Cycling

A new era has begun. Work offer a very generous 'ride to work' scheme. Basically, they pay for a bicycle and all the equipment you can possibly want, you pay them back. In the spirit of this magnificent scheme, I've purchased a rather lovely Pinnacle Stratos 2.0 and 3 days a week you can see me riding the 24 mile round trip to work. I'm sure you'll agree that these are exciting times. If nothing else however, cycling in this city has taught me a number of things, some of which I'd like to share with you.

1. Death
Transport for London operate a rather nifty website. Input a starting point and destination, and the TFL site will provide you with a detailed map as to the 'best' route to travel on if you're on bike. It seemed marvellous, however within a couple of weeks it was clear that there were a few problems with their suggested route.

The most obvious of these is one road, Battersea Park road. TFL recommend that cyclists take this road which runs from the bottom of Clapham Junction right the way into Vauxhall. This is about a 2-3 mile stretch, however the most obvious flaw with their otherwise sound plan is the fact that that particular stretch of road, which has shops on either side of it, is the road used by lorries. Hence the potholes. It became clear very early on that if I continued to use this road, I would die.

Mind you, this is the same website that recommends riding through the heart of Clapham Junction, a junction which is not cycle friendly at all. I took a friend of mine down the route, while we were sitting in a traffic jam he asked, quite legitimately, where all of the other cyclists were. It was a very good point. Other than those 2, TFL recommend cycling though vast expanses of council estates and, worse still, riding the wrong way up narrow one way streets.

Very kind of them really, although I should have known better. This, after all, is an organisation which deems it acceptable for leaves on train tracks to be a legitimate reason for trains to be late. There was a story last year where they blamed snow for delays in trains. When quizzed on this, the official response was that it was the wrong type of snow. Of course it was.

I'm now using a lovely route which passes through 2 large parks and runs along the river. Wearing a bright yellow jacket which hurts my eyes and a helmet which I'm sure would do absolutely nothing in any sort of proper accident.

2. Bike paths
Bike paths are to be avoided at all costs. You can see the logic and appreciate the good intentions of people who come up with these ideas. Let's keep cyclists off the road, give them a road of their own. Sadly however, the paths themselves are generally half a footpath, meaning that they're as flat as a pornstar. The other thing about footpaths is that they have things in the middle of them, such as trees and bus shelters. As a result, every cyclist in this city shares roads with the cars, while the cycle paths remain cycle free. And fair enough too, pedestrians will kill you before lorries will I reckon.

3. Weather
I don't want to go on about the weather here, mostly because I don't think it's as bad as people make it out to be. Yes, it is cold and dark for 4-5 months of the year, but it doesn't rain that much, and you just learn to deal with it. Ie, spend most of your time indoors, which is what people do in extreme heat.

Having said that, tonight I cycled home in persistent rain. Ordinarily this wouldn't be too bad, however halfway home is the worst time to find out that your waterproof trousers are not, in fact, waterproof.

4. Annoying
This is a bit misleading. I didn't know what to label it. There are two free newspapers available of an afternoon - the London Paper or the London Lite. (aka London Shite) Both are absolute rubbish. By way of example, the morning version featured, on page 3 mind you, a story about a bloke who was convinced that an iguana was stuck up his tree. He called the fire brigade, they came out and discovered that it was, in fact, an iguana shaped piece of wood. The headline? Wood you twig that this isn't an iguana. Quality journalism. Here is the link. Notice that it's not listed under the 'weird' tab, but that this story is important enough to be considered 'news'.

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?Wood_you_twig_that_this_isn%92t_an_iguana?&in_article_id=328615&in_page_id=34

Anyways, point being that being the competative bunch, vendors of both the Paper and the Shite love nothing more than to shove their paper in your face as you're walking innocently down the street. I was hoping that cycling would prevent this, it's rather annoying. No such luck. Stop at a traffic light near a tube station and they'll accost you with pages full of celebrity gossip. Like I'm going to read it whilst weaving through black cabs and double decker buses.

The good news is that I'm getting healthier. Most people who travel over here receive what's called the Heathrow injection, a curious condition that sees them leave much heavier than they arrived. I've actually lost rather a lot of weight now, and am enjoying the feeling of relative healthiness.