Cycle Infrastructure

I’ve been flat out busy, with hardly any time to do anything useful like ride a bike just for fun, or write much here. But I do have this little film to show - made from clips and bits and bobs from when I was on holiday oh so long ago: So is this a...
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One of the things you absolutely, positively, definitely, without fail, must go and see before you die is the original Monet Water Lillies in the Orangerie Gallery in Paris’ Tuilerie Gardens . But for many of us that’s quite a hike, and something that you might end up having to delay until you’re in the...
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The UK isn’t actually the most dangerous place in the world to ride your bike, and some local councils do make efforts to create a better cycling environment. But in general, what we have is tokenism, where the facilities are created with the money left once the "real" work’s been done by the transport...
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Notice anything odd about this sculpture, that’s adjacent to the cycle route between Whitley Bay and Blyth? Remember that cunning trick they did when filming the Lord of The Rings, that made the 6′8" Sir Ian McKellan look taller than the 5′3" Elijah Wood? Lots of really smart jiggery-pokery with camera angles to fool...
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I was visiting a client in Blyth the other week, and I came across this part of town . . . So what’s this mean in practical terms? Hmmm… Junctions marked with asymmetrically placed brickwork and trees… Foliage taking the place of parked cars . . . … and some of it well-established so as to obstruct the...
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Remember all those hilarious jokes about women drivers? They were the staple for comedians right up to some point in the ’80s, and revolved around the perception that operating a complex machine like a car was beyond the simple minds of the fairer sex, who were better suited to cooking dinner, producing heirs, and getting...
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. . . check out this great video, which is part of the Fat Cyclist’s 100 Miles of Nowhere challenge: That looks tougher than I have words to describe. But it’s all in a good cause. If you watched the film, go and make a donation now.
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I’m not talking about the kind of bonking that was discussed between bridesmaids under a table in Four Weddings & a Funeral (”Well, it’s kinda like table tennis, only with slightly smaller balls.”) No. I mean the sort that you generally only get when you do some serious endurance sport stuff, and just run out...
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Confession time - I’m a bit of an anorak. I like playing with numbers to see what they’ll say. I mean, without numbers, what have you got? In God we trust, but everyone else had better bring data! So I was quite interested in the CTC’s Safety In Numbers campaign that was launched yesterday. Their glossy...
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Last weekend for Daughter’s birthday treat, we took her and her best friend to Edinburgh Zoo. We drove up on Saturday morning, spent the afternoon running from enclosure to enclosure, and stayed overnight at a nearby hotel. Driving back down the A1 on Sunday morning, the fuel warning light for the car came on, so...
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