Netherlands

Here are the two sides of the coin on this one: Mixing motorised vehicles and people on bikes makes no sense. The former weighs 20-50 times as much as the latter, and the driver is protected from the consequences of their actions by a steel exoskeleton. We need to keep these away from people on...
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This video appeared on Cyclelicio.us a few days ago. It shows that you’re far, far "safer" to take the lane on a dual carriageway than to ride along the hard shoulder. In so doing, the overtaking traffic gives you a much wider berth than if you’ve already marginalised yourself to the edge of the...
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… of The Netherlands! No, really. Well, sort of - have a look at this video that came via EcoVelo and Amsterdamize : Compare the main interviewee’s attitude to the typical person where you live: "Perhaps you’ll need a cargo bike yourself one day" "No! Never! No, really. No, no, no. I’ll have two children at most and they...
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No, not the kind of French lesson that’s of questionable use . . . No, I’m assuming that you’ve got yourself off the quayside and on the ferry to France (or for that matter Quebec) and that you now want to hire a bike. But zut alors ! You don’t...
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No, I’m not talking about the kind of segregation that creates second-class citizens , and makes people sit at the back of the bus - that’s not a Good Thing at all. No, what I mean is having decent, direct routes for bikes that keep them out of the way of eejits people driving motorised...
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This weekend, Robbie and I met up in Amsterdam - we were in town for the marathon on Sunday, and had each flown out on Saturday. It’s been a while (like 17 years) since I was last in Amsterdam, and on that occasion, I’d stayed in a tiny hotel (left) not far from...
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This week saw spring doing it’s thing here. By that I mean it was cold, with lots of April showers. Anyway, this photo from Marc over at Amsterdamize seems particularly apt for the sort of weather I wish we were having all day, every day - if only it were more like this!. See what...
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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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My first car was a white 1962 Morris Minor. Actually, that’s not strictly true - before that I drove my mum’s 1966 one, and her 1972 van, which we took to the Reading Festival one year. All had ‘A Series’ engines, and I could strip them down to the con-rods & rebuild them with...
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The hot spring news is that over in Copenhagen, they’ve just got their first bicycle police unit (I know - talk about ironic!) The photos of bicycle police posted on Copenhagenize.com got me wondering what bicycle police look like all over the world . . . so I did a trawl through Flickr’s Creative Commons...
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