Commuter rage...

I've been out on the bike a bit more now that the weather has finally started to ease up. I managed a 25 mile loop round by Farr and Ruthven on Saturday although there was still a heck of a lot of grit and detritus on the roads from when they were gritted. There's still loads of snow up there and it was gently thawing and draining on to the roads, so while it was all clear blue skies and no wind there was still an awful lot of water on the road. By the time I got back it looked like I'd been mountain biking not road biking!



Aaaaanyway. I've decided to commute to work to get a wee bit more training in. We've not long moved house and it's a bit closer to work and R's school. Today would be day 3 of commuting.

Day 1: Leaving work and someone decides that he's going to pull out and sideswipe me, fortunately he misses. Cue much swearing on my part.

Day 2: I'm about to turn right. I position myself on the road to get ready to turn off, I signal, I'm wearing a bit orange jacket, I'm 5'11", I am on the largish side, I have both volume and mass. So WHY does the silly cow in the blue VW Beetle waiting at the junction to turn right decide that regardless of this, she will pull out and drive right at me forcing me to swerve back left into oncoming traffic and nearly getting myself flattened in the process?!! Cue swearing gesticulating and general irritation on my part. Does she even acknowledge my presence? Does she 'eck.

Day 3: No incidents to report but I've just been given a free place on the Etape Caledonia sportive! Result! So it balances out in the end.

It seems even in Inverness cycle commuting is fraught with danger. Someone recently advised that one way to get motorists to 'see' you is to make direct eye contact with them. That way they can't come out with the old 'but I didn't see you mate' chestnut while you try and figure out why you've become embedded headfirst into the grill of a BMW X5.

What kind of Cyclist are you?

I've been blog browsing and spotted this one written by an endurance cyclist  called Jill a few years ago. She's based in Alaska and cycles in some truly awe inspiring settings, her blog is well worth reading.

I'll copy the post here, hopefully she'll be happy for me to do so! I'll email her just to be on the safe side. Are you a Sheepdog, Husky, Greyhound, Labrador or St Bernard? :-)

"... See, cyclists are a lot like dogs. No, not because they eat protein snacks and bark at cars. To most, a cyclist is a cyclist - but that doesn't stop the proliferation of a startling variety of breeds.

First there are commuters. Commuters are the Labrador retrievers of the pack. Throw them a good bicycle route, and they'll keep coming back. They love a good game of "catch"- that is, sprinting to catch green lights. They're highly sociable, largely domesticated and don't mind being leashed to the same roads day after day.

Then there are the recreational riders, the toy poodles. They're mostly out for show. They often have the best bikes on the block, as shiny as the day they were purchased - and often as unused. They coast gingerly along smooth payment, chrome sparkling in the sunlight, all while smiling dreamily to grab the attention of passers by.

In contrast, there are the extreme mountain bikers, the huskies, pulling their powerful bodies over terrain that nature never intended them to cross. Their bikes show the marks of a life fully lived, coated in mud and marred by deep scars. They live on the cusp of tame and wild, fully prepared for the roughest conditions. They work well in groups but their minds are fiercely independent, and they're never fully content when they come down from the mountain.

Recreational mountain bikers are golden retrievers. Like their husky brothers, they love going on long rides in the mountains, jumping in the mud and summoning their maximum energy level whenever they go out. However, they're also just as happy to curl up on the couch when the weather forecast calls for rain.

There are club riders, the Shetland sheepdogs, who are happiest in herds. They're always nipping at the heels of other riders to keep a good drafting speed as they move in formation along the road. Separation from the herd is a mark of shame.

Road racers, on the other hand, break out of the pack when it really matters. Like greyhounds, they move in graceful unity until the time comes to rush forward in a stunning burst of speed. Their sleek, lycra-clad bodies were built for speed and speed alone. They can be a delicate breed, prone to freezing in the winter and unable to carry the weight of life's necessities on their ultra-light bikes.

That's where cycle tourists are different. Tourists are the St. Bernards trailing behind the pack - big, bulky, slow, but built to last, built to withstand the rain and snow and ice and wind that gets in the way during the long haul. Tourists are well adept to carrying large loads on their bikes, pulling them when necessary, moving at a steady speed until they reach their final destination, whether it's 5 or 5,000 miles away ..."

Human Sat Nav!

