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A personal weblog with photographs and comments. Quiet ramblings, quite rambling...

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• Timelapse on the beach at Cei Bach
• Cyclist down at Critical Mass
• He never wants to stop at all
• “Cycling Infrastructure” from Surrey Council
• Unusual Cyclists
• Cyclists down at London Critical Mass
• Critical Mass London - 20th Anniversary Ride
• Cyclists - why won’t they just share the road?
• Road Rage on Oxford Street, London
• Descending Chalkpit Lane (Dashboard version)
• Race on!
• Be alert, your country needs lerts
• A dangerous overtake
• I saw this kid getting pulled
• Who’s that guy?

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• Critical Mass London - 20th Anniversary Ride - (0)
  
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• Race on! - (0)
  
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On Easter Monday we went to Cei Bach (little quay) near New Quay.  I was hoping for some good views over the bay but as we descended to the sea we noticed that it was very misty on the beach.  I used two cameras, so some of the footage here is overlapping. It also meant that some people on the beach didn’t notice the camera that was filming them (they noticed the other, more prominently placed camera).

In London at the July Critical Mass, on the way back from the Olympic Park, I witnessed this incident.  I couldn’t really see what happened to cause this, but it looked “spontaneous”.

He’s just having a good time. He’s having a ball. He’s like a rocket ship on his way to Mars.

I heard him coming up behind me and he announced his presence with a hoot of the horn (which is not a wise move because these are not always audible, especially on a windy day like this was). Prudently, I did manage to get out of his way moving to the edge of the road and pausing slightly.  Then after passing me he raced up the hill and at the next intersection announced his presence with a hoot. He then must have stopped somewhere shortly after that because I nearly caught up with him within five minutes but saw him racing off again, hooting at every bend and intersection. I know that this is how one uses the hooter in places like Italy (to let the others know you are there) but it’s the first time I have seen such persistent hooting on the country lanes of Kent and Surrey.

At first I thought that this is “new” infrastructure from Surrey County Council.  Reviewing my video of last month I see that this is not the case and the cycle lane has been there for some time (unnoticed by me).  The fact that I have cycled this route several times and not noticed the cycle lane before tells me something.  Besides for this, it is clearly bolt-on after-thought infrastructure, lacking vision, it’s part of a piecemeal design, it links up to no other cycle path, it provides no benefit to cyclists, it provides an inconvenience as it forces cyclists to yield to the entrance to Robert Denholm House as well as when rejoining the road, and it will not be used by cyclists. In short it is a waste of money, except as some tick-box exercise.

A few of the many cyclists who I thought were more unusual than the others.

I witnessed that two unfortunate incidents had occurred. I myself nearly slipped at one point on a metal structure affixed to the road (a manhole cover or the like). I hope that the cyclists are now fine.

Some excerpts from the ride last night. For more information about Critical Mass, see here.

Yesterday evening this driver got himself into conflict with a large group of cyclists at the Critical Mass London, 20th Anniversary Ride.  I don’t think they should have taken it personally as he seemed the type of person who would expect any traffic to stop while he did a 10 point turn and then entered the carriageway.  Also, from the way the driver and the other lackeys were behaving, the passenger sitting on the back seat probably owns High Street Kensington.

This taxi driver tried to pull out and “barge” his way through some cyclists. While he probably gets away with this with cars, it is not a safe thing to do with cyclists.  In fact there was a young child in a trailer being pulled by one of the cylists.  A tricyclist (I think he was riding a pedicab) was so incensed that he dismounted and gave the taxi driver an earful.

It is not clear from the video but there was a lot of vehicular traffic on the street and so the taxi driver was not going anywhere fast - the bicycles were keeping up with (and overtaking) the cars, which were causing a traffic jam.

This is another version of the video that I previously posted here.  I have added a display of some of the GPX data, indicating my speed and altitude.

I’m still getting the hang of this malarky and so I didn’t sychronise the data properly with the video (there’s a lag of a few seconds in the data, relative to the video).  Nonetheless it gave me some ideas for what is possible in future.  The data comes from the SportsTracker application, and I merged it using DashWare software, which allows for the GPX data to be represented in a number of different ways.

Half way up from Bristol to Fishponds I was overtaken by a young cyclist. I raised my pace a bit to keep up with her, when she dropped her pace a bit I easily overtook her.  A similar thing happened with some young lads further on. They didn’t like me cruising past them, and so chased me and overtook me again shortly afterwards (when I slowed down for a tight bend). However I maintained my pace and easily overtook them again a little later.

This was just a bit of fun: there were so many people out and about cycling that a “race” would have been inappropriate.

Some general tips for navigating a roundabout:

• Stick to your lane.
• Be aware of other cars around you.
• Anticipate that other drivers (such as the driver of NV52XDM in this example) might not be alert and/or obey the rules of the road.

This driver overtook me a little too fast, and too close.  Section 163 of The Highway Code states:

Section 163:

Overtake only when it is safe and legal to do so. You should:
...

give motorcyclists, cyclists and horse riders at least as much room as you would when overtaking a car (see Rules 211 to 213 and 214 to 215).

The video is taken using a wide angle lens, so it is a bit deceptive. However the car passed me about 1 foot to my right, when the guidelines call for 3 feet passing space.

In Bath yesterday afternoon.

I think I’ve seen this chap out and about sometime last year. Anyway, as you can see we couldn’t really stop and exchange pleasantries, we barely had time to greet and remark on how marvellous the weather was that evening… earlier this week.