Philobiblon

… but when I finally escaped the office tonight about 8.30, got to the corner of Grays Inn Road, and found that Critical Mass was wending its way past – well what could I do?

A very pleasant hour – the degree of friendly cooperation that lets some 300 cyclists (estimates of earlier numbers ran from 700 to 800) wind their way through the streets of London is a pleasure to behold.

This was the “ciggy and have a dance break” in Smithfield market:

Ed has been undertaking the epic Paris-Roubaix ride. As someone who doesn’t enjoy the odd patch of cobbles around Wapping, this definitely is in my “won’ts”, although good on him!

And once again this year I won’t be making the Dunwich dynamo, although I determined to make it one year.

But I have found some interesting looking night rides around London, the Friday night ride and the Friday night ride to the coast, and I have made a resolution to get one of those in this summer.

Note to myself to join to cycling and walking tours that are part of the London Festival of Architecture that start in latish June.

The Camden Cyclist newsletter arrives with some good news – after much lobbying council has agreed to signpost a route out of these two stations down to the main east/west London cycle route.

It is possible to get out along a reasonably quiet route now details here – but only if you know the area extremely well. The one-way streets and twisting route is otherwise pretty well impossible.

Now all we need is a way to get across Euston Station/railways north of the Euston Road… (here there is also a route, if a roundabout one, cutting across a council estate, but you wouldn’t know it from a map, and there are no signs).

… a robin hopping through the blackberries (aren’t they supposed to lose all of their leaves in winter? – these certainly hadn’t), sparrows fluttering around a farmhouse roof, an appropriately wonky sign pointing along a single-lane road to the hamlet of Tilty.

It was once a great Cistercian monastery, the legacy of which is a very oddly shaped church, made of remnants of the abbey.

And the beams of the 16th-century coaching inn, The Saracen’s Inn, in Great Dunmow. (Although the modern town is a traffic horror – why would you want such a lovely historic town in which it is almost impossible to cross the high street because of cars screaming through?)

All of this without the need of navigation, thanks to Ian leading the Lewisham Cyclists and LCC ride – and thanks for their patience. I was a struggling tail-end Charlie for a lot of the day – I kept waiting for the second wind to arrive, but it failed to oblige, and my knees really weren’t getting with the programme.

Edward (a real cyclist) asks in a comment below if I’m going to do the Dunwich Dynamo this year, as I keep threatening every year….

On this evidence I’ve got an awful lot of work to do, and I’m not sure that employment and elections are going to make that possible, but I do have it on the radar and we’ll see. I don’t make new year’s resolutions, but I have decided that I need to get the best part of a day a week off most weeks, which is likely to often be devoted to cycling…

And landing in my inbox this evening is a challenge that I know I’ll never do, but it is a nice thought:

The North Sea Cycle Route is the longest signposted coastal path in the whole WORLD. A 6,000 kilometre loop of sand dunes, white beaches, country lanes, pine plantations, rugged mountains, ice cold fjords, free wandering wildlife and quirky villages, circling England, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Shetland, Orkney and Scotland (plus a new extra bit in Belgium).

Over to you Edward…

The boo is for whatever body is responsible for staffing the lifts on the Greenwich and Woolwich foot tunnels, which it was my misfortune to use today (the latter because the Wollwich ferry wasn’t running). It was Boxing Day, so particularly the former was thronging with people – of course nice stroll by the river is, quite predictably, what a lot of Londoners and tourists are going to do.

But were the lifts operating? Of course not. So I was one of many cyclists wrestling their bicycles up and down the 100-plus stairs each way. Normally it is a minor inconvenience, but when you are trying to do it through a non-stop stream of tottering grannies and small children running down looking at their feet and not where they are going, it is a positive hazard.

The hiss is for the fact that the lovely old traditional pie and mash shop in Greenwich is now a “Gourmet burger” place.

And the second hiss for me is a reminder that I really must get out and do some more miles on the bicycle more often. I did a nice loop through the City, Limehouse, and Greenwich, past the Dome (waving to Tutenkhamen), then along the Greenway and the canal home. But the last few miles were done in a very low gear – if you saw a cyclist in Bloomsbury about 5pm going very slowly that was probably me- and the lactic acid will drain from the thighs eventually, I’m sure.

