Search found 54 matches

by rudge
12 Sep 2015, 6:19am
Forum: Touring & Expedition
Topic: Planning a trip using SNCF (French railways)
Replies: 6
Views: 1812

Re: Planning a trip using SNCF (French railways)

Thank you all. I have never heard of capitaine trains. I will try them
by rudge
4 Sep 2015, 11:14pm
Forum: Touring & Expedition
Topic: Planning a trip using SNCF (French railways)
Replies: 6
Views: 1812

Planning a trip using SNCF (French railways)

I would like to take a bike on a train from Caen in northern France to Bordeaux in the south west.

in France you can take a bike on a train badged TER (regional, stopping) but not TGV (long distance express).

The SNCF on-line journey planner offers TGV only for long distances.

It must be possible to go from any station to any other by TER so I should be able to get from Caen to Bordeaux. Does anyone know how to plan such a journey without immense labour?
by rudge
14 Jun 2015, 3:38pm
Forum: Non-standard, Human Powered Vehicles
Topic: Riding backwards
Replies: 6
Views: 8463

Re: Riding backwards

Thanks for these, and my apologies for posting twice. The bike I remember wasn't recumbent. What has made it stick in my mind is the undesirable posture of the person in front, with head tucked into the other person's belly and with spine horribly exposed in the event of a crash
by rudge
4 Jun 2015, 7:20am
Forum: Non-standard, Human Powered Vehicles
Topic: Riding backwards
Replies: 4
Views: 8048

Riding backwards

Years ago I saw an item on television about a redesign of the tandem to reduce wind resistance.

The bike was set up so that the rider in front was travelling backwards - obviously more aerodynamically efficient than the normal way. The front rider's head and shoulders had to be lower than the rear rider's eyes, though - not a perfect riding position for either of them.

The designers were going to seek approval for the bike to be used in competition. I assume that that didn't happen. Has anyone heard of such a tandem ever being used?

I don't think the date is a problem. It would have been a very expensive April Fool to set up.
by rudge
4 Jun 2015, 7:10am
Forum: Non-standard, Human Powered Vehicles
Topic: Riding backwards
Replies: 6
Views: 8463

Riding backwards

Years ago I saw an item on television about a redesign of the tandem to reduce wind resistance.

The bike was set up so that the rider in front was travelling backwards - obviously more aerodynamically efficient than the normal way. The front rider's head and shoulders had to be lower than the rear rider's eyes, though - not a perfect riding position for either of them.

The designers were going to seek approval for the bike to be used in competition. I assume that that didn't happen. Has anyone heard of such a tandem ever being used?

I don't think the date is a problem. It would have been a very expensive April Fool to set up.
by rudge
14 Mar 2015, 4:56am
Forum: On the road
Topic: Mam Tor, shivering mountain
Replies: 21
Views: 8569

Re: Mam Tor, shivering mountain

That's interesting. When I wrote the original post I thought that the point of it was that this family, grandfather and grandson, were prepared to observe with apparent equanimity the potential obliteration of a harmless cyclist.
by rudge
11 Feb 2015, 8:03am
Forum: On the road
Topic: Lesson learned - again
Replies: 18
Views: 2954

Lesson learned - again

The curb is stone, so is the gutter. The tarmac comes to the edge of the gutter, but not on to the gutter or up to the curbstone. So there is a little cliff of tarmac, no more than two centimeters deep. Moving across and into the gutter presented no problems but moving back on to the tarmac sent me skittering abruptly in a tight circle, ending up on the centre line facing the way I had come. There was no vehicle passing. If there had been I would have been wiped out as I had,for a moment, no control at all.

Speaking of gutters, our country curbstones are not square, like town curbstones, but sloping. I never catch a pedal on a town curb but seem to do so frequently - a startling experience in itself - on the country curbstones.

Yes, yes, I know. Don't get into the gutter in the first place. But the gutter does draw you in, don't you find?
by rudge
29 Dec 2014, 7:56am
Forum: The Tea Shop
Topic: new c2c and other northern cycle routes forum
Replies: 7
Views: 2573

Re: new c2c and other northern cycle routes forum

When a pub is closed owing to lack of business everyone laments that a vital component of community life has been taken away. I wrote the following to admin not long ago in the course of a conversation on why I had not returned to the forum.

"I enjoy these forums very much and can spend many hours in them. I go into the CTC forum often, because there is always something new to think about. It seems to me that the C2C forum doesn't have much new to read, or to write about, so I get out of the habit of going there. In the C2C forum today, for example, I click on active topics (seven days) and there are none. Active topics (one month) has one topic.

Do we need a new site? Is there a reason why the northern C2C routes should not simply be accommodated within the CTC forum, which often has posts about C2C and already has a section on LEJOG?
by rudge
2 Sep 2014, 8:03pm
Forum: Helmets & helmet discussion
Topic: Magic hats in France
Replies: 42
Views: 4593

Re: Magic hats in France

Puny but determined wrote:I have just been enquiring about insurance with Brittany Ferries as we are about to set off for France. I was told by the (French) person answering the phone (0871 244 1501) that helmets are compulsory. I am almost certain that he is wrong and said so, to which he replied that we will be stopped straight away without one! Is this something I have missed?

Not true. Serious, proper gear, French cyclists mostly wear helmets, but bikes are used in France as everyday transport by a wide variety of people who do not favour proper gear. None of them wear helmets, in my experience.
by rudge
2 Sep 2014, 6:53am
Forum: On the road
Topic: Mam Tor, shivering mountain
Replies: 21
Views: 8569

Mam Tor, shivering mountain

The road from Castleton to Chapel en le Frith used to go over the hill known as Mam Tor. The geology of the hillside up which the road zig zagged was so unstable that it was constantly under repair. In the end the authorities admitted defeat, closed the road and left the hillside to its own devices. But the road still features in books of bike rides, so a couple of weeks ago I went down it.

