Forum Replies Created
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It sounds to me like an
It sounds to me like an overly aggressive move to reduce the space for an oncoming car even if it is well intentioned. If I was riding and I saw an oncoming car doing that, I wouldn’t be happy and would feel more threatened by the lack of space ahead of me. It’s tricky to figure out whether the actual danger had been increased or decreased, but my gut feeling out on a road would be that more space ahead of me is better than reduced space.
As a general rule, I’d be happiest if motorists just focussed on their own driving – be aware of what other traffic is doing and try to anticipate possible hazards (and avoid them). There’s too much disagreement about what is the best way to drive/cycle so I think it’s best to avoid potential conflict unless it’s a blatantly dangerous situation.
When there are vehicles vying for road positions, I’d consider the drivers that cede position to be the more competent. Anticipating where other vehicles are wanting to go and slowing/positioning yourself to allow them to do that is a better attitude for sharing the road (and usually doesn’t significantly change journey time). It’s the more aggressive attitude that tends to cause problems.
The romance of a 4ft 11 Eileen Sheridan battling wind and rain to do an 870 mile LEJOG in 59 hours and 7 minutes on a 4 speed and indeed her 250.5 mile ’12’/446.5 ‘ 24′ in 1954, nor the Beryl Burton ’12’ can ever really be replicated.Jasmin Muellur was inspired by Sheridan after going to listen to her at a meeting in Isleworth before her record attempt. there’s a nice page on Sheridan here https://www.cyclinguk.org/article/cycling-guide/eileen-sheridan
Before Sheridan there was the great Marguerite Wilson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDXgv3pqPcw and on rollers https://www.britishpathe.com/video/roller-racing who like Sheridan held all 21 of the RRA records, and a contemporary of wilson’s, Billie Fleming, who held the female year record, achieved in a snow riddled 1938 but still managed 29,603.7 miles, that’s 80 fricking year ago!
Here are some other amazing ladies of two (and occasionally three wheels) https://www.evanscycles.com/coffeestop/news/eight-women-cyclists-we-should-all-know-more-about
Contrast that to someone plodding a flat, wind-breaked loop with a motorhome and stuffing gels whilst using aero bike and kit or being driven upwind every day to knock out another 220 miles on a 3ft per mile road, meh, there’s no excitement or romance in that!
I’ll take the old days every time, technically modern stuff is amazing and it can and does help to get people riding but there’s also a lot of it that people think, no thanks simply because of what ‘sports’ cycling comes across as.
Ladies cycling would be far more popular if we had the likes of the ladies above inspiring them rather than next to nothing from the plastic hat brigade who do squat for everyday cycling.
Thanks for the informative links – I love reading about dedicated people excelling at what they love doing (and women’s cycling could always do with more exposure).
Beryl, I presume.
Beryl, I presume.
Women’s cycling has gone backwards in the last fifty years.Do you mean racing or does that include all types of cycling?
Did you know that commenting
Did you know that commenting on your own forum post makes it much more visible to other people?
Sheep. OBVIOUSLY!A horse in sheep’s clothing?
I guess horses used to design a lot of cycling kit
So who designs the horse onesies?
I’m surprised that it’s taken
I’m surprised that it’s taken this long to figure it out, but I suppose not many people are that interested in seeing things from the horses point of view. Maybe that is why horses always look so sad.In other animal news, I think my wife just got kicked off a plane (she’d’ve been better off with a miniature horse): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/10/us-woman-flight-plane-emotional-support-squirrel
I had no issue with carbon
I had no issue with carbon clinchers through last winter, but then I’ve got disc brakes.
Unless you’re cycling much
Unless you’re cycling much slower than usual, facemasks will just feel far too hot and restrictive. They might be of some use in the winter, but my experience is that you’ll wear it a couple of times and then realise that it’s too uncomfortable.
Always the BBC and their use of words to cause as much shit towards cyclists as possible! when they’re on a bike they are definitely cyclists and when it’s anything else it isn’t a ‘motorist’ or ‘pedestrian’.A person using a bicycle is not a cyclist if your intent is to simply kill someone, just as a terrorist in a van going to kill someone is a terrorist not a motorist!
Can’t they be both?
I reckon they (the press) are more justified in this case as they haven’t got much information on the perp other than the fact that he was cycling.
