Live blog: Jeremy Vine films “The most life threatening moment I’ve ever had on my bike,” 2,000 years for Santa to do his rounds by bike, pro rider’s top save, reaction to Thomas SPOTY win + more

@steve1968smith I appreciate you being the reasonable cyclist here but it was only a matter of time before the locals started moaning about cyclists actually using the new path instead of not using it. As with most of these stories there is more background to the rage bait headline on here. The latest issue came about when the car boot organiser put a post on Facebook about how 'speeding' cyclists should be giving way. It was only when he was pulled up on this, and consulted the latest version of the Highway Code, that he edited the post to then start bleating about 'shared responsibility' instead. Councillors got involved and that led to the retrospective planning application. Presumably the marshals are sufficiently trained/qualified to direct traffic on the highway? The 14 day limit will likely have no effect either - apparently a previous organiser got round it by dividing the field into four parts and using a different bit each time! You should know as well as anyone that GCC Highways are experts in designing conflict points into their active travel infrastructure.

@ mdavidford - can't reply to the relevant post because threading issues but, to be fair, most dictionaries associate 'barrelling' (in this context) with speed and lack of control - neither of which describe this cyclist.

Merlin sell these tyre for £50 each too

But that requires expertise in economics and financial history, and these guys are largely cycling enthusiasts.

@mctrials23 I totally agree with you, the RRPs are becoming meaningless are can therefore be seen a marketing trick. As I said, road.cc should do some real journalism and analyse the reasons behind these inflated prices and look at historical trends and how we got here.

I love how many videos on road.cc prompt detailed local knowledge from readers! I don't have any in this case, but the way we describe locations is context specific - if I was describing it for a police report, I'd describe it the way you have, but for the purposes of describing it to a cycling website, referring to e.g. the nearest large residential area (Blanchardstown seems to be c.7km away?) doesn't seem unreasonable.

@mdavidford To be further fair to the blogger, Blanch is a sprawling mess of bland suburban hell that seems to keep expanding and consuming every townland around it. So... this will be close to Blanch one day, soon enough, if not today.

@Zermattjohn That's quite possible - the turn there left on to Tinker's hill is very sharp and tight. Cars coming from the direction of the cyclist have to swing out to make that turn, and there are regularly conflicts between cars turning up Tinker's hill and cars coming down. Which is almost surely why there was a garda already standing there.

@the little onion I think that too many casual cyclists still identify far more with cars or at least the politics of anti cycling and their default point of view is "I hate cyclists but I'm one of the good ones that bows to the alter of the car". The same ones that somehow have apparently been cycling for 20 years and never had a bad overtake or an issue with a car because they are such a great cyclist. I would just love to go out with these people on their rides.

Gove absolutely might have been complete unrepentant even if the cyclist was perfectly polite. But that wouldn't have given him any room to accuse the cyclist of being "unmannerly", which is the only thing Gove could realistically have accused him of doing wrong here.