RosieBell

Pedal on Parliament - Sunday 19th May 2013 3pm

I took part in the Pedal on Parliament last year. It was a heartening sight, with thousands of cyclist meeting in the Meadows and then cycling down the Royal Mile to a rally in front of Holyrood Parliament.  Just for once, we owned Edinburgh's narrow, dangerous streets.

Pedal on Parliament is happening again, on Sunday 19th May.  Assemble at the Meadows to take part in the ride, which kicks off at 3pm.

What we want

1. Proper funding for cycling.
2. Design cycling into Scotland’s roads.
3. Slower speeds where people live, work and play
4. Integrate cycling into local transport strategies
5. Improved road traffic law and enforcement
6. Reduce the risk of HGVs to cyclists and pedestrians
7. A strategic and joined-up programme of road user training
8. Improved statistics supporting decision-making and policy

Manifesto

Making Scotland a cycle-friendly nation

The great city is not the one that has highways, but one where a child on a tricycle or bicycle can go safely everywhere. – Enrique Peñalosa

Cycling should be the obvious solution to many of Scotland’s ills. It is cheap, healthy, democratic and convivial, benefits local economies and makes the streets a safer place for all. Cyclist benefit themselves – physiologically their bodies are, on average, many years ‘younger’ than non-cyclists’, and they suffer less from the ‘western’ diseases that beset Scotland so – and  they benefit others, cutting congestion and improving air quality. And yet bikes barely seem to be taken seriously as a mode of transport while the majority of Scots don’t cycle, simply because they feel it is too risky. Although statistically the benefits of cycling vastly outweigh the risks, poor design and maintenance of roads and cycle routes, dangerous driving, and lack of enforcement mean those risks remain unacceptably high. Making Scotland safe for cycling and walking, and – more importantly – making it feel safe, could transform our cities and villages and the lives of the people who live in them.

The Scottish government has already made a start. It led the world in signing up to a low-carbon future, part of which will include much higher levels of cycling. The Cycling Action Plan for Scotland (CAPS) set the target of having 10% of all journeys in Scotland made by bike by 2020. Whilst many of the individual points in CAPS are welcome, CAPS does not add up to a coherent, researched and costed path to reach the 2020 target – and nor has it received anything like the necessary funding.  Furthermore, even the existing funding levels are under threat. The history of UK cycling policy is full of strategies which have been quietly shelved when it becomes clear that their targets are not going to be met. We hope the Scottish government will not join Westminster in this hall of shame.

We call on all Scotland’s politicians, of all parties, to sign up to the following eight point manifesto in order to make cycling a realistic choice for everyone, from eight to eighty – and show the rest of the UK that cycling doesn’t just belong on continental Europe, but in the country where it all began:

1. Proper funding for cycling, with a high and rising share of the transport budget committed to cycling nationally, and locally.

If cycling is to reach 10% of all trips then there needs be serious investment. We ask the Scottish government to to commit a minimum of 5% of its transport budget – revenue and capital – to cycling within an overall commitment of 10% of the transport budget to active travel. Further, local authorities should also commit a share of their transport revenue and capital budgets to cycling at least in proportion with the percentage of people cycling to work or school in their area until in total, spending on cycling from all sources reaches a target of £25 per head per year.

To put this into perspective, 5% of the £2bn annual Scottish transport budget equates roughly to £100m, or £20 per head, which is comparable to the £1.32bn over 11 years that the Low Carbon Scotland report proposed spending on active travel (including walking). At the moment in Scotland actual spending is nearer £2-£3 per head. In contrast, in 2010, the Netherlands spent €30 per head (around £25) on installing and upgrading its cycling infrastructure which is already streets ahead of anything found here. Cycling England’s 2005-2011 Cycling City and Towns project invested around £10 per head and achieved significant growth in everyday cycle use, saving around £2.5 for every £1 spent, principally in reduced congestion. Other studies have shown that money invested on cycling and walking networks can pay back up to nineteen times the amount spent, a better rate of return than any other transport investment. If cycling levels rise to 13%, the benefit to Scotland would be between £1-2bn.

2. Design cycling into all of Scotland’s roads and junctions, with improved and strengthened national design guidelines in line with best practice internationally.

Improved provision for cycling must include a commitment to transforming Scotland’s roads and junctions. The existing design guidelines, Cycling by Design, should be revised in line with best practice internationally – particularly drawing on the experience of the Netherlands where 25% of trips are by bike. These standards should be incorporated into the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges and local authority road design guidance and should form minimum national standards for any new road or any road being substantially maintained or upgraded, whether local or trunk road. In addition, the Scottish Government should investigate whether it is possible for these standards to be made binding on roads authorities. Each local authority should commit to creating a dense network of direct and dedicated cycling routes with separation from traffic where needed, particularly on busy roads. Cycling infrastructure should be suitable for cyclists of all kinds, whether fast commuters or children on their way to school. Importantly, it should not bring cyclists into conflict with either pedestrians or heavy traffic. Such designs don’t just benefit cyclists, they benefit everyone who uses the roads.

3. Safer speeds where people live, work and play.
There are significant road safety benefits to a 20 mph speed limit. In residential areas, the presumption should be that roads authorities should apply 20mph speed limits as the norm in these areas. Lower speed limits should also be considered for unclassified rural roads where all road traffic faces a completely unacceptable risk of accident.

4. Build increased cycling into local transport strategies.
Local councils are best placed to know how cycling and active travel can be improved in its own area. Each local authority should be required produce its own local cycling action plan with clear targets to increase cycling levels in line with the national target of 10%, using the existing cycling levels as a guideline. Funding to support this should be ring-fenced and councils required to report against their progress every year. As well as working towards a coherent joined up network (see point 2), plans should include integration with public transport, including buses and trains, making cycling a seamless and practical part of even longer journeys. Local authorities should take cyclists into account when drawing up their maintenance plans, with a duty to give equal consideration to off-road tracks and infrastructure when planning gritting, road cleaning and repairs. Resurfacing roads and fixing potholes should take cyclists’ needs into consideration as well as motorists.

5. Improved road traffic law and enforcement.
While acknowledging that road traffic law is effectively reserved to the UK Government, traffic law must do more to protect the most vulnerable road users such as cyclists, pedestrians, children and older people. The CAPS already includes a commitment to investigate the feasibility of introducing ‘strict liability’ – we would reiterate that this must not be sidelined. Restrictions on parking in bike lanes and on pavements should be strictly enforced and, given a lack of police action on these issues, those local authorities that have not requested decriminalisation of parking enforcement should be encouraged to do so. Where 20mph zones have been brought in they should be properly policed and sentencing must be appropriate when drivers cause harm.

6. A comprehensive package to eliminate the risk of HGVs to cyclists and pedestrians.
This is a pressing problem. Heavy lorries are associated with a disproportionately high risk of death or very serious injury to cyclists and pedestrians. For example, despite being just 6% of road traffic, lorries were involved in around 20% of all cyclists’ fatalities in London. CAPS already has targets for reducing cycling casualties but the onus must not just be on the cyclists to keep themselves safe. The Scottish government should engage with the UK Department of Transport with a view to developing a comprehensive package of measures to reduce the risk to cyclists and pedestrians, based on up to date evidence of what works. These might include better training, mirrors, sensors and warnings, or limitations on movements of large freight vehicles during the morning and evening peaks. Equally they might include complete redesign of junctions to remove conflict between bikes and lorries.

