Manchester Cycle Chic

Manchester, cycle chic?

Last week Manchester joined the growing number of cities with a website dedicated to cycle chic – people riding bikes, dressed for their destination, not clad in Lycra as per the cyclist stereotype.  The original idea started in Copenhagen and there are now worldwide sites, including a Gambia cycle chic! Having spend a few minutes as resident paparazzi in Piccadilly Gardens at the weekend, I felt it was only appropriate to share…!

Milling about…

Milling about…, originally uploaded by Alan Perryman.

The people mill about the bus station in Piccadilly Gardens. So much movement, yet also so much so still.

Tram chaseth the man

Tram chaseth the man, originally uploaded by Alan Perryman.

I’m a fan of the idea of panning shots, so a moving tram was a good chance to practice… I think this one has come out really well – the tram – a mechanical monster about to devour the pedestrian. There’s so much going on in Piccadilly Gardens, it’s an excellent place to spend even just 10 minutes with a camera.

Roadhug

Roadhug, originally uploaded by Alan Perryman.

Spotted this at lights on the way to Liverpool st tonight. I don’t know what ‘roadhug’ is yet, but I’m not sure I like the sound of one. It conjures up images of people flat on the road to me!

A greenway, a waterway and a motorway (almost)

Olympic boats

Having successfully managed to stagger across the finish line at Bogle, the next challenge booked in the diary is the c2c. At at the moment most of my cycling is relatively short utility trips (i.e. shopping and commuting) this is something else to ‘man up’ for.  With a planned completion date of June, it’s time to start training properly!  Yesterday provided a glorious day here in London so I took the opportunity to check out East London’s ‘greenway’, cycling down through the Walthamstow marshes to it’s start at Hackney Wick.  At the moment the Lea/Lee* valley paths are being upgraded for the Olympics so there are a few diversions but once onto the Greenway you start to see what London is capable of infrastructure-wise.

The Greenway - segregated running

The Greenway cuts all the way across the borough of Newham, I believe it’s the main sewer from Hackney to Beckton sewage works. (It certainly smells that way when you pass by a manhole cover!) It’s flat, wide and straight – potentially a very fast piece of cycling infrastructure.  Again due to the Olympics and Crossrail, there are some diversions in place.  There were particularly poor involving much pushing the bike and queuing to allow road traffic in and out of the Olympic park.  It would be nice if there’d been a few signs to as it’s really easy to miss where you should cross Stratford High St.

Anti-cycling gate

Further down the track there are many road crossings – each with a set of anti-cycling gates at each side.  In most cases they seem to have been vandalised to allow free passage (probably for a few motorcyclist too…) but the odd one remains intact. It does seem a bit odd to create some infrastructure for fast easy cycling and then add barriers to prevent take up.  I know the main target is to prevent people running motorcyclists or quad bikes etc, this really doesn’t seem like the best solution.

The main objective of the trip was to cross the river using the Woolwich free ferry.  A strange anachronism of London down in the bottom right hand corner, the ferry connects the North and South Circular roads.

Bike and Boat - from the southside of the water

Apparently there is some legislation meaning there has to be a free crossing here – so the small ferry carries lorries, cars, bikes and pedestrians the short hop between North Woolwich and Woolwich. I wasn’t the only cyclist either! Crossing the river is quick and relatively easy – I was very lucky with where I was put on the boat, opening up a familiar view but from the ‘wrong side’ of the Thames barrier.

A familar sight - but from the 'wrong side'

Once on the south side however, it was pretty obvious the unwritten law (‘south London must be less good than north London’) rang true with respect to cycling facilities.  The ‘Thames Coastal Path’ weaves between the riverside and busy roads with lots of ‘give up an push’ signs.  In the end I gave up trying to follow the path round the Blackwall Reach peninsula due to the lack of sign posts! The roads of between Woolwich and Greenwich did have some advisory cycle lanes but on a Saturday afternoon were as snarled up as a rush hour.  At least, I’m not sure how much worse the traffic could get at rush hour.

Snarling traffic

By Greenwich I was pretty knackered – a quick pit stop and a chance to ‘refuel’ before heading under the river again using the foot tunnel.  Currently under renovation, the lifts are closed.  This meant carefully pushing the bike down a spiral staircase and the back up the other side.  Apparently this is part of ‘National Cycle Route 1’ but I didn’t see any signs and you can’t cycle in the tunnel (probably for the best – it’s very busy with people walking). Even back on the north side of the river there didn’t seem to be any NCN1 signs – so I just hit the road and headed towards Poplar. There’s loads of interesting things on the back streets here so it was really cool to explore a bit, even if all of the roads did some how seem to lead to the A12, effectively a motorway. Eventually back to the Lea/Lee path and to the ‘stow.

With 29.3 miles (46km) on the clock it was a new personal best. Still a long way to go though – need to nudge that above 40 miles and cycle every day for a while to ‘toughen up’. Where to venture next I wonder…?

*Lea/Lee – it is spelt differently in places. No idea why.

Big red tower

Big red tower, originally uploaded by Alan Perryman.

Stratford’s answer to Blackpool tower is coming along nicely..

It’s a lovely day for boating…

It’s a lovely day for boating…, originally uploaded by Alan Perryman.

Currently in the queue for the Woolwich ferry. 13 miles out, so I guess about 13 miles back!

Cycling through Waltham Forest

Waltham Forest is notorious within the world of cycling blogging, mostly due to the work of freewheeler.  But what is is really like? Judge for yourself – using a gorilla pod and a fairly cheap digital camera… I recorded this earlier this year. Look of for cycle lanes that just stop, cycle lanes with bollards in them and lots of parked cars…

 

(Apologies about the purple streak – I’ve edited out the worst bits.  That’ll teach me for heading out at lunchtime…)

Geek Like Me

 

Geek Like Me, originally uploaded by Alan Perryman.

