Dutch cyclists slipping on icy corner
These cold winters always make us Brits feel like Europe's wayward cousin, a badly organised shambles of slushy tailbacks and queues at airports whilst over the channel it's business as usual. It may feel like that, but it's not always the case. Our Dutch friends may get a much better bike infrastructure than we're ever likely to see, but come the big freeze everyone's being careful dishing out the salt, and even over in the enlightened low countries it seems to be bikes that lose out.
DutchNews.nl is reporting that with salt stocks on the verge of running out, there have been dozens of complaints from cyclists who have fallen foul of the icy conditions. In Amsterdam, they report, few cycle lanes have been gritted at all and with more snow on the way and temperatures set to plunge to the minus teens for the Christmas weekend it's getting rather sketchy out there.
How sketchy? Well, take a gander at this video from Lelystad, 40km or so East of Amsterdam. Luckily with a dedicated path there's no motor vehicles to end up under, but even so there's some pretty nasty falls. To be fair there's some pretty funny ones too, and some impressive recoveries; predictably the YouTube comments are split between schadenfreude and disbelief that someone could film for this long without getting the salt pot out of their kitchen and doing something about it...
Dave is a founding father of road.cc and responsible for kicking the server when it breaks. In a previous life he was a graphic designer but he's also a three-time Mountain Bike Bog Snorkelling world champion, and remains unbeaten through the bog. Dave rides all sorts of bikes but tends to prefer metal ones. He's getting old is why.