7. A strategic and properly funded programme of road user training.
Much is made of developing training for cyclists in the CAPS yet Bikeability is not fully funded, and Cycling Scotland is dependent on volunteers to carry out vital training in schools. But training should not be confined to children – nor even just to cyclists. All Scottish residents should have access to affordable cycle training, whether children, adult returning cyclists, and those in later life. Further, HGV drivers, bus drivers and other professional drivers should be required to take an on-bike qualification (or a theoretical module if physically unable to cycle) as part of their licensing requirement and be made aware of the needs of both pedestrians and cyclists, and the Scottish government should press the UK government to introduce these measures .

8. Solid research and statistics on cycling.
We can only improve decision-making and policy development with solid research. The information that records how many people are cycling is very poor at the national level and inconsistent at the local level. This makes it difficult to monitor what is happening and which interventions have greatest impact. At a minimum counts should be carried out twice a year using standardised protocols for data collection and handling, taking into account cyclists using off-road facilities as well as those on the public highway. Where possible electronic counters with public displays should be used, as in Copenhagen and other cities, which count the number of cyclists passing through certain areas as these can provide both feedback and encouragement. These would become a talking point and a public reminder to cyclists that they are part of a growing band taking control of their health – and their freedom.

There is all to play for and so little to lose. Proper investment in cycling is not a zero-sum game. It will bring so much more than the expenditure put in, benefits which will gradually be reflected in a changing, healthier population. We all know our natural resources are not infinite and we would irresponsible not to think of ways of making them last, but cycling is hardly a hair-shirt option. Rather it is a joyous way to get about – but one that has become confined to a hardy few because of the conditions on our roads. From Kirkpatrick MacMillan onwards, Scotland has a long history of popular cycling which has been all but forgotten. We believe these times can come again and Scotland can once more be a beacon for the world.

Full article with footnotes here.

Spokes Public Meeting

Spokes Public Meeting: Future of Local Transport

Cycling as a form of transport needs to be seen in the wider context of local transport as a whole, and at our meeting on Monday 8 April Professor Iain Docherty will set the context by describing current trends and policies in local transport as a whole.   Jim Eadie MSP will outline cycling developments at Scottish level, followed by Cllr Jim Orr describing the Edinburgh situation.   There will then be a panel discussion, with questions from you the audience, chaired by Paul Tetlaw.

Date: Monday 8 April
Venue:  Augustine United Church, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh
Time:  7.30 – open 6.45 for coffee, stall, exhibition and chat

Iain Docherty is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Glasgow, with interests including sustainability and transport.

Jim Eadie MSP  is Co-Convener of the Scottish Parliament Cross-Party cycling group, and Parliamentary Officer to the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure, Nicola Sturgeon MSP.

Cllr Jim Orr is Edinburgh City Council’s Transport Vice-Convener, has responsibility for cycling, and is a Spokes member.

Paul Tetlaw is a long-standing Spokes member, also board member and former chair of Transform Scotland.

Easter Monday

On Easter Monday I was cycling through the Dalmeny Estate.  There were still snowdrops out, and daffodils have not really got started. The Pentlands and Ochils were very white.  The paths had been cleared of snow, which was piled in heaps here and there on the verges.  A flock of heavily pregnant ewes. A couple of the ewes had given birth and very young lambs were feeding.  One ewe was licking a pile of snow - perhaps it had been salted.  Several cock pheasants were wandering about and in one field I saw a dozen curlews among the first, faint green - barley, I think. So the late spring has arrived.

Snowdrops in Dalmeny Estate

The Pentlands from Kirkliston

My family and other cyclists

I wouldn't have thought of us as a cycling family.  I'm the only one who commutes by cycle.  I'm what New Zealanders call  'a cycling advocate" and it's been hinted to me that I am an obsessive bore on the subject. However, various members of my family cycle in their different ways.

We - my siblings and I - cycled when we were children.  We lived near the end of what we called a "metal"(i.e. dirt) road and to get to school we had to cycle about a mile and a half to the bus-stop. We would leave our bicycles leaning against a fence unlocked, as you did those days, and play games - walking along the parapet of the bridge over the big drain was one - until the crowded, superannuated bus picked us up to go about four miles to our country school.  

 

Our house and farm

My first year at primary school I was carried on the back of my sister Claudia's bicycle. Then the next year she went to the High School in town, and caught an earlier bus. The middle sister, L. said she wasn't going to carry a lump like me, so at the age of six I was taught to ride a bicycle, Dad holding the carrier and jogging behind me on our lawn for a week while I learned to balance. The children on our road cycled on a surface which would be an easy mountain bike trail these days, except when the Council came with its loads of crushed rock and graders, when it became hard work for our basic bikes.  "The grader's been here," we would howl as we tried to make our way through what seemed like small yellow boulders for the first few days, then the cars and tractors gradually formed two strips, the rocks heaped in the middle and down the sides and we had smooth dirt paths again. 

A notable time on this route was when a dead cow lay waiting on the verge for what we called the dead cow lorry. Oh, the stench of that cow - we'd hold our breaths as we went by  - and if we met the lorry, My God! Sometimes the dredger came to clear the big drain that  made the swampy land farmable. The verges were piled with mud, and weed and on the road would be eels,  some as big as your arm, struggling through the dust  back towards the water.  I was terrified of them and sickened by them, L. was fearless and would make to chase me with one.  She rescued a small black one once and kept it in a bucket of water, but it didn't survive, like the baby rabbits, pukeko chicks and other "found" small creatures.  Then cars would run over the eels or they would just die and you would dodge and avert your eyes from their smashed and maggoty bodies.

The others left school and went out to jobs, marriages and different countries, and L. said she hadn't been on a bicycle since those early days.  Then a few years ago friends suggested she do the Otago Rail Trail in a group.  She got a cycle and a pair of cycling shorts and enjoyed the trip hugely.  She has done other trails and she lives in the Hutt Valley in Wellington where there are 27 km of trails by the Hutt River where she exercises regularly and looks very fit on it. 

 

Bridge on the Rimutaka trail

She and I did a piece of the Rimutaka Trail.  This is an old railway track, so with easy gradients and tunnels.  It goes through regenerating bush and with stops at the information boards we headed uphill.  It took us about an hour and a half to get to Summit, 10km away.  There are a few rusty bits of engine and other signs of its train origins as well as a shelter and the usual Department of Conservation toilets (DoC really is great, setting up long drop toilets and information on trails all over the country). 

The Summit, Rimutaka trail

On Wellington Province Day, a public holiday, under a perfect blue sky it was a very popular route, and family groups were out, which are something of a hazard, as small children waivered from one side of a trail to another. As we sat at Summit eating a snack a gang of guys cycled past, including one on a unicycle. 

You could continue down to Featherstone in the Wairarapa and catch a train back to Wellington, as you would in the manner of my UK cycling.  We, however, cycled back the way we came, getting to the car park at about 12:30 and by then it was hitting 30 degree afternoon heat, which I would certainly have found hard to cope with.

Cycling in a New Zealand summer

Other than the river path in the Hutt Valley I didn't do any more cycling in Wellington. However I saw that cycling had picked up since my day.  I was four years in Wellington at Victoria University and I would never have dreamed of cycling.  Wellington is a walkable city, its public transport is quite good, and I would have dismissed the idea - the hills are precipice steep and it's famous for its southerly gales.

A view of Wellington from a friend's house in Kelburn

I love Wellington which reminds me of Edinburgh in being beautiful, hilly and windy, so not the most obvious city for cycling.  However the cycleways were marked for urban routes and I saw people on mountain bikes on squally days- and yes, you would need something with very low gears with hills like these.  L., whose office is out in Pauatahanui over a steep hill (Wellington is a system of steep hills and valleys) said that some of her colleagues commute by cycle. Evidently it's catching on. 

Postie in Devonport. Posties have always gone by bike.

