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

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Most recent entries

• Artificially green
• Watching the traffic
• London Mayor
• Wet and muddy
• Looking Greenwich up and down
• On my bike
• Making Hay
• The previous cycle route
• Back to Woldingham Viewpoint
• The nasty way to travel
• Heaven and hell
• Berlin cycle lanes
• Kurbelstange (deformiert)
• Ebbsfleet International Railway Platform
• Police incident in Tandridge

Recent entries with comments

• London Mayor - (1)
  
• Looking Greenwich up and down - (2)
  
• Police incident in Tandridge - (2)
  
• British War Criminals - (2)
  
• Checkpoint Charlie - (3)
  
• Oxted from the “Woldingham Viewpoint” - (5)
  
• A figure of defiance - (1)
  
• What really happened in Croydon? - (3)
  
• Bike hire in Berlin - (1)
  
• Brandenberg Gate - (1)
  
• Three Way Chess - (1)
  
• Gamelan instruments - (2)
  
• Oh no! John! - (2)
  
• “Bells and Smells” Mass - (1)
  
• Turn cash into less cash - (6)
  

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Europe

This is Woldingham Golf Course from the top of Gangers Hill (looking North West). By the looks of it a lot of artificial chemicals are being utilised to keep the grass this green.

A couple of weeks ago there was this traffic monitor opposite Church Lane on the A25 at Oxted.  Of course the traffic (which usually speeds at this point) was driving very calmly and actually adhering to the 40 mph speed limit.

I have written before about this accident hotspot: here and here.  The best solution would be to reduce the speed limit on the A25 when it passes through Oxted down to 30 mph (and to enforce this if necessary). Given the way the presence of the van altered motorists’ behaviour, I would be most surprised if the police research found the need to do anything about this busy intersection!

Well I’ve heard about people running away to join the circus…

It was drizzling lightly when I left home and in retrospect it was not the best day to choose to go off-road. It had clearly been raining today judging by the puddles on the bridleway, When the rain came down harder, I came off the North Down the quick way: down a tar road and through this maize field. Back home I had to hose down my bike and body. The rain was actually ok. It was the wind that was unpleasant.

Here are a couple of reverse views of Greenwich: looking up at the Observatory from the National Maritime Museum and then looking down in the opposite direction with Canary Wharf in the background.

My new ultra-padded cycling shorts seem to be working well. There is less numbness after an hour or two in the saddle. I decided to invest in them after reading this story recently.

Hat tip: BoingBoing.

It is currently a lovely time of year on the Surrey/Kent border . The farmer was out in his tractor harvesting the hay into these stacks. Bees were also buzzing, midges flying, and swallows swallowing.

There is also the occasional rude and inconsiderate motorist racing too fast down country lanes.

Just after this photo was taken I discovered that I had forgotten to bring a banana and had to resort to scrumping an apple (that was hanging over a farm fence).

This is the 23 kilometre route I have been doing for the past few weeks. (The actual start and end point has been altered somewhat).

Link: Gmap pedometer.

I’m back in the UK and able to do my cycling ride from Oxted up to Woldingham and back. This view of Oxted, in Surrey, also takes in Kent and East and West Sussex (Sussexes?). My route currently includes only Surrey and Kent.

This is almost the highest point of my route and I only have one more ‘serious’ climb on my way back into Oxted.

My work trip next week is postponed so I should be able to get back into the swing of things again. Right now I feel a bit unfit.

Here I am arriving back in the UK from Germany. One of the problems with this mode of travel is that you go so fast that it takes a while for your spirit to catch up with you. Another has to do with the amount of CO2 emissions generated.

They say that:

Heaven is a restaurant where the chef is French, the manager is German, the waiter is English and your eating companions are Italian. Hell is the same place with the same people, but they occupy different roles. The chef is English, the manager is Italian, the waiter is French and your eating companions are German.

The sculpture in the photograph above is in the general vicinity of Potsdammer Platz. I ate dinner this evening next to the sculpture, at a restaurant which is located somewhere between heaven and hell.

They do it properly here in Berlin. Here are some of the notable differences with Surrey and London:

1. The lane doesn’t end or suspend when an intersection or bus stop is reached. The cyclist can continue safely at these features along a clearly defined route.
2. The available space on the road and pavement is allocated fairly to car, cyclist and pedestrian. Each group is catered for in the same proportion even where the road and pavement narrows, such as on a bridge.
3. At the traffic lights there are three phases and separate lights for car, bicycle and pedestrian.
4. The cycle lanes are safe and widely used.

Of course some parts of London are worse than others.

This is apparently a (deformed) pitman, which is some kind of connecting rod on a steam engine.

Someone has put it in on display in my hotel in Berlin.

Unlike most of Britain’s railway stations, Ebbsfleet International has covered seating (and waste bins). It’s ironic as they only let passengers onto the platform a few minutes before the train pulls in.

The car is taped off with police ribbon. The driver has driven up the bank next to the roundabout and into the hedge.

I am on my way to Berlin to run some workshops for a client. I may post intermittently this week. Or not.