Hello. I’m Roger Symonds and this is my new cycling blog.
About this blog
Hello, I'm Roger Symonds and I have created this blog to highlight local and wider cycling issues. Given the incredible interest and increase in cycling we must not miss this opportunity to provide the the infrastructure that gets even more people out on bikes in a safer environment.
Roger, keep up the good work. I am a supporter of dual use paths if used sensibly and the Paragon would appear to be wide enough to cope………
Hello Bill
Thank you for the comment. There is some disagreement between cyclists on shared paths and segregated paths. My view is that both are appropriate and in fact both are used in the best examples of countries that have got their acts together in cycling provision. The key lies in peoples’ tolerance and awareness of other road users. Have you been through the Two Tunnels yet?
Roger
A great idea Roger! I’m really looking forward to reading your posts and contributing to the debate.
A Bathonian who’s been riding a bike all his life I know we agree on so many fronts.
Bath’s Hills will no doubt be a subject for a future post, it’s true that the hills and the compact nature of the City and its streets present challenges, but the City also presents so many opportunities (which I’m sure will also be covered in future posts!):
Two Universities;
So many forward thinking employers (Buro Happold, Wessex Water, the RUH(?)); We are lucky to have Future and Road.cc,
Two fantastic local cycling Clubs, a CTC group and lots of others who ride socially;
A new Cycling Circuit;
The astonishing Two Tunnels;
And of course the local Cycling Campaign Group (CycleBath) worked with their counterparts CycleBag to create one of the first shared use paths on an old railway line: The Bristol Bath Railway Path, that led to the creation of Sustrans and the Millenium Cycle Network.
Bath has so much to offer cycling. Cycling has so much to offer Bath.
Thanks Andy, you have given a good summary here of local cycling. Three of the early campaigners in the city that I know of are Terry Coulson, Barry Maunder and Andrew Nicholson. They were lone voices when I first got on the Council in 1991 and sadly Terry and Barry are no longer with us. I intend to pay for one of the interpretation boards on the Two tunnels route with my councillor allowance money (most of the tunnel is under Combe Down) and dedicate the board to the memory of their efforts during the 1990s.
You’ve given me some ideas for posts and I would be happy to publish any updates from yourself. My knowledge of local competitive cycling, for instance is pretty thin.
Thanks Roger,
Yes, the 80s and 90s.. Very few of us riding then. From 90 to 93 I worked in London and used to commute from Wimbledon into Earls Court. I got to know all of the dozen or so cyclists I’d pass each day, they were so few of us.
I was riding in London earlier this year and almost broke into spontaneous laughter at the ‘peloton’ that gathered at every red light (and, no, I saw only a tiny proportion jumping them!).
Terry, Barry and Andrew really were lone voices. (The latter of course we have to thank for the ‘Two Tunnels’ – now that really was an idea no-one thought would ever happen!). It’s another good idea of yours to mention them on the boards and record their efforts.
Andy was stationed at the entrance to Devonshire Tunnel on opening day counting people through (more than 8,000 in the end). He didn’t stop smiling all day and was justifiably proud.
Barry bless him was a bit of a ‘Two Tunnels’ sceptic at the start, he worried about the cost and said he’d rather see the money spent on the streets first, but I know he would have been won over once he’d had the same pleasure of riding the Two Tunnels that we all have. Both he and Terry are sorely missed and often remembered.
And, yes, more than happy to let you have some pieces on the local Club scene. It’s the last of what’s been a really successful series of Tuesday night races up at Odd Down tonight. I’ll write something over the next week about how much it’s been used already and what a success it’s proving to be.. Dare we stray into the subject then of whether it should be open to all to use whenever they like though?!
I ride in London about once a month and have been doing for some years. I use my Brompton to ride from Paddington to Smith Square in Westminster, mainly through the parks. Recently at Hyde Park Corner all the barriers that used to corral people on bikes and on foot together have been removed and now there is plenty of room for “the Peloton” and pedestrians. No dodging lights there – it would be like leaping into a river in flood!