Skyride London

So with a long train journey ahead of me on Friday morning, I’d prepared the photos for a few blog posts to be written. Then the Wi-Fi on the train refused to work…

Never mind, a few weeks ago it was London’s Skyride after which I posted a short video. Here are some further photos and thoughts.

Blackfriars Ramp

Normally this is a very busy road and I’m using it to gain speed before joining the traffic on the Embankment. Despite the wet it was nice not to have to worry too much about the traffic at the bottom.

South bank sights

Even Ruth got into it eventually – whizzing past the sights of the South Bank.

Buck house lady

I wonder if the Queen ever rides a bike?

Closed cycle lane on The Mall

Yes – to allow for Skyride to go ahead they really did close a cycle lane. Crazy eh?

Whitehall

I wonder what those tourists thought of the bikes rushing past behind them…

Speeding through the Skyride

So this weekend saw the return of ‘Skyride’ (formerly Hovis freewheel) the cycling event that closes off a large chunk of London so Londoners can meander round on two wheels. Apparently this year saw a drop in attendees, with just 55,000 attending compared with last years 80,000 but then it was raining for much of the day so hardly surprising some people stayed at home. It was good fun – but as you might spot in the video above, put a hi-vis on an over enthusiastic marshal and you invoke their internal god-complex and bring the proceedings to a halt. Ho hum.

Of course, away from the Skyride circuit it was situation normal.

Skyride

I’m a day off today, which has given me the chance to catch up on some bits and pieces and lounge round the house. This meant I followed up on an email from TfL, telling me about the joy of Skyride. Being a bit of a leftie liberal, I did think twice about whether I should sign up for something so overtly connected with Sky but the centrist me me said ‘meh’, it might be a nice bike ride – there’ll be no cars on the road! On signing up you get presented with this survey, to ‘help them organise their events’:

Skyride Survey

‘Some cyclists thing they own the roads and are a danger to other traffic’?
Really now? Spot the question written by the non-cyclist!

Yes cyclists can be a danger to pedestrians (less to then motorised vehicles, obviously) but the majority of the time anything stupid one does puts the cyclist at risk rather than the ‘traffic’. 13st of me versus a 1 tonne car is not a contest I’m likely to win. I wonder what outcome the researcher is actually trying to get to from that question…