I eventually got to Auckland and caught a ferry to my brother's place in Devonport on the North Shore.  A few commuters had their cycles on the ferry and there was a cycleway marked from the ferry stop to Takapuna. Auckland, with its warmer climate and lower hills you would think was an ideal city for cycling. I stayed at my sister's in Mount Eden, near a cycleway through the suburban streets.  I did a little of that and also an off road path through Walmsley Park. It was supposed to be a cycle path but it was not sign-posted, and when I got to the end of it, I had no idea where to go, so it receives low marks.  I didn't really sample enough of Auckland to give it a fair assessment but I did seem to end up on  busy roads a lot of the time, which were not well signed.  I would say that a start had been made for making the city more cycle-friendly, but my verdict now would be "fragmented".

Cycleway signs, Mount Eden, Auckland

I also went with my brother-in-law for a cycle along the waterfront.  This is marked as a cycle way, and  pavement has been divided by a white line, with the half near the kerb being painted with outlines of cyclists.  Cycling along Auckland's waterfront is very agreeable in many ways, as you are by the grand Waitemata Harbour among the Aucklanders on a Saturday morning jogging, boating, swimming, taking the kids out in buggies and on scooters and small bikes. A bloke on a wheelchair went by at high speed, doing training for what was probably the paraOlympics.  But it is cycling with all your attention on hazards. I was reminded of the Union Canal at its city end in Edinburgh.  It's picturesque but the towpath is too narrow and it's too busy with pedestrian traffic to be able to get up speed, and I usually miss out that bit and go along the streets.  Auckland's waterfront has all the hazards of a canal towpath in the city, with the addition of cars parked along the kerb and car doors opening out on you while people extract themselves and their children.  One door was open while three teenage girls sat in the car or stood on the pavement and hung out.

"I would have sworn at them but I'm a foreigner," I said. later to my brother-in-law later, who was also cycling the path.

"I swore at them," he said.


Reminder to car drivers on Waiheke Island

We were in a cafe at the end of the waterfront run comparing notes, and agreeing that it was more of an obstacle course than a cycle route. I cycled back along it, and another lot had their van doors open and were cleaning out their van, with a vacuum cleaner on the pavement.  The bloke training on the wheelchair went past with strong, fast moving arms and I mentally cheered him. I did enjoy my urban cycle, which was really a tourist's potter but this cycleway is not a serious cycle route for commuting.

Cyclists wanting to get somewhere at speed use the road instead and Auckland drivers think that they are being cheeky sods for cycling there because look, don't they have their own cycleway now?  rather in the spirit of white South Africans pointing to bantustans.  Look!  You've got your own state.  Why do you want a share of ours?

After this I noticed other pavements that were halved as cycle routes, and on the cyclist side the path would have a pole for a traffic light or something else stuck in the middle of it, and wondered what car drivers would think of a road where suddenly a concrete bollard appeared in their way.

My nephew J. showed me his Norco mountain bike. J. is big, blonde and macho and used to play rugby.  Now he has taken up competitive mountain biking and his bike has a special seat where you press a button to change its height. He was due to do some time trials in Rotorua and had been getting fit cycling up Auckland's volcanoes.  I had seen groups of mountain bikers on Mount Eden doing this on a Sunday morning.  He said though that Auckland drivers are awful - selfish and inconsiderate, which I well believed.  (I've heard stories of New Zealander drivers' resentment of cyclists).

As we walked back to the car from J's house, his children followed us, the little girl in a pedal car and the sturdy blonde boy toddler pistoning energetically on his tricycle as he headed along the pavement, obviously dying to be moving fast over uninterrupted tarmac. When he's old enough to cycle alone, perhaps Auckland will have safe spaces for him to do so.

My brother-in-law rides a recumbent tricycle.  He had a stroke seven years back, which has left him unable to drive and he can't walk far, but he can use a recumbent tricycle which has been adapted for his disability.  He now does regular exercise rides, and goes off to cafes so as well as gaining independent mobility, he has made some new friends. He has found the exercise, upping his oxygen levels, has been good for his mental health as well, with his speech improving (it sounds totally normal to me).  He and my sister are now evangelicals for the disabled being self-propelled, if possible.

 
My brother-in-law John on his recumbent tricycle

He also wears very snazzy colours on his bike and has become a feature of the neighbour hood.  People recognise him and his bike, and call out greetings.

The only other cycling I did was at Ruakaka in Northland, where the family has a beach house.  Ruakaka is a couple of hours north of Auckland, a town that was built for the workers at the oil refinery at Marsden Point. It is very flat, and also has 23km of perfect white sand beach.  However far the tide is out, you can swim in the surf, and it is safe.  Small children can play in the waves.  I went for a ride at low tide along the hard sand, with the waves of the Pacific curling over the bike tyres.  This being New Zealand, a beach like this has a handful of people on it.  My sister says the biggest number they have seen is seventeen.

On Ruakaka Beach

I only sampled cycling in New Zealand and now when I see new routes being advertised, would like to go back and do some of them. Any organisation who would give me a year's grant to do a survey of New Zealand's cycling infrastructure is welcome to apply

Biking is the new golf

The next day I set out on what should be the longest leg of my journey round the three volcanoes - 27km to Waiouru and a further 60km along the Desert Road back to Turangi.  It was another grey day, the clouds well down. I was on State Highway 49, which was reasonably quiet but there was the problem I had with New Zealand roads -the steep camber at the shoulder. Cyclists are happy to keep as far left as possible,  but on the other side of the white line I had the distinct feeling of tipping sideways on corners and I would start drifting towards the middle of the road, annoying the occasional driver behind. 

As I pedalled along, looking down to see I wasn't going too far on the wrong side of the cyclist's Pale, I noticed some white stuff on the road surface. It was ice!  It had snowed last night on the mountains, and though it wasn't cold - it was summer ffs - there was the ice.  I stopped to touch it.  Yes, ice.  There were signs warning "Slippery when frosty", but I thought they were for winter. I'd given up cycling at the beginning of December in the UK because of the icy patches on my route to work and had not really expected to see it again in a New Zealand summer.  The road was gritty and it wasn't really dangerous, just disconcerting.

I was cycling through New Zealand farmland.  From a hilltop you will get great panoramas of the land stretching ad sweeping away over hills and down valleys but close up it's barbed wire fences, grass, a few cattle here and there and shelter belts of pine trees, which I learned to dread, as they shaded the road and each time I saw them I knew there would be ice. 

I plugged on through this dull landscape for 27km until I reached Waiouru, the famously drab army town. advertising itself an oasis in the desert as it sits at the edge of my real destination, the Desert Road.  I stopped in a cafe for breakfast and watched two squaddies, male and female having a coffee together, i.e. both in camouflage and not speaking to each other, but communicating with their handheld devices. I told the waitresses that I planned to cycle along the Desert Road.  

Kids' ride in a Waiouru cafe

"I've never seen anyone do that," said one.

"I have, once," said the other.

It was a basic cafe, and the food and coffee were, as usual, delicious.  I sat and thought about it.  60km, in what looked like a strong wind that I could see bending the tussock, along a very busy State Highway One - the trucks were rumbling past -  in an area notorious for sudden changes of weather, and with no shelter at all.  It was looking like a bad idea. I went to the excellent army museum and among the musket and land wars displays rang the Tongariro River Motel and they said they would pick me up.  They thought I had been sensible, and said so on their website.

Ross, the motel owner, turned up at about 1pm and we drove along the Desert Road.  The clouds had lifted again and you could see the great volcanoes, as splendid as my memories of them.  Ross told me about his own cycling - he and a group were doing the whole of the New Zealand trail, a proposed off-road route along the whole of the country, mostly going through tracks across farms ("races" we called them in my New Zealand farming childhood).  I remembered them from our dairy farm and they were always covered with cow shit, and fairly muddy.  He said one time the cyclists all became crook with terrible gastric problems and that was from getting covered with cow shit - the walkers and horse riders among them had been fine.