On Thursday this week I went along to Geekpop, in the fabulous space of Wilton’s music hall in the East End. This was a fun celebration of all things geek – some music, some science in a part derelict, serious piece of history. (Wilton’s is being restored of course).

At the end of the event I could even indulge my love of shiny media with this very nicely packaged CD. It’s also available on spotify…

You can read more about geekpop at http://geekpop.podbean.com/

Bogle 2011

This weekend saw me tackling Manchester RAG’s famous Bogle event.  There are many variations on the ‘creation myth’, but what is certain is that some people walked around 55 miles home from somewhere north west of Manchester.  This is my second attempt – the first ended after completing the ‘south loop’, a distance of 29 miles.  This time, I am very glad to say I made it all the way around!

Fresh faces - at the very beginning, a mug shot with our walker numbers!

Starting from the old UMIST campus close to Manchester Piccadilly station, we were fresh and ready to go (despite rather stupidly having walked to Whitworth Park and back!). From here, the route takes us down through studentsville (Fallowfield), Northenden and finally Heald Green where checkpoint 1 provides a very welcome brief stop, nearly 10 miles out.

Checkpoint 1 - still smiling. Tea is awesome!

From checkpoint 1, the route heads further out taking in Bramhall, Hazel Grove, Stockport, Didsbury and finally back up Oxford Road to the hub at UMIST – checkpoint 5. Here we took a decent break, having covered the 29 miles in just over 9.5 hours – an average of almost 3.5mph – which is really quite a fast walking pace to maintain! Leaving checkpoint 5 before 6am, this stretch is an infamous challenge amongst Boglers. 4 of the 5 miles to checkpoint 6 are up hill, following the Oldham Road to Failsworth through areas of Manchester that are ‘awaiting regeneration’.

By checkpoint 6 (34 miles) the gruelling nature had set in.

At least the checkpoint is indoors! The next stretch is possibly the most difficult distance en route.  Checkpoint 7 is 41 miles in – yes – that’s a 7 mile stretch without a scheduled break.  It was during this stretch I came closest to quitting.  A chance encounter if a friend who was following the walkers on his bike provided some conversation and a welcome boost in morale. It was really nice to talk about cycling for a bit and take my mind off the various pains! Having reached checkpoint 7, I was now in good spirits – with a sandwich in one hand it was off again, for checkpoint 8 is just 3 miles further round. If I get that far, at least I can have a hot pie, I thought…

By checkpoint 8 however, things started to look up. The shop had pies!

Indeed I could. The man in the shop at Ringley stores was very happy to chat about the walk and very proud of his own certificates for keeping a Kidscan charity box in his shop! From here, the route is very much on the top of the hills.

Top of the morning - high above Bolton and Bury, it did get quite pretty.

But with an up, there’s obviously a down. And then an up again – the Irwell valley brings you the ‘Hill of Death’.

Looking up - "the hill of death". It wasn't so hard.

It’s quite steep, but I got through it thanks to a little musical inspiration from The Guillemots, managing the climb in a little under 10 minutes. Turning left at the top, it then really started to feel like I was heading home. Through several checkpoints and eventually onto the final stretch – the last 3 miles through Salford back to base. At this stage it really feels like there’s no point giving in no matter how slow the progress.

Old Salford - happily this stereotype is now rather rare

Liverpool St (picture above) is unremittingly grim.  Long, straight, and a mix of late 20th century flats, earlier terraces and some industrial sites (such as a scrap yard).  Here I gave up on music. Perhaps Portishead’s Third was just a little too fitting. Close to the centre of Salford I joined up with 2 freshers – who had absolutely no idea about Salford, or quays.  For the last mile we took it steady, finally crossing the Irwell, then Deansgate, then St Peters Sq and finally turning down the slope onto the campus.

Finishing 21 hours and 44 minutes after I had set off, I had made it. So without further ado, here are the freshly crunched numbers:

Vital statistics

2011 figures									2009 figures
Checkpoint	Arrive	Depart	time since last CP	miles from last checkpoint	Total Distance	section average mph	moving average mph		Arrival	Depart	section average mph
0	00:00:00	19:33:05	00:00:00	0	0	0.00	0.00		00:00:00	20:10:00	0.00
1	22:28:17	22:51:33	02:55:12	9.8	9.8	3.36	3.36		23:15:00	23:40:00	3.24
2	23:55:26	0:09:44	01:03:53	3.6	13.4	3.38	3.36		00:41:00	00:55:00	2.95
3	1:57:30	2:08:07	01:47:46	6.2	19.6	3.45	3.39		03:08:00	03:22:00	2.93
4	3:43:00	3:55:00	01:34:53	5.2	24.8	3.29	3.37		05:33:00	05:50:00	2.52
5	5:15:07	5:51:49	01:20:07	4.2	29	3.15	3.33		07:15:00	–	2.35
6	7:31:57	7:57:10	01:40:08	5	34	3.00	3.28
7	10:21:58	10:27:38	02:24:48	7	41	2.90	3.21
8	11:51:41	12:10:17	01:24:03	3.1	44.1	2.21	3.11
9	13:38:33	13:57:23	01:28:16	4.1	48.2	2.79	3.08
10	15:33:54	15:39:00	01:36:31	3.9	52.1	2.42	3.02
11	17:26:55	–	01:47:55	2.9	55	1.61	2.89
Distances as per route notes, maybe rounding errors may exist

At the time of writing I had amassed £260 in sponsorship. You can still sponsor me at http://www.justgiving.com/AlanP-Bogle2011 with the funds going to Lymphoedema Support Network.

My feet are beginning to recover!