Cycling UK Forum

cary: the technical answer in this situation is:

"If we (or I) can find a way to get my bike to my office safely, would you then be OK about it?"

If he says Yes, ask "What would you consider a safe way to get my bike to my office?"

If he says, No, the bike would mess up the carpet, you know you have a different argument on your hands.

If he says there isn't a safe way, repeat "But if I find one, then you would be OK?"

If that gets nowhere, you can say, "If we can find a way round the liability issue, then would you be OK?"

And so on. This is how Tesco get planning permission for their superstores so you might as well use the same technique for your bike storage problem.

johnw: in the age of the internet there is no such thing as a local bike shop - they can trade economically all over the world. I too was impressed by Spa and would turn to them for anything complicated - by post. There is nothing now to stop us using anyone else's local bike shop. There is also nothing to stop them from specialising in certain areas of stock. No more expensive catalogues or brochures - it's all there on the screen and their customer service and knowledge is invaluable if you cannot physically get to the shop itself. Even repairs can be undertaken by post.

As Mick F. says above (another mention there, Mick!), in Cornwall we are used to relying on the post so things are getting better not worse. Many people say that the internet is all about price - not at all: with distance involved, trust, reliability, good telephone skills etc become even more important. Another advantage of the internet is that LBSs can retreat from expensive high street shop fronts to lower cost premises anywhere - even their own garage or shed!

As an analogy, antiquarian book sellers were seen as just that - antiquarian - until the internet came along. Post offices are clogged with them and other small businesses stacking up parcels for posting. My advice to LBSs is hang on in there.

Anyway, back to the magazine. Time to put it on-line?

penfold: I see what you mean but I 'm quite glad they don't. TV advertising would imply a big enough company to do it. At the moment the only company big enough is Halfords (who do advertise on TV). Apart from them, no manfacturer or retailer is dominant enough to go on TV. This is good as cycling still relies on local shops and small builders offering a fairly bespoke service, even on cheap bikes. What we don't have is a high street bike chain (excuse the pun) like Boots or Blacks. This is possibly because bikes are still a low margin (or low volume), high service area that lends itself best to small operators. I think this is why Halfords struggles with the level of service they aspire to.

However, it may be a good idea to appreciate even Halfords while they last. The current trend is for the big supermarkets to expand into non-food goods and with people like Lidl and Tesco selling bike stuff (while not offering the service to go with it), it cannot be long before Halfords feels the pinch. The end result will be, like almost everything else, two or three very big players, dozens of very small players and nothing in the middle. Halfords is currently in the "middle".

This will make websites like this one even more the exclusive preserve of the dedicated enthusiast. But I can imagine Tesco running an Easter promotion along the lines of "Buy bikes for all your family, pick up some healthy sandwiches, get the right cycling togs (fashionable shorts etc) and some after-ride shampoo and head off to your local two mile cycleway for a great bit of Tesco exercise". In fact the bikes will have been better used for getting round Tesco itself which by now will be far larger than the local cycle path.

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Here's the Horizon. According to the brochure it has a SuperGalaxy frame so as I slowly upgrade the bits...but can I believe Dawes? Obviously well loaded as always and in the New Forest in January after a work trip. The following week she was in the snow.

jac: thanks for that. No, you were right first time - your post is exactly what I'm referring to - all the ferry companies do it. Why I get agitated is because people have complained about not being able to book multiple cyclists at the same time. This completely misses the point, the fact that it costs more without a car than with - exactly what happened to you. I have always thought that this would only occur with say four cyclists but it seems in your case it happened with just two. It is quite an amazing situation that few people seem to have grasped.

My comparison with booking a train isn't quite correct as I compared say four cyclists on a train with four cyclists going by car - obviously bad but not as outrageous as on a ferry where the different groups are actually travelling on the same conveyance.

People may miss the point because a single cyclist would obviously get a ticket for less than a car; a group of cyclists may miss it because each person would book separately or the group would split the cost. It is the family that would realise what is happening but of course a family booking bikes on a ferry is extremely rare. But they are all being ripped off.

I think the situation is so incredible that no matter how many times I write about it on here, no-one quite takes it in. I think an article in Money Guardian might do the trick - something along the lines of "Take your car free to France and Spain in August". I would like more people to tell us about their experience of taking a bike on a ferry and what it cost in comparison to taking a car.

