsors, who plied us with free drink. Everyone there was a blogger, or at least pretending to be, so they were a wide range of ages and types. Strikingly, pretty much everyone was either (a) already a keen cyclist or (b) keen on being a keen cyclist but put off by the safety thing.

I did my proselytising thing to the (b) people, repeating all the things I'd celebrated with the (a) people: that cycling is fast, fun and free...ish. That you actually look forward to your commute because it makes you feel good. That it enables you to do twice as many things in a day because you can whizz around at your own schedule and pace without waiting for buses or being stuck on a stationary train. That it's just the best way of enjoying London, and all that.


I did my best, but it's not always easy. Obviously, I admitted, London's cycle facilities aren't, er, always, um, quite up to Netherlands standards. Look at the state of one of our 'showcase cycle lanes', in Torrington Place, for instance (top right). The roadworks force you out into one-way traffic coming the other way. It's been like this weeks with little sign of progress.

And some road users don't make it easy either. On the way home I stopped at a Chinese takeaway on Baylis Rd, near Waterloo. I had to: this car had parked blocking the lane (right). They must have been waiting for the beansprouts to grow because they were there ages.

So long, in fact, that another car arrived and parked right next to it, blocking the lane even more (below right).


Blimey, this takeaway must be good. Spring Orchid, it's called, if you're interested. As always, by an amazing coincidence, the number plates of both cars were entirely appropriate.

Still, we do know a sure-fire way of getting people to agree that cycling's great. Get them in a social situation and put them with a charismatic, persuasive advocate.

Or, failing the charisma, ply them with free drink.

The puncture-repair rite of passage

The new copy of Cycle, the magazine of the CTC, is out.

Obviously the stand-out item is my sensational article on page 41 about a visit to a puncture repair outfit factory in Lincolnshire (right). I posted here about the visit in June. Now, to complement that, and the magazine article, is a short audio souvenir. James Milnes of Weldtite, the company in question, takes you on a quick trip through the factory:
Play sound file (twaud.io, MP3, 1min 51sec, 1.3MB).

I didn't get space in the article to discuss puncture repairs as a rite of passage. One day when I was about eight or nine my dad decided it was time to start showing me the ways of the world. His knowledge of things sexual was pretty sketchy, to be honest - he thought being bisexual meant seeing two women at a time - and his attempts to tackle birds-and-bees were mumbled and confused. But in puncture repair he was on home ground. God knows what Freud would make of that.


Anyway, one special evening he took me into the kitchen, with bowls of water and newspapers and oily rags all laid out. He showed me how to ease the tyre off by clever positioning of tyre levers, which took some time and you had to smoke a pipe to help you think. How to find the hole by looking for the tiny, jewel-like bubbles that streamed out from the breach when you threaded the tube through the water.

How to gently rough up the surface with the smallest piece of sandpaper I'd ever seen to a grey, fibrous texture that put me in mind of school dinners. How to apply the glue, which wasn't actually glue, because it's Rubber Solution and it vul-can-ises, you see, and I nodded and repeated, vul-can-ises, though neither of us knew what vul-can-ises was. How to wait five minutes, now this is important, because otherwise it won't vul-can-ise, and mum came in asking if we wanted a cup of tea and dad smilingly ushered her away, because this was man's work and it was serious.


Then we applied the patch and made chalk dust so the sticky bits outside the patch wouldn't glue the tube to the tyre and mum said you're not getting dust on the floor are you Tony I'll have to hoover and dad said no love, it's alright and winked at me and I grinned though I didn't know why. And we put the tyre back on which meant dad had to light his pipe again and pumped it up nice and hard and dad bounced the bike a few times on the kitchen floor to make sure and I took it outside and rode it round the block and it was fine.

The whole process took an hour and a half. Finally we cleared up the kitchen and mum made us a cup of tea and I knew a great transformation had happened. I'd started the evening a boy; I'd finished it still a boy, but a boy who was cross because he'd missed Dr Who.

And now it takes me about five minutes to fix a puncture and I smile and think dad, what was the big deal? Hmm. Wonder if Freud was a cyclist.

Will Bike Polo make a mint?

I dropped in to the European Hard Core - er, Court - Bike Polo Championships on Saturday. All through the weekend, on a south London sports pitch not far from Tate Modern, dozens of teams of three from all over Europe twirled mallets, manoeuvred bikes with improbably narrow handlebars, and occasionally fell off and leg-surfed the asphalt apparently impervious to pain.


It's fast-moving and lively spectator sport, but the players are fun to watch too. Lots had come from France, so you could pick up all sorts of French slang, such as 'great shot', or 'dirty bastard', or 'we got a government subsidy to do this, actually'.

There are quite a few alternative-passions types, so there's a range of intriguing body modifications on show, from swirly calf tattooes to eye-wateringly stretched earlobes and nasal perforations.

Strangest of all though is the apparent renaissance of sweeping Edwardian moustaches: some of the chaps wouldn't have looked out of place on a 1900s black and white sports-team photo, except perhaps for the lip-ring.


