Queen: I want to ride my bicycle

'Even the queen bicycles' in the Netherlands, enthuses another recent article about how cool Cloggie cycling culture is. (It comes in the wake of January figures showing that in Amsterdam, bike use continues to increase, and bike journeys per person have just overtaken car trips.)

For the nearest approach we've had in Britain between 'queen' and 'bike', see Mercury, F. et al: 'Bicycle Race' (London: EMI, 1976) - but it's an entertaining thought, isn't it?

Proceedings in camera

If you want to take video while riding there are three options: helmet camera; bike-mounted bracket; or you steer with one hand and film with the other.

The first two can be bought or made. But the third is easier and more artistically satisfying, as you can pan and tilt, plus you get interesting action shots of the sky when you fall off.

All new technology, you might think, this snapping-from-the-saddle business. Not so. I was intrigued to find this advert on the British Library website's Online Gallery today. It is, the ad says, 'AN IDEAL MACHINE For those Gentlemen who wish to combine Photography with Cycling'. (You can read a description or see a high-res zoomable image.)

Dating from 1888, it's a special tricycle from the Crypto Cycle Company that comes with a built-in rig for taking photographs while out riding. (Presumably not actually while in motion?)

A curious feature of the trike is that it's compressible to 26 inches width - perhaps they suffered from narrow cycle lanes then, too. As if out of Wacky Races, the bottom line of the ad excitingly informs you that the bike is 'supplied with or without Crypto Power'.

The price, without camera, is 22 guineas. For young readers, that's just over £23 - equivalent then to several month's wages for an artisan. (Bikes of the late Victorian and Edwardian era probably felt about as expensive as cars to do for us today. There were thriving second-hand markets.)

Me, I'm working on the bike-mounted-bracket solution...

Taking Liberties exhibition cycle tour of London

I'm currently working at the British Library, editing the website of their exhibition Taking Liberties, the 900-year struggle for Britain's freedoms and rights.

This has involved taking several dozen pictures of London sites associated with exhibition items. The shop where Thomas Paine's Rights of Man was sold in 1791, for example; the house of feminist pioneer Mary Wollstonecraft; or the building where the committee for the abolition of the slave trade first met in 1787.

The stop-start process of snapping all these locations, many of them in central London or the City, would have been unmaginably tedious by public transport, with lots of foot-slogging and Oyster-bashing. And by car it would have been impossible. But on a bike, the process was great fun, taking me through lots of Dickensian lanes and passages, and to little enclaves I'd never otherwise have seen.

And gloriously expanding my knowledge of back-alley pubs. For instance, just down the lane from where the worthy abolitionists first met in 1787 is a pub called the Jamaica Wine House (top right), ironically then a meeting-place for the slave-ship masters. It's virtually unchanged from those days, except for a fresh lick of paint, a new front door, and everything inside.

And visiting by bike is the best way to enjoy the psychogeography of these sites and their contribution to history. So I've put some of my favourite Taking Liberties sites on this Google map, and sketched out a suggested cycle route to thread them together.


View Larger Map
There's a large picture for each site, and a link to the relevant item in the Online Exhibition.

I've only chosen central London locations, and any one-way streets used assume you're going clockwise overall. There are many other locations on the exhibition website's various Google maps.

For example, Magna Carta fans might be interested in cycling out virtually all along the river on the Thames Path to Runnymede, perhaps coming back from Windsor by train. En route you might pop in to St Mary's church by Putney Bridge: the site of the Putney Debates of 1647, where following the overthrow of Charles I, the people discussed what the new Republic of England should be like, and what should be in the British Constitution. Being Britain, that's still at the committee stage.

Further afield, there's one of the caves that claims to be the one where Robert Bruce had his encounter with the spider (top right, accompanying our various exhibits on Scottish independence).

I was there in autumn last year with my chums Mark and Si, cycling from Carlisle to Edinburgh one weekend. We were cycling in Dumfries, just past Gretna, through the village of Kirkpatrick Fleming (which put me in mind of Kirkpatrick Macmillan, the man who didn't invent the bicycle). I saw a sign to the cave, and couldn't resist the diversion.


Mark and I scrambled down the muddy path to the entrance of the cave (top right). It is man-made, hollowed out of the rock halfway up a cliff-face as a hidey-hole for treasure. Now there's a wooden access walkway. Our luck was in: the original spider's web was still there (below right).

