Cycling UK Forum

When I was on the Stonehenge Riverside project one of my first duties of the day was to remove sleepy druids from the portaloos.

Thing about the druids (the iron age ones) is that they and their religion probably didn't just arrive over night, rather it would have evolved over many years. Thus there may well be Bronze Age (even Chalcolithic) roots in there, meaning that we can't disassociate them completely from the Chalcolithic/EBA. Just as a modern member of the C of E would find early Christian practice very strange but there is a link there.

Goes off at a tangent.....

The thing that stood out in the magazine for me was the feature on the clubs, and more specifically the contrast between the Handsworth club and everything else in the mag. On one hand we have a CCC where many of the riders borrow bikes because they don't have their own, don't wear lycra, are from deprived communities, etc etc, on the other had we have white middle class with flash bikes, lycra, etc etc. And virtually all the kit reviews are for top(ISH) end stuff.

This is not a criticism of Cycle - the magazine is just catering for what numerous surveys have shown to be the typical member. Rather it is asking why CUK seems to attract plenty of white middle class, middle aged people with healthy disposable incomes, but many fewer people who are younger, less well off, from deprived communities or not white? It's not as though people from this kind of background don't want to cycle....in Brum the CCCs, which tend to be based in deprived areas, are thriving, but very few of the CCC members to on to become CUK members.

One might almost suggest that CUK, whilst doing great work with its CCCs, is inadvertently becoming elitist in its public image.

reohn2 wrote:They tell me Thongs are in short supply

Well I guess that if you are going out wearing nothing but your thong you should have little problem maintaining a 2m exclusion zone!

I was hoping to be able to bodge the mech onto the seat tube, failing that I would have used a BB mounted mech.

My link has 24 gears....so if you fancied a swap.....

Another thing to consider is the ir35 stuff. When I did bikeability in schools I was self employed but the gov's new ir35 tool thinks I'm actually employed for pay/tax purposes.

The Grand Union Canal down in the Small Heath area.

Not heard anything lately but they have a spate of attacks every now and then. I once had a bloke jump out in front of me waving a stick...then he noticed there were 15 more cyclists behind me and beat a hasty retreat!

To be fair, the minister for cycling doesn't have to be a regular cyclist....like the minister for health doesn't have to be a doctor or the minister for war (whatever their real title is) doesn't have to be an active soldier, etc.

What they do need to be is very capable and determined to do the job properly with support from their government and its policies. This, I think, is where things fall down.

Richard Fairhurst wrote:Personally, from central Birmingham, I'd actually start by cycling south along the Worcester & Birmingham Canal to Kings Norton. Then turn east along the Stratford Canal, which is prettier and has a tolerable towpath (assuming you're not on a skinny-tyred road bike),

Yes, this also misses out one of the cyclist mugging hot spots in Brum.

This is another problem that I think bikeability may be bringing on themselves - don't know about other areas but where I am there is a reliance on volunteers to teach adults as part of community cycle clubs and similar. Now that we have the new standard with the requirement for extra training, registration and on going costs I can see a number of these volunteers giving up as donating their time is one thing but having to pay to be allowed to donate their time is taking the mick!

I know of several who have stopped and others who are just sticking to the old standard, given that it does a perfectly good job of teaching people to ride......however they may then find themselves in a grey area insurance wise.

My personal experience.....YMMV.....

I've Vs, calipers, cable discs and hydros, all of reasonable quality, and guess what.....they all work

If it's going to be wet, and indeed, wet and muddy off road, I prefer discs, otherwise they are pretty similar when set up right.

Hydros, I find, are more of a faff to maintain as I find bleeding them a chore...I can do it perfectly well, just find it more effort than maintaining cable brakes. On the other hand the hydros have more power.

Interestingly, I have spyres on one bike and in the dry I can't lock the wheels from the hoods like I could with Vs or caliper, but I still find them better as they stop me just as well, plenty of modulation, reliable, etc.

If some one gave me some quality drop bar hydros then I'd happily use them, but I'm happy enough with my cables that I don't feel I need to upgrade.

Iirc, freelancers that I worked with at sustrans were on £10 ph, I think bikeright were somewhere around £15,. BC were £15 , and Birmingham council, then BBB when they took over were about £19ph.....although the lead is expected to do extra stuff beyond the paid session.

Considering the responsibility and limited hours, i think that £10 ph is pretty rubbish. If you are semi retired and looking for a small extra income then you are probably ok, but if you can only get four hours per day, and maybe 20 weeks per year then you are going to struggle to live on it.

The govt have made noises about every kid in the country getting bikeability......you have to wonder where all the instructors are going to be found.

Thanks for that! Yes, I was thinking of retro fitting a double at the front if I got one. Good to know you've had no trouble on trains....my airnimal was ok on them too but it was more of a pain to fold as you have to take the front wheel off.

******thread resurrection alert********

Thinking of swapping my link for a node d8. Would be interested in hearing how you've got on with yours since your initial post, Horizon, and from anyone else who has used them.