So we got talking about the mountain bike trails and he said "mountain biking is the new golf."  And I heard that from other people, that golf was declining.  I thought mountain biking a great improvement on golf for all sorts of reasons, for instance that you would no longer be setting aside a tract of land for a monoculture of alien grass but just making a simple track through the bush and farmland. Also, I love biking and have never seen the point of golf.

View up river from Pillar of Hercules Bridge, Kaimanawa Forest (Ross's photo)

Ross took me for a drive through the Kaimanawa Forest, a tract of beautiful black beech forest and river gorges on the eastern side of the Desert Road, 15km south of Turangi.  There was quite a system of unsealed roads from constructing hydro-electric dams as well as some bush tracks and swing bridges, and he thought they should make a good mountain bike trail.  But the different tracks are not joined up in an official trail nor are granted the government money set aside for developing the New Zealand cycleway, and there were political issues over land ownership.  Ross, as well as being a cycling enthusiast, wanted to add a proper trail to the attractions round Turangi, since, he said, trout fishing, the main reason for going there, is declining.

Ross on swing bridge

I thoroughly appreciated being picked up and the tour of the Kaimanawa Forest.  After this I was back in Turangi far earlier than I'd expected.  In the UK if I got somewhere mid afternoon I'd go for an excursion to a church or castle or some such thing.  In New Zealand I cycled a short way to Te Kaanau.  Here I went for a stroll around the small geo-thermal area.  It was the only one I visited in the whole of my journey, and it's very modest compared to those in Rotorua but I was glad to see the mud bubbling and spitting and the water steaming among the manuka.  I then bathed  in the hot springs pool. An elderly American woman in the changing rooms saw my cycling gear and enthused about how nice their cycling guide had been to her.  She was referring to Taupo, with famous trails, and I could see why Ross wanted to offer the Turangi stall at the mountain biking market.  Planted forests where they have trails make more money from the cyclists than the timber.

Hot springs, Te Kaanu

After my soak I cycled round Te Kaanau which is where the Tongariro River pours into the southern edge of Lake Taupo.  On a wharf of silvered wood lads were fishing, another sitting on a seat reading a book, while some blokes, joking and laughing,  tied up their fishing boat and hauled in their catch.  Black swans and cygnets swam out in the water, which was as blue as could be, and dotted with little reedy islands where I assumed the swans must nest.  What a beautiful country my homeland is.  

Church, Te Kaanu

Tongariro River flows into Lake Taupo, with black swans

I had a terrific meal of fillet steak and polenta at a motel bar and then that night I went to bed at 10 and slept through to 6am. I had arrived in New Zeaalnd on Monday and it was now Saturday morning.   Jet lag was over, and I caught the bus to Wellington. 

Brakeless on the Old Coach Road

After the uphill slog of my first day cycling round the three volcanoes I had a lovely downhill run from Whakapapa Village back to State Highway 47 to continue south-west, on an easy up and down route past huge flax swamps to the  National Park settlement. There I turned south on to State Highway 4, which was a busier road, but not too bad.  Above me - well, it should have been bush clad mountain slopes and views of mountain tops but instead it was just cloud and rain.  I stopped on the bridge over the Makatote Gorge to take photographs while trucks carrying logs or sheep shook the camera and had a quick look at the Makatote Viaduct but it was too wet to hang about.

Makatote Gorge

I got to Horopito where I had the choice to carry on cycling the main roads to Ohakune, about 14 km away, or else turn on to the Old Coach Road, a mountain bike trail. Out of the thick rain I saw a family group emerging from the trail and thought, well that can't be too bad, and headed away from the tarmac into the bush.  I passed a bank of mountain cabbage trees, looking to my Northern Europeanised eyes, highly exotic, stopped by the Department of Conservation board to read the info, and then the sun came out in strength and began to dry me out. I sat in the sun and ate my sandwiches  feeling very happy, as I always do at lunchtime on any cycling day when the weather doesn't make cutting pieces of cucumber and cheese and placing them between bread impossible.

Mountain cabbage trees

Mountain cabbage trees

The Old Coach Road was opened in 1907 to carry supplies for the construction of the railway.  When the railway was complete and the state highway opened, the road fell into disuse and the bush took it over.  It was rediscovered and restored in the 2000s, first of all through local efforts and then with government funding. 

A smooth section of the Old Coach Road

The path was covered with big cobblestones from the old road. Tree roots were growing across it, and the rain had caused big stretches of mud.  However, it's only about 10km long, so perfectly doable, and I half walked, half cycled along it, reading the Department of Conservation's information boards, which told me about the vegetation as well as the story of the surveyors and navvies who made the road.   All around me was the New Zealand bush with its particular musty smell and very silent except for an occasional tui. More silent than a European forest, even more silent than my urban garden.  It was of course a summer afternoon, not dawn, but I thought there should be more bird song than this.  But it was lovely, as dense as jungle, but not as hot.  I'd stop for a drink and look across at the steep slopes of the bush, the unphotographable layer after layer of trees, each covered with epiphytes and moss, climbed over with supplejack, every one a little eco-system of its own.  Beneath them was the dense thicket of tree ferns and shrubs.  Stray off a bush path for a few yards and you can very easily get lost.

There was one bit I went through with a line of trunks very green and shadowy and - as you do these days - I thought "Lord of the Rings.  This is what Peter Jackson saw".  Near this was a huge fallen tree,  producing a little forest of moss and fern and other plants. The bush gives a sense of vigorous life growing, of every drop of soil, every surface shoting green. 

Fallen tree with epiphytes

A full surround of greenness

So I walked the difficult, twisty bits over stones and mud and cycled the easier bits until I came out to where I could see the railway viaduct and  hear a train go by.  It had started to rain again but the bush  sheltered me. The going was smoother now and I cycled along the zig-zag paths.  I tried the brakes.  They didn't work.  I tried them again.  I thought I must be imagining this.  I got to a small slope, set off, squeezed them again, then realised no, the wheel still spun, the bike kept going and I turned off the path into the bush for a soft landing.  (I had a mighty bruise on one leg after that).

Viaduct in the rain

Well, this was f- annoying.  I had no idea what was wrong with the brakes except that they didn't work. The cables were still in the right place, and that's as far as my knowledge went.  So I pushed the cycle , along a smooth  path downhill on should have been an easy ride.  Then the bush was on one side up the steep slopes and on the other there were a few fern trees dotting the more gently falling farmland.   Eventually I came to a car park and a big sign introducing the trail. 

I had no idea how far I was from Ohakune, my map being a tourist one with not much detail.  I didn't know whether it was 6km on a steep road or what. And it was slewing with rain.  I'd seen a farmhouse close by and walked to it, thinking I'd ask them to get the number of a taxi to pick me up.  But there was no-one there, not even a dog barking.  Standing in their doorway I called my accommodation.  Did they know of a taxi?  The manager, sounding very harassed, said she was only temporary and didn't know.  So I called up Ross, the guy who had rented me a bike.  He offered to come and pick me up.  No, I said, if I can get to Ohakune I can get the bike fixed.  He asked where  I was, I gave details  and he said I was only 2km from Ohakune. (I really should have been able to work that out myself - there had been plenty of signs on the way, but I was in something of a state). 

I found the road to Ohakune was flat so I could cycle it cautiously till I got to a bridge over a tumbling river, and was at the top of the town, by the railway station.  Ohakune is attractively set with the bushy hillsides rising sharp above it, and with its many older buildings, it is a pretty town.  However the handsome pub with the double storey of verandahs was closed, and it was very quiet, even by New Zealand standards. It is an alpine town that caters for skiers. There was no-one round to ask directions. I pushed my cycle around the steep streets, thinking how annoying it was not to be able to cycle to find my accommodation but then spotted a cycle hire shop and took my bike there.