Graham, you're right, you just cycle straight on, having been waived past the queuing cars which is very nice. The irony is that when we once drove on with the bikes on the back, we weren't charged for the bikes which they do when you book. It seems everything is OK provided you arrive by car.

jac: did you remove a post?

reohn2: a belated reply to your question. I was "up North". I have to travel for my work but usually in the south of England. This time I found myself near Crewe and decided to drop in on Shropshire on the way home to Cornwall. I had watched the met office weather map for days previously but all was fine. Then, on the day I was leaving, the severe weather map was plastered red from top to toe. It was too late to pack the skis but in fact the day I planned for cycling was forecast wet, not snow. Of course, being a met office forecast...

I am not completely mad - I did cut short my trip at Church Stretton which was the first railway station that I got to. In the meantime, I had savoured the delights of the A49 in thick heavy snow but also some delightful side roads. Conditions weren't icy, just snowy. Wonderful.

If you don't want to cycle alone, the answer is a tandem. Almost all couples have an imbalance in strength/stamina or whatever and even just the prospect of riding home late on a dark wet night on their own bike can put someone off. A tandem transforms cycling for couples. I cannot recommend one highly enough and don't understand why more people don't use them.

For my sins I occasionally deliver training courses on professional report writing. What I teach is that, for some reason, the human eye/brain is able to spot minor errors in language with quite amazing alacrity. The closest analogy is listening to a piece of music and hearing a wrong note - it stands out a mile.

My advice to CTC writers is: check, check and check again - every mistake, however minor, will be noticed by someone; it will undoubtedly cause annoyance and will definitely reduce the impact of what you have to say.

My advice to CTC readers, on the other hand, is to try to be tolerant (I know it's hard) as getting it right is immensely time consuming and costly for the writer.

Personally, I cringe at the spelling errors on this MB but I would much rather enjoy the humour and information with all the mistakes included than lose the contributions of so many witty and well informed people.

Just to reiterate that I'm not going off the rails, I'm referring to using sat nav as a passive route finder rather than as an electronic map. It is the interpretation of the map that counts and this is the same whether it is paper or electronic. I use old maps because they show the best cycling roads (usually smaller A and B roads) while on a new map it's hard to tell what kind of road they are. In any event, there is no signposting, but more on that another time.

Simon L6: can we take it you were being ironic?

Think about it: sat nav gives you the route between two places based on the criteria of speed and shortest distance. A touring cyclist looks presumably for a route based on, well, scenery, quietness, interest etc. To find that route they would have to look at a map and then specify that the sat nav route must pass through certain points. Having done all the work, the cyclist would use the sat nav simply as a reminder. Big deal.

Worse still, someone who isn't familiar with the possibilities of different routes just uses sat nav and follows the usual routes ending up on unpleasant and difficult roads.

The road system and all the sign-posting is geared to cars: to follow good cycling roads requires quite a lot of map reading and detective work. Of course if you just want to get from A - B, along the by-pass, past Tescos, along featureless dual carriageways and into the Little Chef, then sat nav is fine. A gadget that produces maps on a screen is one thing; sat nav, as I understand it, is quite different.

Last week I cycled from Crewe to Holmes Chapel. The only signpost on the route was in the middle of Sandbach and said "Library". Almost the whole route was shadowed by new by-passes. I don't know which the sat nav would have chosen but I don't think it would have been my route. I used my 1974 OSM. It was a great route.

Sorry dodger, that sounded a bit OTT but I am very angry about it - the same applies to all the ferry companies and of course any calculation you do when cyclists travel together such as on trains. How can it be that it costs more to leave the car at home? What is all this rubbish that people are talking about doing something about global warming etc etc?

dodger: it's much, much worse than that. Those ten people could take two large vehicles, all their bikes (outside the car, on racks etc) and all their panniers and luggage and pay less than the ten cyclists with their bikes. No wonder Brittany Ferries were helpful - they were laughing at you all the way to the bank. And you complained about having to book ten times. How about complaining about the destruction of the planet, being comprehensively ripped off and being the butt of their finance department jokes for months to come. Do the figures - ask for the two quotes and then listen to the embarrassed silence at the other end of the phone. It's unbelievable. Sure enough you bet they do. Remember - the cars go free.

On the road/hit from behind

Could you tell me whether this thread was "cleaned up"? There were a couple of offensive postings that appear to have been deleted.

reynard: reading your message again, of course you are right - you use a map; sat nav is used by most people in place of a map.