Left the bicycle outside the University of London Union at the weekend for a long meeting – came back to find someone had attached, with an annoying great tangle of elastic bands (particularly for cold fingers in near-freezing weather), several leaflets. Not politics – but from “Camden street wardens” telling me that did not approve of the manner in which I had parked my bike.

No – it wasn’t attached to any railings, it wasn’t blocking pedestrians, it wasn’t in the wrong place at all. But it was NOT – shock horror – locked up in the approved manner, with the D-lock through both frame and wheel.

Now:
1. With the shape of bike stand provided it is exceedingly difficult to achieve this with a D-lock.

2. This is a very old, very rusty bicycle, with stickers indicating it is security tagged. (Which it is.)

3. It has a very expensive and good lock on it.

All of which mean that I consider the manner in which my bicycle was locked up was perfectly reasonable, and if it wasn’t, and the bike was stolen, that was my problem – I didn’t need three separate leaflets, with detailed diagrams, to tell me how I should do it.

Now I wonder, does it make sense to employ people to do this, or, to spend the same money to employ people to teach kids who are struggling to keep up in school, or social workers to help families with problems?

Well, no, I don’t wonder at all.

Good news that the £50m Sustrans bid for cycling improvements won a public bid for lottery money.

Hopefully this means there’s increasing recognition that this is one of the key elements of our transport future (with trains and walking).

This month’s edition of The London Cyclist has a lovely feature on the work of Frank Patterson, who recorded, with pen and ink, the cycling life from the 1890s to the 1950s. He’s got a society, and some lovely drawings are on its website.

I particularly liked “a summer tour”, 1928 (which you can see in the “shop”), which shows a cyclist drawn up outside a pub. The explanation: “Many inns at that time offered refreshment to travellers who did not wish to enter premises where alcohol was served; one rang the bell and the landlord would bring to the window any refreshment the heart desired.”

…. also meaning that you didn’t have to unpack the bicycle, remove outer clothing etc etc … not drive-through, but cycle-through. Definitely a concept worth restoring.

(And the prints are not a bad idea for a Christmas present for the cyclist in your life.)

Another government scheme, another mess. My employer has just joined the Cyclescheme whereby you can pay for a bicycle to cycle for work out of your tax-free income, spread over one year.

So I have in my hand a “cheque” for a bit more than I would probably otherwise spend on a bicycle, and I’ve found a bike I really like the look of, a Fahrrad S20 at Bikefix on Lamb’s Conduit Street. But, no, they no longer do the scheme (as they did when I checked about a month ago before initiating the whole process) since the middleman who manages it takes too much of the cash. And they can’t even be talked into taking more money for the bicycle, since to use this middleman they have to pay an annual fee.

(And I’ve already found at another shop that bikes effectively have two prices – the Cyclescheme price and the normal price, and there’s a serious difference between them.)

So, it seems, the government has managed to make money for a call-centre somewhere — until that is they realise the faults of the scheme and give it up suddenly, throwing the call centre people out of work. Somehow I don’t think that was the aim.

So anyone know any other stockists of Fahrrads in London or vicinity? What I liked about it are hub gears, very low step-through but light frame, friction lights front and rear, and a clever little spring designed to ensure that when you stop the bike and are locking it up, the handlebars don’t swing around – the sort of thoughtful European design that doesn’t seem to be very easy to find.

On a recent visit to a Camden council meeting (yes, I do have all of the fun), I did learn that there might, finally, be some plans to enforce the protection for cyclists provided by advanced stop lines.

In the “London Local Authorities and Transport for London Bill, Third Bill for Deposit in November 2007″ is a proposal (clauses 25 to 27) to “create a civil offence for unauthorised vehicles blocking or driving into a cycle advance stop area and the cycle lanes that feed them”.

The whole thing is written in dense legalese, but as I understand it the idea is that while “crossing the stop line” (for cars) is now a criminal offence, subject to fines and penalty points, this will retain the possibility of criminal enforcement, while also allowing council parking officers (and cameras?) to take action for the offence.

Don’t really care about the details, but it would be nice is drivers actually got the idea what that green patch with bicycles painted on it means.

I’m not quite sure what to do while reading about the £6,000 Chanel limited bicycle.

But it does make me feel better about planning to splash out on a flash new bicycle, which will cost a LOT less than that.

And mine will NOT have a quilted chain cover. (Which will presumably mean that you can’t go out if it is raining or muddy…. although I suppose you are only ever meant to casually lean it in the conservatory – not to actually ride it.)