Pub, Ohakune

This shop mostly hired out mountain bikes and offered transport to the bike trails, but it also did repairs. The friendly guys there checked the bike and said that some water had got into the cable housing - anyway, they could fix it on the spot.  A young blonde mechanic who would be a surfer if he wasn't a hundred miles or so inland, showed me his own mountain bike - no brakes at all.  He was one of the thrill-seeking mountain bikers, the skiers on wheels. He'd adjust the seat height, he said, so he'd use different muscles. 

I asked the guys if they were busy.  They said that on a day like this no-one would rent a bike and go out on a mountain bike trail - in fact they were quite respectful that I should do the Old Coach Road in such rain.  Except for the family group I'd seen at the beginning, I'd seen no-one else on the track.  I had a look at the leaflets in the shop showing the variety of mountain bike trails in the area, and how you could arrange to be taken to the beginning of the trail and picked up at the end (sometimes by boat).  I said I thought cycling had picked up in NZ. They said that the government had put $NZ50 million into cycling and had got in advice from England.  Advice from England?  So less advanced than places like Holland when it came to cycling infrastructure?  On the other hand, it makes sense to get advice from those in the process of developing cycling in a car owning society rather than one which had sorted it out in the 1950s.

Later I checked this $50 million investment and the advice from England with the New Zealand cycling pressure group Cycling Advocates Network. I got an email stating that:-

"The $50m was for a national cycleway (or more accurately a network of cycle trails). You can see details of what has been developed so far at http://www.nzcycletrail.com.

While it is a great recreational/touring initiative, it is arguably at the expense of real investment in cycling in urban areas, where the Govt has reduced planned investment in this area and other sustainable transport investments (compared to the previous Govt), largely to help cover the cost of building $9 billion worth of new motorways."

They had got advice from Sustrans for the national network and Cycling England for a couple of small city urban routes.  

So the policy is to build up a series of mountain bike trails for tourists, both local and international.  Tourism is a big earner in New Zealand and New Zealanders love the outdoors.  If I lived in New Zealand, I would certainly be doing these trails. I've been looking at them longingly as I write. and wondering if there are elegant cycling maps for them, like the ones that Sustrans produces.

However as a commuting city dweller I would also want - in fact think I am entitled to - some safe routes to my job and for work-outs in the evenings and weekends. It's like the difference between tramping and walking. I remembered the days when there was an excellent set up for tramping of four, five or six day trails, with well-marked paths, huts and wardens.  You would experience the wilderness driving to the beginning of the route and then being picked up at the end. But if you lived in a city you would not take a bus somewhere and go for a walk, or set out straight on foot from your door through those endless suburbs. However, in recent years the cities have developed urban walkways, besides rivers, and through parks. I stayed with friends in Hamilton, and we did just such a pleasant stroll. Going for a walk has become more ordinary, as it should be.

Safe urban cycling may ultimately develop from the mountain bike trails. Some of the trails are easy, and suitable for family cycling and the unfit, others are for the athletic.  If mountain cycling is taking off the urbanites who will go off for a week on them are going to want to get fit - which means they will want to cycle without fear in the cities, and pressure will build for safe cycling. Given the temperate climate, the cities should be whizzing with weekend cyclists working out and commuting, and then - and a vision of Auckland like Gothenburg or Amsterdam but with milder weather comes to mind, with the cars replaced by cyclists engaged in what is not a special pursuit, but an ordinary means of transport.

I tested my brakes in the car park outside the cycle shop and was much relieved to be able to stop at will, I set off through Ohakune, which has a population of 1100 and has the wide, long streets characteristic of New Zealand towns, which made finding my accommodation feel like something of a journey in the countryside. The manager of the lodge was relieved I had got there safely as she had felt bad at not being able to answer my tourist questions about taxis and had been ringing round to get the information. This place was very busy in winter, she said, but quiet at this time of the year. It offered a hot spa and after a pub dinner I soaked away. The evening was chilly for summer.

I then fell asleep on my bunk bed 9pm, and woke again at 1am to watch American crime programmes on television and continue with Amos Oz's A Tale of Love and Darkness , which is extraordinarily good on the atmosphere of Jerusalem in the 1940s among Jewish emigrants from the urban parts of Europe.  Amos Oz has powers of memory - of slight gestures and expressions - which  are uncanny.  The people he writes about were immigrants, like my own ancestors, but utterly different from them with their high culture, intense learning and the persecution that made them leave home.

Uphill into the wind with jetlag

I arrived in Auckland after the usual cattle-truck journey (Edinburgh - Heathrow - Guangzhou  - 26 hours of actual plane journey plus waiting in airports) and blinking like coming out of a cinema in daylight.  My sister picked me up and I walked around her garden touching the growing things after the plastics of aeroplanes and airports.  Then the usual terrible jet lag night's sleep and I caught a bus south to Turangi, at the edge of the central North Island plateau.

I left New Zealand when I was twenty-two and return infrequently. I was last in New Zealand in 2004.  The changes I noticed this time on the bus journey down south along State Highway One were the cycleways that were marked where cyclists were allowed a space on the hard shoulder and the occasional alternative route was indicated.

New Zealand is a car-owning society.  You get your driving licence as soon as you can.  I was amazed when I first came to the UK that people my age with degrees couldn't drive.  An adult drove.  Public transport was poor, there are long distances between towns and cities, and with most people living in one-storeyed houses with gardens, the cities sprawl and you commute and shop and socialise by car. 

So this provision for cyclists looked promising.  Also, mountain biking trails have taken off. My sister L has done the Otago Rail Trail and a new trail on the West Coast  for which I envy her, as the scenery there is spectacular. 

This holiday I was sticking to the North Island where my family and friends live and I had searched on the net for what cycling was on offer.  There were plenty of mountain bike trails around the geothermal areas of Taupo and Rotorua but I'm not a mountain biker.  The tour organisations offered bike hire and transport to the beginning and end of trails.  I wanted to cycle as I do in the UK, going off for a few days on roads and covering an area - Suffolk, the Yorkshire Dales or what have you.  Of course UK cycling can't be templated on New Zealand.  The UK has a dense network of minor roads, bridleways, cycle paths, and towns and villages every few miles, New Zealand has big state highways and thousands of no exit roads, dirt roads and walking tracks through the bush, with about 40 or 50 miles between settlements.   Also it is far more mountainous than the UK.

The Desert Road with Ruapehu

Desert Road, with Ngauruhoe in the distance

Ngauruhoe and pylons

Desert Road, pylons.  I took these photos later on the trip by car.

Fixed in my mind was the Desert Road that runs among tussock and beneath the biggest mountain in the North Island, Ruapehu, and the other two volcanoes, one, Ngaurahoe, usually spouting smoke.  I had been to university in Wellington and had hitch-hiked along this road in the holidays to visit my family in the north, and I had always been overwhelmed by its danger and loneliness.  The British have colonised New Zealand for less than two centuries, and what with the houses being made of wood and the farmland that looks raw and dishevelled, I would feel that I and my kind had just been dropped by parachute on this shaky ground.  Looking at the distances of the map it seemed possible to take three days and cycle a loop round Tongariro National Park, with the last and longest day being along that road.



So I googled and found the Tongariro River Motel in Turangi, which would rent me a cycle, panniers and a helmet (compulsory in New Zealand).  The owner, Ross, picked me up from the bus stop.