Reason for swap.....just finding the link too slow when doing any distance. Used to have an airnimal with 24 inch wheels.....it was nice and quick but folding was more of a hassle.

I've skipped most of this thread as don't have time to read 11 pages at the mo...forgive me if I repeat what others have said.

I've actually done what is now known as "gravel biking" in the UK for about 40 years, but I've only had a Gravel Bike for the last year and a bit.

If you find a gravel bike group and look at what they type of trail ride you'll see that it's similar to what mtbers used to ride in the 80s/early 90s and what rough-stuffers used to ride before that. It's off road that is not overly technical for the most part, although you may need to negotiate the odd technical bit here and there (either with skill or reverting to the 24" gear). Bridle ways, farm tracks, fire roads, etc etc. Trails (unless you are lucky enough to be by one of the National Parks) are often linked together by roads.

You can ride much of this sort of stuff on.....MTBs (the road bits are a slow slog of a pain), road bikes (have to go very slow on a fair bit of the off road and mud will often defeat your skinny bald tyres.....but it can be done....my Fred Williams Light Weight Special '90s race bike was the first bike to test parts of the Follow the Dog trail at Cannock Chase mainly because i was the only trail builder to arrive by bike!), touring bikes (may have to change tyres if the mud is getting British, and you'd be better off with disc brakes in all that wet, and you might want to think about other ways of carrying luggage if find panniers are frequently getting snagged on the fauna and are bouncing about all over the place on the rocky trails, etc), Uni-cycles (yes, I've done a full-on MTB race where there were people competing on uni-cycles).

Thing about the gravel bike is that it is tuned specifically for this type of riding. Doesn't mean you can't use other kinds of bike quite happily (I also use a Dawes 1-Down for this kind of riding), but the gravel bike will have several small advantages(my gravel bike is faster than the 1-Down on the road and smoother trail sections, stops better in the wet, is easier to lift over gates, etc etc).

Just like you can actually go successfully bike touring on a race bike.....does that mean that you are gullible if you choose a touring bike instead?

The proposals come in several stages.

The initial one was the so-called congestion charge in the city centre. This one got all the 'hard working, law abiding, tax paying, mail reading' citizens up in arms as it was just another part of the 'war against the motorist'. In reality it was a charge on the most polluting vehicles, e.g. dirty diesels and older petrol cars. It would have little effect on the average car driver. Taxi drivers with diesel were to be given help to change over. Those living within the zone were to be given extra time to transition. However the scheme has been put back...hey what do the lives of a few inner city kids matter eh?

The scheme that has just been mooted is stop travel across the city centre. So you would still be able to drive into the city, you just wouldn't be able to leave in a different direction. So if you live in, say, Kings Heath and you want to go to the Hippodrome (or your place of work in the SW part of the city) you drive in same as normal, park near by, then drive out the same route again after. If you live in, say, Sutton and you want to go to the Hippodrome, you either drive in to a car park on the east side, park and walk through the city centre(20mins?). Or you go round the outer ring road and come in and out via the other side. OR, you might even consider using the train or bus....or, heaven forbid, cycle.

Public transport - this is the bit that hasn't yet been specified. PT into and out of the city at the moment is pretty regular and covers many areas. It's also close to capacity in a number of areas. It needs improving such that you can not only get into and out of the city but around the city better. Alas a lot of money has just been spent on the tram. Trams are good if you either have no trams (then you can spend on cycling or buses) or lots of trams (such that you can catch one near your home and get to where you want to go). Brum has one big fancy tram running through it so most people don't have a use for it. Brums has lots of buses....the issue is, like other places, you have lots of companies working the same profitable routes and fewer ones on the unprofitable routes. The council really needs to control who can run what where and when to form an integrated bus network. And local councillors need to stop closing bus lanes.

Cycling. We've just had our two new Blue Routes (equivalent of cycling super highways). They are pretty good. the one from the Uni to the city gets a fair amount of use (although there are two parallel(ish) routes: canal and NCN5). The other one, towards Newtown is pretty under used. BBB has done a Big Bike Give Away....handing out around 5000 adult bikes and a load of kids bikes. All good stuff but it didn't really coincide with the Blue Routes - e.g. if would have been nice if they could have given out lots of bikes to people living near the outer ends of the Blue Routes. However, the giving out of bikes was one of the factors that allowed the money and political will for the Blue Routes to be built. At the moment I am not aware of any plans for new Blue routes, however, with the Commonwealth Games coming in two years, one would hole that the Newtown route will be expanded up to Alexandra Stadium where mush and the games and athletes village will be. BBB & BCR continue but at a much less enthusiastic pace. British cycling is still very active (HSBC having it's big offices in Brum) but their best project, Ride Active, has had funding cut and is treading water rather than being progressive (note: I'm extremely biased here as I used to run it, other people's MMV). CUK continues to be active, with still more Community Cycle Clubs starting up.

edit....forgot to say....based n my experience working in cycling in Brum I'm not sanguine that Brum will become a continental-style cycling city any time soon. Lots of dedicated people working really hard to promote cycling but but the hurdles are just gigantic.