Many bike-polo players seem to be couriers, computer or IT bods, or designers - as demonstrated by the outraged comment from one: 'What font did you use for the numbers on the scoreboard? It's not Comic Sans is it??'

And you bump into a few of the sort of bike people you bump into at bike-related events. I was pleased to see Booksnake, as ever snapping some excellent pictures, and even more pleased when he magicked me a beer from his shoulder bag. Beats rabbits and hats.


Bike Polo has come from out of nowhere in the last few years. When I wrote a chapter on it in my book in 2006, there were only a couple of teams in London. Now there's a regular league, and a growing number of profile events like this. Given that horse polo requires thirty grand a year to maintain a string of polo ponies and keep up your club membership, you can see which version is more likely to take off in south London comps.

Rising sea levels? No problem

Cycling under water is the next big thing, according to Bathland in Hamburg. The text on their website is in German, which means we can't understand it: 'Der neueste Aqua Fitness Trend... Radfahren im Wasser... jedes Fitness Levels' etc.

Now that the Met Office has reforecasted the 'barbecue summer' to more weeks of rain and flash floods, maybe it's something we should pay attention to.

Summer CMs: Free entertainment for the Masses

Yesterday was a fine evening for London's monthly Critical Mass ride. There's always a great atmosphere as everyone gathers by the National Theatre at the South Bank.

Cyclists are a very diverse bunch: from crisp business suits on Bromptons, to dreadlocked and tattooed alternative types who display their piercings in curious and intimate places, such as just under Waterloo Bridge.


There's no starting-gun or fixed time. However, a kind of consensual crescendo of bells, whistles, irritatingly loud bike-trailer sound systems, and everyone on their mobile saying 'It looks like we're setting off, I'd better go', catalyses the grand départ shortly after 7pm.


Where it goes from here depends on the whim of the crowd - it could go literally anywhere in London - but even if you don't want to or can't join the ride, the start is a remarkable and thrilling sight.

There are lots of rather puzzled tourists watching too. If you listen to them carefully you can learn how to say 'What's this?', 'I don't know', and 'Where's the bar?', in a range of European and Asian languages. Which luckily is all you'll need to know when you travel there.


Through summer, this also happens to be the venue for free nightly outdoor entertainment. You can sit on the astroturf outside the National Theatre and enjoy world music bands or circus-style entertainment with a beer or glass of wine from the bar.

On Critical Mass nights, though, the acts have tough competition from the cyclists. Watching them is an entertainment in itself.

Taking the cross out of Kings Cross

Cycle parking provision at London stations generally is poor. Charing Cross, like Fenchurch St and Cannon St, has none at all. Even Network Rail's PR dept can't put a positive spin on zero.

St Pancras International has a measly 60, which were only installed at the last minute in response to a Camden Cyclists bike demo scheduled for their opening day celebration.

More cycle parking is coming, slowly, in to London's stations. For example, the fairground-ride racks recently installed at Euston. Well, according to the recent 2009 report on cycle parking, Stand and Deliver (PDF), anyway. And up in Waltham Forest, Freewheeler can report some exciting improvements to station parking there.

According to that report, there are 418 bike spaces at Kings Cross. Which means there must be 418 people who get up at 5am every morning to come and occupy them, because whatever time you arrive they're always full. If you're rushing for a train that can clearly be inconvenient, especially if you had to book yourself on a specific service six months in advance to be able to afford it.

But here's a tip. There are some racks recently installed on the traffic island outside the front of Kings Cross at the head of Argyle St (picture). It's very convenient for the station. There always seems to be space there. They're not under cover, so the day you use them it'll cascade with rain, but you can't have everything.

The odd thing about these island racks is that there's no marked pedestrian access. The only way of getting to or from them, without dashing through busy traffic, is by bike. Which defeats the point somehow.

Are you sure the satnav's right, Oates?

Satnav mishaps were in the news again the other day, thanks to the BBC website's story about a Swedish couple who misprogrammed their satnav for the beautiful island of Capri and instead ended up in an industrial town called Carpi.

I like such stories (particularly the Mirror's Top Ten Satnav Disasters) because they make me feel good to be a map-using cyclist. Not that I'm smug. Oh no. I'm just pleased because I'm clearly superior to them.

Anyway, I like maps, and my panniers are full of them: an A to Z, a few London Cycling Maps, a Google map printout of a pub or two, and a few sketchmaps of road layouts where taxis or buses have cut me up. Who needs satnav? If I get stuck I can always stop and ask a passer-by. Usually though, when they see this scruffy and haggard man approaching them saying 'excuse me', said passer-by hurriedly gives me fifty pee and retreats.

In March I did a couple of posts on strange things on maps, including the only place-name in Britain with a capital X in it, the emptiest square in Britain, and two adjacent villages with the same name: Quirky Stuff on Maps 1 and 2. Something to read after the satnav has taken you to the edge of a cliff and you're waiting to be rescued.