Tongariro River, on an early jetlagged morning

The Tongariro River is famous for trout fishing, and the motel caters mostly to fishermen.  Ross rents out bicycles with special carriers for fishing rods so that the cycling fisherman can be the first one at a pool.  He is a cyclist himself, and gave me advice about my route.  He also said I was mad to do this, and gave me a cell phone in case of any problems.  When I was trying out the bikes for size he told other people at the motel about my mad scheme.  He wrote about it on the motel's website.

The day started bright, but then the clouds came down and when I'd turned off State Highway One to State Highway 46 the west wind was blowing straight into my face.  The road, climbing through bushy,  landscape, wasn't steep but unrelenting.  My muscles were post Christmas, post Norovirus and post my gym closing for refurbishment.  I was not fit, and this was hard work.

There's a prison farm up here, and the Poutu Canal, and a canal, which is something profoundly urban in the UK seemed very strange in this semi-wilderness- in fact, it's part of a hydro-electric system.  On the other side is Lake Rotoaira.  I had a snack and toilet stop at a campground beside it, and it looked vast, grey and melancholy, with one person fishing.

I had imagined an awesome view of the volcanoes sweeping up on one side of the road dripping with lava flows (there had been an eruption in November), but the cloud hid them.  I toiled on and eventually in these clouds I could just see a vent from the side of Tongariro ejaculating stream.  I stopped at the side road that takes you further up the slopes of Ngauruhoe, which was closed because of "high level of volcanic danger".

The state highway wasn't busy, and if I did stop hill starts were easy because the roads are so wide you can get moving across the road horizontally. So I slogged it to the end of State Highway 46, and turned south-west onto State Highway 47. On the corner was a cafe!  No, closed.  This is ski-ing country, and in the summer the visitor numbers fall to trampers, mountain bikers and tourists doing the Tongariro Crossing, which the bad weather had closed.

Manuka in flower

I'd been cycling for 3 hours, and had done about 25km.  This was poor showing, and I set off again, besides typical New Zealand landscape - flax, toi toi, cabbage trees and manuka, which was in full flower, very white.  About 20 more km of what was really a tiresome grind, then finally the turn off to Whakapapa Village, with another 8km to go.  At that point the clouds lifted, and finally I could see Ruapehu, almost all 9000 feet of her.  The road now was going through the Japanese looking alpine landscape, and I saw some rubbish in the ditch. - the first rubbish I'd seen.  And thought, this country is so clean, and so beautiful, and so quiet, and except for natural forces like volcanoes, earthquakes and storms, so safe.

Ruapehu finally appears on the road to Whakapapa

This last part of the journey had more up in it, or perhaps I was just extremely tired.  I pushed on, got off and walked for a spell, pushed on, past waterfalls and streams and karimea forest and brown tussock grasses until I could see the Chateau Tongariro Hotel up ahead.  (When I was a child we knew this whole area as "the Chateau" and at fifteen I got up at 4am with my bible class to take a bus to "the Chateau" in winter so we could touch snow).  I went into the bar, ordered a cold drink and a cappucino, sat at a table and fell asleep for a few minutes, in a jet lag, cosh to the head narcoleptic fit. 

I woke up again, left the bar and found that Whakapapa Village was about 100 meters away, got my accommodation - a backpackers, quiet at this time of the year so I could have a bunkroom to myself, which was fortunate in my jet-lagged state.  I fell asleep at once, woke up at about 7:30pm and went and had a a delicious meal of lamb shank cooked with rosemary in the Skotel - all meals I had in NZ were delicious though a bit pricey.  The food is fresh, and very well cooked, with a variety of influences - Mediterranean and French mostly. The overcooked and unflavoured British foods that held sway until the 1970s have now gone.  Back to the bunk room, asleep at 10, awake at 1, reading until 5 and then asleep till 7:30am.  I wasn't at all sore or stiff from the day's toilsome cycle.  After December's dormancy my cycling muscles had woken up and were in reasonable order.

Punctured in Swaledale

I had done the wettest cycle of my life in order to get to Keld in Swaledale.  My friend H., who is from Yorkshire and knows the Dales well, had recommended the village as quiet and with good pubs further down the Dale.  I was staying in Keld Bunkhouse, part of a campsite that includes a Mongolian yurt.  The Bunkhouse is a well-run hostel about a half mile from the village, with a pleasant vibe and a fantastic location.  Right by the front door  behind a low mossy wall one of the Swale waterfalls roars - and of course after the day of rain I had come through it was in full spate.  Also, after the rain, it was a startlingly sunny, breezy day. 

I had the bunkhouse to myself after the coast to coast walkers had left. I was staying another night in Keld and I strolled to the village, which is a few houses, holiday cottages, a church and a Countryside and Heritage Centre  giving some facts about the place (lead mining, sheep farming and tourism) and a quote from Auden, who loved Swaledale:- 

Lately, in that dale of all Yorkshire’s the loveliest,
Where, off its fell-side helter-skelter, Kisdon Beck
Jumps into Swale with a boyish shouting,
Sprawled out on grass, I dozed for a second.

Keld


Wall, Keld

As no doubt there was once a pub for lead miners, a church for sheep farmers there was now a leaflet for me the tourist, showing a walk to the waterfalls.  The paths were muddy but I picked my way round to see one, along the Swale that was pushing hard beneath its cliffs and then walked back to the Bunkhouse to sit by the one that roared by the door.  Waterfalls are hypnotic like open fires - there was  brown water like long fronds of kelp diving over and over, and I sat in the sun in a wonderfully contented state of physical tiredness.  Guys turned up in kayaks, paddled along the river, got out to inspect the fall and then gave up. That would not be white-water but death water falling with a Niagara force, though only a few feet high.




Waterfall, Keld

I  went to get my cycle for a short run to Tanhill.  I felt the tyres, and the front one was a little soft.  I pumped it up, but gave up the idea of cycling very far - I was tired anyway - and took the cycle along the road near the river to see the waterfalls - small but violent- the bits of tunnel left over from lead-mining, the cliffs and to feel the general quietness of the place.  An occasional coach passed by, very stupidly down the narrow steep hill, and the other tourists were kayakers and waterfall-watchers.

Tunnel

Every time I returned from viewing something to my cycle I would give the front tyre another feel.  What should have been serene enjoyment under rare sunshine was marred by a slight anxiety  (according to evolutionary biology a natural state for humans who once lived in fear of predators or starvation).  I had to face it - I would have to mend a puncture and I am very bad at mending punctures. 

I got back to the big shed place where my bicycle was housed and took off the front tyre.  I found a bucket, filled it and ran the tube through it - no bubbles to show holes.  I had a spare tube, and with the usual cack-handed tussling, got that on to the wheel.  I rammed the pump over the valve to pump it up, and then when I removed the pump, the end of the valve, the little piece that screws into a Presta , fell off.  So the tube was unusable. 

I had another spare tube and wrestled that on to the wheel.  As so often, when I do this, a last piece of the tube was not tucked under the beading but bulging out.  I tried a few times, got it properly in position, pumped it up, and then another end of a valve was rolling on the floor.

At this point I gave up and went to make some dinner.  Afterwards I put the tube with the slow-puncture leak back on, thinking I could keep pumping it until I found a bike shop.  I asked the owner of the site where the nearest one was, and he said there was one in Reeth, about 10 miles away, at the other end of Swaledale.  This sounded like an easy run, so I left the cycle and went to the pub with filthy blackened hands.