I was delighted, partly because I'd seen the historic spider, but mainly because I could legitimately take a picture for the website and thereby make the whole weekend tax-deductible.

Comedy Cycle Lanes 1: Nine Elms Lane

This is the first in a series about bad bike facilities. (For the mathematicians among you, the series is infinite, irrational, and monotonic increasing.)

First up is one of the crown jewels of crap cycle paths: the one along Nine Elms Lane in south London, between Queenstown Road and Vauxhall. Here's a Google map:


View Larger Map

I've been past it several times, and greeted it like an old friend yesterday when I went into Clapham to have my teeth re-grouted.

Well, not so much an old friend, more like a vengeful and ugly ex-partner from a messy divorce.

Anyway, the path starts just by Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, where stray or unwanted apostrophes are taken in and cared for. Here is where you can join the path. Except that you can't, because they fence it off from the road by these toothpaste-coloured blocks.
If you get as far as rappeling the blocks to get on to the path, then once you've abseiled down the pavement, you can practise your slalom skills.
A bad bike path is a bit like those hitherto unseen characters that join the Star Trek party, beaming down to a dangerous planet populated by bad actors: you just know it's only a matter of seconds before they disappear horribly. Sure enough, the Nine Elms path expires here, only to rematerialise after the bus shelter. (All cyclists, of course, simply ignore the path and opt to follow the road.)
Finally, just by the turn-off to the fruit and veg volcano of New Covent Garden market, comes your comic highlight: the cycle path completely blocked in the space of ten metres by an electricity box, a street light pole, and - boom, tiss! - the sign for the cycle path.

To be fair, the same bike path is also blocked by the sign for the bike path at several other points on the bike path, and on the one that runs along the opposite side of the road.

Do you know of more LOL bike facility incompetence? Other chortle-making cycle-path cluelessness? Or perhaps you're a publisher who wants to push a book called Crap Cycle Lanes, which I distinctly recall was actually my suggestion? Let me know...

New Year Bike Quiz 2 of 2

The second part of yesterday's quiz.

QUESTIONS...

11 According to a survey by Cycling England in September 2008, 64 per cent of women (right) never cycle. What was the main reason (cited by over half of them)?
A Didn't want to arrive at work sweaty
B Helmets would ruin hairstyle
C Partner didn't like it
D Worried about getting lost

12 How many cycling golds did Britain win at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing?

13 In 1954 a young man got into boxing accidentally when his bike was stolen. Furious, he found a police officer who happened to be a boxing coach, who persuaded him to take up boxing to channel his aggression. Who was the young man?

14 Which band released the single Bicycle Race in 1978, which featured a large photo of several dozen nude women cyclists?

15 What links Oscar Pereiro, Alberto Contador, and Carlos Sastre?

16 A classic 1948 Italian realist film about the search for a stolen bicycle was re-released in December 2008. What is the title?

17 Gold Hill, Shaftesbury, Dorset (above right), is famous for what cycling reason?
A Thomas Hardy broke his leg riding down it
B Dropped at last minute from Tour of Britain in 2008
C Setting for a TV advert
D Olympic cyclists Bradley Wiggins was born there

18 In 2006 Bath University researcher Ian Walker studied the space given by cars overtaking cyclists, and concluded that which one of the following is safer than wearing a helmet?
A Sign on bike saying 'KEEP BACK'
B Cycling on pavement
C Using lights in daylight
D Wearing a long blonde wig

19 England's biggest body of water (right) has a traffic-free bike path all round it. What county is it in?

20 Which of the following is illegal?
A Breaking the speed limit on a bike
B Refusing a breathalyser test while cycling
C Riding two abreast
D Cycling to church on Christmas Day


...ANSWERS
11. A was the chief worry. C, however, was also a concern, followed by D. More
12. Eight. More
13. Cassius Clay, now Muhammad Ali. More
14. Queen. More
15. Tour de France winners 2006, 2007, 2008. More
16. The Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette). More
17. C. The Hovis advert was filmed there in 1971. More - Ad on YouTube
18. D. The wig suits you. More
19. Rutland. More
20. *Updated 3 Feb 2009* All of them. The Holy Days Act 1551 said you must go to church on Christmas Day, and you must walk, but was repealed in 1969 (I'm told). Nothing wrong with the others.