Having been through the Catholic school system, it just doesn’t work like that (at least not in my experience) It was actually a lot closer to compulsory Religious Education, with other religions only held up as ‘context’ to show how wrong they are. We had two (others had more) Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child videos sprung on us – just horrible anti-abortion propaganda. And then there’re all the clubs set up around confirmation time to shepherd you into The Club. I count in the Pope’s gang, even though I knew it was shit by the time I was 14.If an organisation has your kids’ ears for longer than you do, and wants to drip feed a message that you fundamentally don’t agree with, do you really want to spend the energy balancing it out and possibly creating conflict in your kids, as opposed to just send them to a school that doesn’t peddle that bullshit? I’ve actually no problem with my kids signing up to a religion, to a point, but I doubt they’re going to get a balanced view of any of them via a school of any religious flavour.
Yeah, it could be a difficult choice depending on just how much better the education is versus the amount of indoctrination.
I’d prefer schools to be focussed on the education aspect and not have any religious involvement (except for teaching about religions in religious studies etc), but history has left us with a bunch of good schools that happen to have been funded and run by different religions. I’d expect there to be a big variation in just how religion focussed they are but I expect it also depends on which religion they follow.
You could send them to the church school and just opt them out of collective worship, but I guess you wouldn’t be able to get on your high horse about it then.Now kids routinely go to schools that require long journeys, often passing by schools much closer to home. “Ooh, we’re over the moon, we managed to get our Tarquill into St Beckhams Academy – it’s a two hour drive, but the Ofsted was outstanding”Don’t be too harsh on parents – in some areas, schools are so oversubscribed that “choice” simply doesn’t exist – you go where you get sent, even if it’s an hour’s bus ride away. We’re planning to move out of London when ours hit school age, for this very reason.
Schools being secular would help, too. We could practically throw our kids into a decent school from our garden… Problem is, they’d get a daily bible bashing, so we go past that to the nearest non-sky fairy one a mile away.
Don’t religious schools get to discriminate in favour of pupils of the right religious background, though? (And with teaching staff as well, come to that).
If you want to opt out of worship on the grounds of not having that religion, they could choose to put you to the back of the queue for admission.
Seems fair to complain about that. It seems blatantly wrong, to me.
Nicked from a NSS website:
We are non religious parents of a 3 year old child that will be attending primary school from September 2010. There are only four schools in the immediate catchment area and of these, three are faith schools who take pupils based on their religious beliefs or church membership. As this is our first child, we were unaware that we would be excluded from certain schools based on religion but feel strongly that religion should be kept separate from education.
All three of the faith schools have ‘outstanding’ Ofsted reports and because of this are always oversubscribed whilst the non-faith school offers a lower standard of education. We are only 100m from the nearest school, which happens to be a faith school, and as such we assumed that we would have a good chance of our daughter attending. However, this seems unlikely purely
because of our religious beliefsThat doesn’t sound particularly fair, but personally I don’t see it as too much of an issue and I’m a confirmed atheist.
For the sake of your kids’ education, you could just lie about being a lapsed member of the relevant faith (assuming they don’t require genital mutilation to be a member of that faith) and simply educate your kids about the nature of faith. The kids could then decide for themselves if they want to sit through the religious stuff or to make a stand against it.
I think that cycling is almost a victim of a rather unpleasant and ingrained social attitude towards minority groups who are visible, often appear to be breaking rules that others are forced to comply with, are clearly identifiable (on a bicycle) and are perceived not to be contributing to the cost of infrastructure that they use. There is also a level of resentment of the apparent freedoms enjoyed by those on bicycles, e.g no number plates, ability to go exploring off road, filtering past traffic queues and generally being fitter and having a better time than those stuck in cars.Sticking a helmet on, wearing hi viz cycle specific clothing and becoming an object other than human is actually one of the most compelling arguments to me on the side of those who reject such things, especially when cycling in an urban environment with lower speeds, higher vehicle densities and decent lighting infrastructure.
Attitudes in general will only change if more people can be encouraged to cycle for short local journeys. I.e normalise the use of bicycles as safe, practical, convenient, everyday transport for normal people wearing normal clothing for purposes other than just going out for a cycle ride. The benefits to self and wider society are clear to all but the most ardent critics. Unfortunately those with the biggest bees in their bonnet about such things tend to make sure they get the most press coverage.
Unfortunately, it seems that the government has an entrenched anti-cycling mindset and it’s going to require a top-down effort to change the public perception of cycling.
If we look at countries that currently have a positive mindset towards cycling, it’s been built on decades of investment into cycling infrastructure. Although Labour and Conservatives would appear to support cycling from their manifestos, they are not prepared to invest the money that would be required.
That’s very interesting –
That’s very interesting – thanks for that link.
I was recently bemoaning how the BBC has an anti-cycling agenda, but didn’t have any stats on their articles, so it’d be nice if there was a similar analysis.