Cambridge overtakes London in safe-cycling signage

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.

Potholes meet their Waterloo (loo, loo, loo...)

Goodbye snow, farewell ice, congratulations on your retirement frost. Hello potholes [on the radio version of this blog, you now hear a comedy echo, followed by studio laughter].

Anyway, Waterloo Bridge is swamped by traffic cones at the moment. From space or the top of Strata, whichever is the higher, it must look like a tube of toothpaste. At last they're resurfacing it and 'reseating the ironworks'.

It's a comprehensive reskinning for a bridge whose recurring pothole at the north end was suspected by some geologists to have been the crater from an ancient extinction-event meteorite.


So it's currently down to single-lane both ways. Northwards (above, right) it's too narrow for a car to pass, which isn't too much of a problem in rush hour as the traffic is crawling anyway. Still, it can get pretty claustrophobic as you jostle with all those buses.

Southwards (right) the traffic goes in quicker pulses, released from the traffic lights like spawning salmon from a sluicegate.


I've had a couple of unpleasant fast-passes from buses, but most of the car drivers pay no attention to the CYCLE LANE CLOSED sign and give room for bikes. For once I'm glad they ignore a sign.

Still, at least it's goodbye potholes. [Comedy echo, followed by studio laughter]

The right kind of snow

Proper snow at last yesterday: snowball snow, snowman snow, Playdoh snow. It covered our local park like the cotton wool stuff the BBC use for shooting Christmas specials on location in May.

And as it was the polite sort of snow that melts fast on tarmac but not grass, the roads were OK, not icy at all, and whizzing around London on a bike was a delight. Even cycling across the park was enjoyable.

Ooh, everyone said, you're intrepid, and I said yes, well, Shackleton and me, we're quite similar, him with Elephant Island me with Elephant and Castle. Mind, Shackleton wouldn't have liked the roadworks on Waterloo Bridge. Sod it, he'd have said, we'll row back to South Georgia. It's safer that way.

That Waterloo pothole is back: Hippos take note

It's nice to get back to work after the Easter break and see old friends. Such as this pothole at the north end of Waterloo Bridge. It hasn't been this big since, oh, as far back as February.

They patched it up then, but it's back. Following the torrential rain last night, it could serve as a watering hole for African megafauna again.

So I'll be engaging with another old friend: TfL's pothole-reporting web page. (For non-TfL roads try FixMyStreet.com or the CTC's FillThatHole.org.)

Holy roads, Batman

London's streetscape changes, exhilaratingly, from day to day. New buildings go up; new roadworks take you to excitingly unfamiliar routes; new potholes form. The streets have an entire tectonic system of their own.

I've been keeping my eye on this growing monster on Waterloo Bridge. It's on the northbound side, near the north end, by the bus stops. It's been patched and filled before, but it's a losing battle. The rock-cracking temperatures of the Snow Events last week, and the sledgehammer bus wheels, keep quarrying away at the Waterloo lithosphere.

It's a whopper! An opencast mine. An extinction-event crater. A rift valley lined with fossils of uncharted taxonomy. It took me five minutes just to clear out the geology field trip from inside it, so I could take a picture.

Well, it's quite big, anyway. Large enough to drown a small mammal in, at least. And I've reported it.

You can report this sort of thing online quite easily. The CTC have a pothole site for example, fillthathole.org. Alternatively, FixMyStreet.com is another high-tech general-purpose reporting website, and allows you to upload photos (always a help).

FixMyStreet also apparently offers an iPhone application: point the iPhone camera at the pothole, fill in a short form, and the iPhone's GPS senses where you are and which council area you're in, and magically sends the complaint with the photo to the relevant officer in the council. Then creates a Facebook group and organises a party to celebrate.

However, according to people who know about these things on Southwark Cyclists' e-group, you're likely to get quickest action on a 'red route' (controlled by Transport for London, usually denoted by red instead of yellow lines at the side) if you report it directly to the TfL website - otherwise it might go to the council instead and involve a delay.

It's a shame the road is so busy, as otherwise it could provide untold adventure-leisure opportunities - boating, bungee jumping etc. Though actually, maybe cycling over Waterloo Canyon is enough of an extreme sport, thanks very much.

Foiled again? No, despite the ice

We got chucked out of work yesterday afternoon at 2pm. Rather dramatically, as we signed out, there were foil survival blankets (right) available for us to take home.

This presented something of a dilemma for a Yorkshireman. On the one hand, I couldn't do anything so self-pitying and wussy. The only survival bag you'd admit to having in God's country is a Spar carrier full of crisps and lager.

But on the other, it was free. And that trumped everything. So I took two, telling myself it was OK because I might be cycling somewhere really dangerous one day, like the Stelvio pass in winter, or the Norwegian arctic, or Middlesbrough.

Anyway, I got home OK. The way back was easier than the way in, with very little traffic. I got snowballed by a gang of teenage schoolkids off the leash in Cleaver Square. It was a bit intimidating at the time, though I can laugh about it now. I didn't engage with them because you never know, things might have got nasty, and I might have pulled a knife on them.

I cycled in to work again this morning. The side roads were as uncyclable as yesterday, caked in hard, uneven grey ice. I pushed. It was, in fact, like walking on a glacier. (I was surprised when walking in the Alps for the first time that glaciers are not silky-smooth and translucent blue like virgin mints, but are actually moon-rock dirty and cobblestone bumpy.)

The main roads were fine for cycling though, wet but melted of all ice and snow. In the sun, the tarmac looked sleek, warm and glossy. There was a hard shoulder of slush, ice and snow all the way along the side, though. Occasionally a taxi or bus passed too close, as if they thought I should be off 'their' bit of road and humping along the ice. Not without huskies I wasn't.

But those few impatient drivers notwithstanding, cycling across Waterloo Bridge (right, middle two pics) was elating. It was far preferable to walking on the pavement, which was still carapaced with acned ice and snow.

Tavistock St, running parallel with Euston Road just to its south, has a separated two-way cycle path. I'm getting less keen on using the separated path even in good weather, because it seems to create chaos rather than order at its many junctions. But using it today was out of the question anyway: while the road was fine, the cycle path (right, bottom) was icebound, impassable without crampons. Councils have a duty to keep roads roadworthy, but don't have to do anything about cycle paths, and it shows.

Still, on the way home, if I see any commuters slip and fall and need keeping warm while they wait for the ambulance, I'll be well equipped.

And if not... well, when summer comes, I've got a couple of insulating bags for keeping my beer cold.