The bunkhouse was now full of all-women walking groups from the north of England who were fairly muddy.  It had been a fine day but of course the ground had been soaked from the day before.  As for the waterfall, even a day's fine weather had lessened its power

The next morning it was raining slightly.   I set out on my bike, and after going half a mile or so, the tyre had got too soft, so stopped and pumped it up. The road was a switchback, and I continued, stopping every quarter mile or so to pump again.  I pushed on a few yards then realised I could hear a distinct hissing from the tyre, and then suddenly felt that the laces on my right boot had wound round one pedal. After a scary second I stopped, and tried to unwind the lace.  But it wouldn't unwind, and I had to pull out my foot in its fresh clean sock from a nearly dried-out boot on to the wet road and unwind it.  I pumped again, started cycling and realised that this was not going to work, so a few hundred yards from the village of Thwaite got off and pushed the bike to a coffee shop attached to a hotel, where I asked if there was a taxi.  They gave me a number and in twenty minutes a young bloke turned up in a people carrier.  He was a nice chap with red hair, who had been born locally.  Said how pretty Swaledale was in the winter.  Said his usual gig was to drive people out who wanted a drink or to take children to school as the place is depopulating and the schools closing.  One little girl he picked up at 7:15 and brought home at 5pm  -a long day for a child.  I told him my destination was Leyburn and he said, You're going to find Fremington Edge a hard cycle.

As we went through Muker, Gunnerside and the rest on a gently rolling road beside the River Swale I thought what an agreeable cycle this would have been, even under patchy rain.

We got to Reeth, and at the other side of the village, in Fremington, was not just a bike shop but a cycle centre, with a cafe, accommodation, a place to wash your bike - a whole complex devoted to cycling hobbyists and mountain bikers. I despise  mountain biking - thrill seeking, skiers on wheels - but its popularity has really improved cycling infrastructure. Reeth is just a large village (pop 750)  and here was a bike centre with three mechanics.  One,  a woman (I'm always glad to see a woman mechanic so I can think my own ineptness is not sex-linked) changed the rubber lining of my wheel, pumped up my tube and then squeezed it against my face so I could feel the air from the hole, indicating that I must have been blind and/or stupid to miss it, fitted a new tube, saying that I should be using a Schrader tube, not a Presta, and pumped up the back tyre as well. 

Feeling  much happier with a functioning cycle that had had some expert attention I cycled back into Reeth, up its steep streets.  There was a big agricultural show on which I would have quite liked to go to but it cost £6, and I did want to go on my way so went to buy some bread.  On the village green a group of elderly guys were singing and playing guitars and double bass, while being filmed and microphoned by a couple of young media types.  (Note - age discrimination - the young do the filming, while the old are filmed).

They did a song about calling the musters for the Loyal Dales Volunteers, one of those bands of militia put together in case of a Napoleonic invasion.  Because there would be half a dozen guys called Thomas Alderson and a few more John Hirds they used to call the roll by nick-names.  They fitted the following names to a song:-
Grain Tom, Glouremour Tom, Screamer Tom, Poddish Tom, Tarry Tom, Tish Tom, Tripy Tom, Trooper Tom (all Thomas Alderson by name);
Assy Will Bill, Ayny Jack, Aygill Tom Bill, Becka Jack, Brag Tom, Bullet, Bullock, Jammie, Buck Reuben, Butter Geordie, Bowlaway, Brownsa, Jossy, Cis Will, Cotty Joe, Codgy, Cwoaty Jack, Curly, Dickey Tom Johnny, Docken Jammie, Daut, Freestane Jack, Gudgeon Tom, Hed Jack. Awd John, Young John, Jams Jack, Mary Jack, King Jack (all John Hird by name);
Katy Tom Alick, Kit Puke Jock, Kanah Bill, Knocky Gwordie, Lollock Ann Will, Matty Jwoan Ned, Mark Jammie Joss, Moor Close Gwordie, Nettlebed Anty, Peter Tom Willie, Peed Jack, Piper Ralph, Pullan Will, Roberty Will Peg Sam, Rive Rags, Skeb Symy, Slipe, Slodder, Swinny, Spletmeat, Strudgeon Will, Tash, Tazzy Will.

(Looking them up on the internet I'd say the singing group were the Fourum Folk). 

I listened to them for a bit, then went and bought cheese and fruit cake and set off to Leyburn via Fremlington Edge, a notorious hill, or semi-cliff.  I had to push the cycle mostly under a cloudy sky and intermittent spits of rain then as I cruised down the other side through moorland, I heard gunshots. I was cycling alongside a huge military shooting range.  I did the few easy miles to the edge of Leyburn and was looking for signs when someone called, "Rosie - are you Rosie?" and a woman was leaning out of a car window.  It was the owners of the B&B which I had booked.  They had told me they would be out till 5pm as they were going to the agricultural show in Reeth, but having spotted me, said they'd lead me to their place.  I followed them to their farmhouse a little out of Leyburn and was glad to dump my gear and make some tea, eat the bread, Swaledale cheese and local fruit cake I'd picked up in Reeth  while sitting on a bed watching the lunch-time news.

I then cycled a steep down and up to Middleham to see Middleham Castle, the home of Warwick the Kingmaker.  Richard III had lived there and married Warwick's daughter Anne.  I have a vague interest in Richard III - I have read Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time which Christopher Hitchens called "a minor masterpiece".  It has dated - the comic Cockney chairwoman is especially wince-inducing - but I think what Hitchens meant that it is a beginner's guide to examining received opinion and drilling down to sources - an important skill for both academics and bloggers. 

The book opens with Alan Grant, a Scotland Yard detective, in hospital.  He has time on his hands so on seeing a photograph of Richard III he thinks that he doesn't look like a monster and murderer as portrayed by Shakespeare and children's history books.  He co-opts an American research student to look out the original evidence for the case against Richard, and he finds the source is Thomas More's Tudor propaganda derived from Cardinal Morton's (Richard III's enemy) account 

Hitchens says of this:-

Scouring the increasingly meticulous and assertive and well-sourced revisionist literature, I felt a sensation I had experienced only once before, while reading Josephine Tey's minor masterpiece, The Daughter of Time. As fellow addicts of this book will know, it begins with an acceptance of the standard view of Richard III—"Crookback Dick," the usurper, and the murderer of the Little Princes. Then, by slow forensic degrees, it demonstrates that every aspect of this story is an accumulation of lies and later courtier propaganda. The chronicle of Holinshed, the memoir of Sir Thomas More, the drama of Shakespeare himself—all are pitilessly uncovered as the merest conjury and fraud. Even for a reader who has no stake in Tudor spin-doctoring, the effect is a vertiginous one, with all the cargo in the hold slowly turning over. Is one to be left with no illusions? Is the whole pageant a cruel put-up job?

(They have found a body in a Leicester car park which is supposedly Richard's.  Now neo-Yorkists and Royalists are squabbling over where it should be given its final burial.)

Middleham Castle is a colossal ruin with walls high enough and thick enough to give you some sense of what it must have been like to have lived in such a huge fortress.   There's a sculpture of Richard III in white marble.  - rather arresting, with a monstrous form attached to his back. 

Richard III, Middleham Castle

The weather had now turned to short but violent showers.  I walked around Middleham which I had never heard of before. It is a very bright, painted expensive-looking village, famous for its race-horses and the signs on pubs and shops were either of Richard's white boar or horses' heads.  I went to look at the church and hard by it was a glossy, South Forks looking place, which was a big stable complex.  You could see the horses heads poking from their stalls and the stable boys.  I would have expected the fields to be full of galloping horses, but they are of course kept inside and taken out to be exercised.  Well, it explained the prices at the gourmet pub.

I returned to Leyburn and stopped off at the tourist info. The violent showers had passed, the sun had come out and there were a few hours of evening light remaining.  I asked the chap in the tourist info what I should do for an hour or two before dinner and  he recommended a walk along The Shawl to admire the view.  The Shawl is a a series of fields on the edge of one of those Dale drops, with the grand views of the kind that appear on the calendars of a Dales landscape of hills like oceanic waves, and rivers.  People were walking their dogs and children there.  So that until a pub, The Black Swan (very friendly), for dinner and then back to the B&B for telly and bed.