It is an amazing sight. Not pretty in any way, rather sinister in fact, but fascinating. In places the road surface is more or less intact, if at a crazy angle, with deep holes in the peat at the sides. In places the road is broken up in slabs, like sea ice. In other places, all evidence that there had been a road has disappeared, leaving almost natural looking pools, tussocks of vegetation and drifts of peat.

I was riding steadily on an apparently undamaged section. Ahead of me the road seemed to dip and then rise again or level out. I would have continued blithely on but for a boy who was staring intently at the road surface at just the point where it seemed to dip.

Innocence.jpg

I got off and pushed the bike. I had to get quite close to the dip to see that in fact the road had sheered neatly and dropped vertically down. If I had continued I would have crashed on to the jagged road surface below.

Awareness.jpg

As I was carrying my bike, with some difficulty, round the obstacle, the boy’s grandfather came down the hill and said to me “Do you know, I think he [the boy] would have let you go straight over the edge?” I replied “Do you know, I think he would.” A lame response, but at the time I could think of nothing better. After a couple of weeks I still can’t
by rudge
31 Jul 2014, 6:23am
Forum: Does anyone know … ?
Topic: Newbie: can someone explain gears
Replies: 28
Views: 3976

Re: Newbie: can someone explain gears

drossall wrote:Gears work because they change the number of times the wheel goes round for each revolution of the pedals. Your legs work more efficiently if they can rotate at a comfortable rate, usually thought of as 70-140 times a minute.

This is the crucial bit, isn't it? I didn't understand gearing at all until I realised that the point of it is to maintain constant pedalling despite changing road speed. I would have given the range as 50 - 100, with 80 as the comfortable ideal.
by rudge
25 Apr 2014, 11:17am
Forum: Does anyone know … ?
Topic: Politically correct in Yorkshire.
Replies: 50
Views: 3113

Re: Politically correct in Yorkshire.

kwackers wrote:I thought it was "duck".

(First time someone said it to me there was actually a duck nearby and I thought they were talking to it! Didn't help that their accent was very strong and my brain was a sentence behind in the decoding)


I always understood that the north/south luv/duck boundary went through Burton on Trent.

I remember the startlement when the film "This Sporting Life" - about rugby league - opened and grown men - big grown men - were heard to address each other as "luv".
by rudge
16 Apr 2014, 9:33pm
Forum: On the road
Topic: Its raining stones
Replies: 13
Views: 5113

Re: Its raining stones

A couple of years ago I was riding into Soulby in the dusk. A car passed me and the passenger hurled a can of beer hard at the tarmac. It exploded, as it was meant to do. The can exploded too far in front for me be brought to some kind of grief, as was presumably the intention. I didn't know whether this was a gesture against cyclists, against strangers, or against the ancientry. In any case, I didn't report it to the police. The logic of the thread is that I should have done so. For all I know, this might have been the seventh time the stunt had been pulled.

Next time.
by rudge
7 Apr 2014, 8:19am
Forum: Does anyone know … ?
Topic: Age to hang up your saddle.
Replies: 85
Views: 7513

Re: Age to hang up your saddle.

I am old (but not very old - yet) and I have Parkinsons. The second is so well controlled by drugs that if you met me you probably wouldn't realise I had it. There is no control for the first.

When I walk any distance I am now very conscious of the fact that I cannot walk as fast or as fluently as I could. I feel hampered and ungainly. The bike, though, is different.

Until a few years ago I could cruise at around 22 kph. Now it is 15 kph, and falling. But thanks to multiple gears, with a bottom gear of 22/28, cycling feels just the same. I can keep up a nice spinning rhythm with no heaving at the pedals. The fact that I am moving so much more slowly simply doesn't matter. I now think of 50 k as a reasonable target for a day's ride, whereas it was 100 k not long ago. So I take in more of the passing scenery. Some days my neck is a bit stiff and I cannot turn my head to look behind me. So to turn right I put my foot down at the kerb and take a good look back. That's no hardship.

Exercise is strongly encouraged for people with Parkinsons so I have no dispute with the medical profession. Cycling is particularly appropriate because it smooths out any jerkiness in your movements. (So is the tango, apparently.)

I said at the top that there is no control for aging but of course there is. You can ride today, so ride. They won't put this nice afternoon to one side so that we can use it later.
by rudge
5 Apr 2014, 8:42am
Forum: Does anyone know … ?
Topic: GPS's taking cyclists onto motorways.
Replies: 58
Views: 2843

Re: GPS's taking cyclists onto motorways.

Mark1978 wrote:
drossall wrote:I think there was a story in the press recently about it happening to someone. Didn't sound as though the Police were any more impressed than if a driver had followed his GPS off a cliff.


He was following a dual carriageway A road which spontaneously became a motorway and increased in standard along the way.


I don't know whether Mark1978 is being sarcastic, ("spontanously") or not but this happened to me three times on a short tour in Spain. Once appproaching Pamplona, once leaving San Sebastian and once in the hills somewhere. On each occasion an ordinary road turned, bit by it, into a motorwary. On each occasion I came on a huge sign listing forbidden traffic, but only after I was already on a morotorway, with no warning at all. On each occasion I had to lug my bike and panniers over the guard rails and work my way back to a place where I could get onto a road I was allowed to ride on.

Nothing to do with GPS, though.