Category: Cycling
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Right Hooked – A Near Miss
A Ford Fiesta turns right oblivious of me being in a cycle lane along the right hand side of the road. This is known as a left-, or in this instance, right-hook. A near miss. The road is Maple Street which, unusually, has a separated cycle lane along the right-hand side of the road rather…
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Wicken Fen: A Cycle Ride from Ely to Cambridge – Stuck in Draft #4
Here’s a cycle ride I took in April 2016. I think the winter and spring months are quite a nice time to do this ride. It’s not especially demanding and is easy to reach from London with direct trains from King’s Cross. Another in my series, Stuck in Draft. Reading Rain recently, I realised that…
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A Shopping Failure – Stuck in Drafts #1
Note: This was written several months ago, but for some reason I never published it at the time. Hence the “Stuck in Drafts” label. I recently visited The Cycle Show at the Birmingham. It was an entertaining – if slightly tiring day. Obviously it’s a bit of a trek from my part of North London,…
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Lights
It has been a week since British Summer Time ended, the clocks went back an hour, and suddenly the sun is setting around 4:30pm. If you ride a bike, and work regular hours, that means that you’re going to be cycling home in the dark. Now I’m a pretty live-and-let-live cyclist, in that I’m not…
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U-Turns in Pancras Road
Note: This is aimed particularly at anyone who cycles in central London and travels near either King’s Cross or St Pancras stations. Everyone else? As you were. Unless you work for Camden Council… While tube maps show King’s Cross St Pancras as a single station, anyone who visits will know that there are actually two…
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Bike Cameras for my Brompton
For some time now I’ve been thinking about putting a camera or cameras on my bike for my commute. While there was no single thing that tipped me over the edge, and I’ve been lucky to only have some rare incidents with other traffic, the ease with which you can fit cameras to bikes meant…
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RideLondon Classique 2017
A few weeks ago, it was the annual RideLondon. This year I didn’t get a space in the main RideLondon 100, but I still popped down to watch the RideLondon Classique race around a central London course. Unfortunately it was a miserable day, with fairly unrelenting rain. I meant to arrive a little earlier than…
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oBikes – Initial Thoughts
On Saturday night, I was returning to my north London home when I noticed something I’d not seen before – a new type of hire bike. Now us Londoners have become used to “Boris Bikes” – or Santander Cycles as they’re officially known. This is a scheme that I’ve been using fairly consistently since its…
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Tour de France 2017 Podcasts
At the 2015 Tour Le Tour is back underway, and while I’m sadly not planning to go and visit this year, I am of course closely watching TV, listening to the radio and podcasts and following all the action on Twitter. And of course, I’m helping out with The Cycling Podcast, the finest podcast covering…
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Women’s Tour 2017 – Stage 5 – London
Following Saturday’s Nocturne, I headed back into town to watch the final stage of The Ovo Energy Women’s Tour, which was concluding on a circuit not dissimilar to previous years’ Tour of Britain finishes. (This year, the men are finishing in Cardiff instead). Taking in lots of iconic London streets including Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus,…
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Rapha Nocturne 2017
This weekend saw the return of the Rapha Nocturne, with Rapha resuming sponsorship. These days, the event has moved from Smithfield Market to an area around St Pauls near the Guildhall. While I have no problem with the route, it’s a shame that it no longer covers an area with bars and pubs like Smithfields…
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A Tale of Two Ferries
I thought I’d document a few of my more interesting rides from last year. So here’s one I made over the August Bank Holiday weekend. The ride is a circular route starting and finishing at Colchester railway station. You quickly leave Colchester and head north into Dedham Vale where there are both a few hills…
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The Cycling Podcast Review of the Year 2016
I seem to have been a little backwards in coming forwards with details of this edition of The Cycling Podcast put together by yours truly and published over the Christmas period. Obviously it won’t be of enormous interest if you don’t follow professional cycling, and you’ll miss all the running jokes if you haven’t listened…