Map of Britain’s velodromes – where and who trained there?

dottigirl wrote:

Am I right that 17 in Carmarthen isn't currently functional?

The localcouncil have been taling about plans to resurface it, put  anew fence up and bring it back into use- and of course it's still a rugby pitch which may make warming up on the infield a challenge....

FatBoyW wrote:

I wonder what the populaation density and travel time to a decent velo looks like when overlayed on it? Seems to be a dearth of facilities in areas Birmingham  south and east and from there across England where I think there are reasonable populations a long way from anything.

 

equally I am not sure the north east has got too much.

i realise there are other blank areas such as mid and north wales but I think there is a small population in them, whereas the blanks I am describing are not. 

Dont get me started if you try and consider what areas are outside of an hours travel time to a covered velodrome!  That would be most of the south east, south west, West Midlands, east England, north east. 

I would love to see a major programme to build velodromes in say reading, Cambridge, at the NEC Birmingham somewhere in the southwest, Newcastle and so on

I've ben quietly lobbying politicians up here in the North East to build a covered velodrome but Newcastle is that last place I'd put it. The idea in the south appears to be that there's this huge place called Newcastle and not a lot else, when in fact Newcastle isn't that large, or populous. The idea that there'ssomething called the Newcastle city region is an invention of policy wonks at second rate think tanks looking for a hand out fromthe city council's PR budget.

You could have better accessibility by putting  a covered velodrome in somewhere like Hexham, Cramlington or Blyth, sparing users the horrors of having to travel into Newcastle. If you were really ambitious you'd add a couple of smaller satellite outdoor velodromes so that you could have greater accessibility - it might seem odd to people from outside the region, but getting from, say, Haltwhistle or Berwick to Newcastle involves hugely unsafe roads with desperately bad bus services, or trains that are infrequent and expensive....

The other north east political problem is that if you try to put something in Newcastle Sunderland will object, and vice versa.