Andrew Mitchell - Cycling Martyr

The nub of the Andrew Mitchell affair is that he is a cyclist.  He was told by the police that he was not allowed to cycle where cars and other wheeled traffic could  but would have to take the pedestrian route.  His anger was justified, and reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's anger because as a lady she was not allowed to walk on the grass in a Cambridge college  (see A Room of One's Own).  As I steamed with Virginia Woolf as she stormed away from the college, so I mentally swore at the policeman along with Andrew Mitchell.

Andrew Mitchell denied he used the word "pleb" but wouldn't enlarge on what he did say.  My theory is that he call the policeman "fucking petrolhead."  The police are petrolheads after all.  Their image of themselves at their most heroic are the car door slamming Sweeney or siren-blasting car chasers in every second Hollywood film. 

Andrew Mitchell - cycling martyr

In our car-and-driver dominated culture that would be a worse insult and far more politically dangerous than "pleb". Class insults are bad, race insults worse, but topping them all is outraging the sense of entitlement the internal combusters have. The only successful street, or rather road politics that occur, are blockades by lorry drivers against rising petrol prices. The government caves in at once, though it will ignore millions marching against a war in Iraq.  The rage that you most often see expressed in this country is road rage by the thwarted motorist, whose sense that he must have total, quick and easy access to every part of the country is as absolute as Charles I's to his divine right to rule.  The internal combusters are the great majority and cities are built and the countryside paved around their needs and desires. Foreign police i.e. grovelling to the repulsive Saudi Arabian government is a direct result of their requirements for oil. 

This of course has not been made explicit.  The tabloids have projected the affair as our heroic police being abused by an arrogant toff,  They won't make explicit to their readers that they are truckling to their pleasure at the thought of a cyclist forced to go pedestrian any more than they tell them that their fascination in three in a bed romps, dressed up as righteous morality and public interest, is simple prurience. The Labour party were happy to follow the populist line and take a chance to poke the Tories, but in fact Labour are bigger petrol eaters than the Tories who at least have  David Cameron and Boris Johnson on bikes.  (Ed Miliband  and Ken Livingstone are taxi and limousine men). They know who fills their petrol tank.

Follow the money?  No - follow the oil traces on the tarmac. 

Andrew Mitchell - the cycling martyr who fought back.  RE-INSTATE HIM AS TORY CHIEF WHIP NOW!

The Wettest Day

It's now fallen into autumn after we were cheated of a summer.  I did have a summer holiday in the last week of August, which I haven't yet written about.  I worked out a route cycling from Arnside on Morecambe Bay, the western side of Cumbria, through to the Yorkshire Dales, then made optimistic jumps on my road map and rang round guest houses and pubs with a finish at Berwick-upon-Tweed.  "So you're doing the coast to coast," people said. Yes, I suppose it looked like that, though certainly not by the shortest or easiest route.

I started at Arnside because a friend lives there.  It's an agreeable village, right by the estuary, with warnings of quicksand and a siren shrieking when the tide turns - the famous fast tide of Morecambe Bay.  My friend told me that the tides are so strong that sometimes a bore comes roaring up the channel. 

The weather forecast was bad, to get worse. I left Arnside at about nine and cycled north east along an arm of the estuary under grey skies, and then turned inland when there was a violent shower.  I sat it out under some trees then pushed along the B6254 trying to find the route east to Dentdale.  By 11:30 I had got to Oxenholme, almost to Kendal which was not the way I planned.  It was raining on and off and there was a pub, with a notice saying Open All Day.  "That means from 12," said the bar manager, but they let me buy a cup of coffee and he offered me some advice on the route. 

I hung around the porch looking at the rain which was falling hard, then realised that it was not going to let off, so I may as well carry on, and retraced my way a couple of miles, then took a road east up a hill, which forked to one dead end, and with another way that wasn't clearly marked on the map and led across lonely looking hills. I hadn't been able to get a cycling map for the area, and was using a big format motoring book map, scale 1 cm = 2km, which is not really detailed enough for good cycling.  Also, when I pulled this unwieldy thing out of my pannier, the rain fell on the pages and they were starting to dissolve.  Someone came along in a car - I asked them, but they were clueless - said that way led by the reservoir. It looked tricky so I gave up and turned back.

I had seen a National Cycle Network sign next to the pub at Oxenholme, pointing to Sedbergh.  So I returned that way, thinking that at least it would be easy to follow though it would add miles on to the journey.  The rain really had set in by now and I followed a rolling, but not steep route.  It was too wet to stop and eat my bread and cheese - I could only stuff the odd oat bar and chocolate down my throat. 

I got to Sedbergh around 2pm, just over half way on my journey.  I looked for a cafe with a wooden floor, went in and ordered soup. Water  made pools below me.  I was wet through - everything sodden - my waterproofs hadn't been able to stand up to the hours of heavy constant rain. . The cafe was steaming and full of holiday makers who were passing this rainy day over slow cups of cofee.  The sun came out for ten minutes and shone through the cafe windows then when I left the cafe it had gone and the rain fell in huge drops again.  Fourteen miles to Hawes, and another nine miles or so from Hawes to Keld in Swaledale. 

I had a choice of going by an A road to Hawes or along a B road through Dentdale.  The cycling principle of never using an A road sent me along Dentdale, by the river Dent which was roaring right next to the road and at some parts was brimming over, ready to carry me off in a flash flood.  There were no other cyclists, or anyone outside until I got to Dent itself.  It's a pretty cobbled town.  I cursed its cobbles and carried on.what would have been a thoroughly pretty road by the river and beneath the trees but all I could see was the rain. 

If I hadn't had a place booked  I would have stopped somewhere, but my accommodation was pre-paid for, and I was going to get there.  Though very wet I wasn't cold, the wind was mostly with me and not very strong and I was in oddly good spirits - perhaps because it was the first day of a cycling holiday, which I had been looking forward to and I had not got any exercise in Arnside. I really was not at all miserable this miserable day.

A viaduct rose up dramatically and there was a steep climb to go under it as it crossed above the road.  I was pushing up my first Dale hill, which was like the curtain wall of a castle.  I was over-laden, not very fit, and had to push the cycle most of the way, wishing the occasional farm tractor or van that passed me would offer me a lift.  The view was of wet moorland and rain, and then a steep drop down to join the A road, which I should have taken in the first place.  It wasn't busy, the gradient was easy, the light wind right behind me, and as it was covered with water I aqua planed at great speed until I got to Hawes.

It was about 5pm.  I had planned to stop in Hawes for a hot drink, but when I ceased cycling and went to the supermarket to buy a couple of things, I started to shiver.  I was too wet to do anything except to get where I could dry off.  I had about nine more miles to go, and in front of me was another Dale hill - 17% gradient the sign said - a Hawaiian surfer's dream of a wave it looked - and so I went up, half walking and half cycling, up into the cloud and constant rain on a high lonely road.  Then the long drop into Swaledale, the village of Thwaite, then on a switchback road for two miles until I got to the village of Keld, and the Keld Bunkhouse.  I rang the bell.  The owner came out, and said "We had given you up."  It was about 7pm.

He took me to the bunkhouse where there was a trio of walkers doing the Coast to Coast and a young couple on a weekend break.  One of the walkers offered me a brew. I hung my waterproof on the racks in the drying cupboard, went upstairs to change - everything was soaking except my bra.  I wrung out my socks, emptied my boots into the sink, made some food and then played Pictionary and Scrabble with these very friendly people who were staying there, all from the north of England.  The walkers had been falling in bogs all day and had got very wet and muddy. 

That was the wettest day cycling I have ever had.  You could have irrigated an acre of desert with the amount of water sticking to me.