gaz wrote:After their eighth winter, most of which have been on roads with nothing worse than a heavy frost, I think it's time to retire my current set of studded tyres.
Might have 3,500 miles on them, probably less but the studs didn't seem to be biting that well today.
If the rubber is still good you could renew the studs.
Very nIce pictures, how to upload? procedures thanks?
Just wondering if in Finland their schools are closer on average to were people live, perhaps smaller communities or less traffic density or better cycling facilities on roads near to schools, I would have to go and see perhaps.
edit, quick look on the web The population density in Finland is 18 per Km2 (47 people per mi2). The population density in the United Kingdom is 281 per Km2 (727 people per mi2)
Steady rider wrote:Very nIce pictures, how to upload? procedures thanks?
Old instructions but they should still see you through. The forum's seen a few updates since they were posted, the main difference being that you no longer need to worry about the file size .
High on a cocktail of flossy teacakes and marmalade
[quote="Steady rider"Just wondering if in Finland their schools are closer on average to were people live, perhaps smaller communities or less traffic density or better cycling facilities on roads near to schools, I would have to go and see perhaps.
edit, quick look on the web The population density in Finland is 18 per Km2 (47 people per mi2). The population density in the United Kingdom is 281 per Km2 (727 people per mi2)[/quote] Population density could be misleading. If you're in town, you're in town, and I suspect that a higher percentage of Finland's population is urban than the UK's. The rest of Finland is basically empty - though of course there are various ways of being empty (villages or isolated homesteads?) - so not many people there.
But it's a good question. UK guidelines are that journey to primary schools should be no more than 2 miles (but possibly this only applies in urban areas?). 2 miles is a long way for a small child to travel unaccompanied - even without traffic danger and fear of strangers, it's just tiring for little legs!
Bmblbzzz wrote:The population density in Finland is 18 per Km2 (47 people per mi2). The population density in the United Kingdom is 281 per Km2 (727 people per mi2) Population density could be misleading. If you're in town, you're in town, and I suspect that a higher percentage of Finland's population is urban than the UK's. The rest of Finland is basically empty - though of course there are various ways of being empty (villages or isolated homesteads?) - so not many people there.
I see where you're coming from but I really don't think it's quite as simple as town size. More to do with planning, transport and education policies. I grew up in a town of ~10,000. At primary level most kids lived fairly locally but at secondary they came from 5 or more miles away, because although there was more than one secondary school, they served a whole district. Since then, some of the schools in the smaller towns of the district have closed completely. I now live in a large city (about half a million) and my son had three secondary schools within a ten-minute walk.
The reason Finnish kids cycle to school in the snow is not because the schools are close to where they live (though that might be true and will obviously help) but because they have a culture of childhood independence and coping with winter.
Nordic countries have guidelines that schools in urban areas should generally be within 1 or 2 km for primary aged children and 2 or 3 km for lower secondary aged children.
It varies some from country to country, but school transport (bus or people carrier) is generally provided if it is too far to walk within ~30 minutes (primary school ages).
In the UK, the combination of the elimination of catchment areas, and consolidations of schools has increasingly meant that even primary aged kids are not within a 30 minute walk of school.
That said, when we lived in an Essex village with it's own school, where 90% of pupils were within 1.5 miles, the street by the school was lined with cars every morning, made unsafe with pollution, bad parking & stupid driving. Quite a few people walked, I would guess 30 or 40%, but there were few cycling, and in our cul-de-sac, there were several families that drove the 1 mile or so to school and maybe only 10 or 15 % that walked or cycled every day.
Nordic countries do have the culture of childhood independence. I think I've discussed on here before some difference that way between Norway & UK.
“In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.” ― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
Seems to me there's a large class element in childhood independence in UK, with (generalization alert!) working class kids from the age of, say, 8 or 9 being allowed out on foot or bikes to roam around in a structure-free way of their own device, while middle class kids are shepherded (usually by car, of course sometimes by cargo bike!) from activity to activity. But that relates to free time rather than journeys to school.
Bmblbzzz wrote:Seems to me there's a large class element in childhood independence in UK, with (generalization alert!) working class kids from the age of, say, 8 or 9 being allowed out on foot or bikes to roam around in a structure-free way of their own device, while middle class kids are shepherded (usually by car, of course sometimes by cargo bike!) from activity to activity. But that relates to free time rather than journeys to school.
That is at least partly out of necessity, though. Poor and working class parents are more likely to be working hours that leave kids unsupervised for some part of the day, less likely to be able to afford child care or activities, and less likely to have cars to ferry the kids around with. My mother signed us up for everything after school she could (with no or minimal fees), depended on neighbours and family, and left us on our own as soon as she could trust we wouldn't burn the house down or kill each other accidently. The cost of child care for the hours between school letting out and her work finishing were bank-breaking.
“In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.” ― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
Agree all those factors apply, but I think there's a different attitude on top of that. FWIW I think it's a rather decent attitude (maybe just rose-tinted 1970s nostalgia). Neither the attitude nor those factors are universal, of course. And (as I think you also indicate with the phrase "poor and working class") poverty is a third category (as in, not all working class families are poor and not all the poor are working class).