After a disastrous Ullapool Sportive on Saturday (the less said the better, I didn't complete, I just wasn't fit enough for it) it was my turn to be a 'Human Sat Nav' for Dave Gorman.

Dave is currently on the final legs of his cycling tour round the UK where he will travel to the most Southerly, Easterly, Westerly and Northernly parts of the UK mainland. At the same time he is stopping off at venues on the way to perform his own unique brand (apologies for the cliche, I couldn't think of a better description and besides it's true!) of comedy. This has all been nicely bundled together as the SIT DOWN, PEDAL, PEDAL, STOP AND STAND UP tour. At the end of each days cycling he somehow manages to recover enough to perform a pretty energetic show in front of anything from 33 people in a railway carriage to 1000+ in a 'proper' venue.


At the time of writing he should be making his way up to Dornoch (it's pissing down!) and should finish up in Dunnet Head in the next few days - he's stopping to do gigs in Dornoch and Lyth on the way.

During the tour he's relied on his Human Sat Navs to guide him on each stage of the journey, these are people who have heard about the tour and have volunteered to help him out. It was my turn yesterday along to take him from Fort Augustus to Inverness. I roped in Colin from work to help out as he's a bit fitter than me and could get him there quicker if it turned out he was in a rush. There were two options I could have taken; the flattish and shorter A82 via Drumnadrochit on the North Side of Loch Ness or the hillier South side through Whitebridge Foyers and Dornoch. We decided to go with the South side because it's more picturesque and the roads are a lot quieter - cycling along the A82 would be tantamount to suicide!



Starting lineup at Fort Augustus





View from the top the hill after F.A - the descent was fantastic! I let Gorman beat me up the hill (honest!) - I whupped his ass when it came to the downhills though.... I did, honest.


Falls of Foyers

We had a couple of stops along the way, a wee look at the Falls of Foyers followed by a stop at Dores where the Nessie Hunter lives on the shores of the Loch.

Fortunately the weather was kind, with a tailwind helping us along the way and the forecast rain staying away for the most part.

The light kept changing on the Loch and as soon as I put the camera away it brightened up - typical! No sign of the monster though.

We got back to Inverness in good time.... just as the rain started, couldn't have timed it better.

Dave was kind enough to give us free tickets to his show at the Ironworks and I can't recommend it highly enough. I don't want to give anything away (honestly it would spoil it for you) but if you get the chance you should go and see him.

The finishing line - I look like a right grumpy arse. I had a great time, I just hate getting my photo taken!

MTB trip - Corrour to Spean Bridge

'A wee jaunt' I think I called it. Little did I know.

Donald and I (check his blog out, it's in Gaelic and he's just blogged about the same trip!) took the train from Spean Bridge to Corrour station, the most remote mainline station in the UK. Our route was to take us back to Spean Bridge via Loch Treig and the Lairig Leacach, stopping off at the bothy along the way.



A stern warning from Network Rail........





... Unfortunately Donald forgot his glasses



Corrour Station











The first few miles were great, a touch boggy at the start but this soon gave way to a good track leading to the lodge at the head of Loch Treig.

Creag Uaineach Lodge (Loch Treig)


After that...... boggy! For the next few miles it was matter of pushing the bikes through bogs. The views were cracking though. Well worth all the effort we were having to make.

Heading towards Lairig Leacach

After a couple of hours of swearing and slogging we reached the bothy in the Lairig Leacach. It's a great wee spot with views across to the Sgurr Innse, the bothy itself is pretty good and has a decent sleeping platform, one to be revisited at a later date I think. Luckily the path is in great nick from here back to Spean Bridge, a short wee uphill section was followed by a great sweeping downhill run pretty much right the way back into Spean Bridge. I think my bike may be in need of a service after all that though, it was making a few distressing noises by the time I got it back to the car.

The last stop before the dowhill run to Spean Bridge

Dave Gorman - cycling the four Corners

The comedian Dave Gorman will this morning be setting off on his challenge to cycle to all 'four corners' of the UK AND do a gig on each night:

"I'm cycling between Britain's four corners. From the southernmost point of the mainland to the easternmost to the westernmost to the northernmost. If that wasn't hard enough I'm going to be doing a full on one man show each night. I can't help thinking that after 50 or 60 miles in the saddle I should be lying down in a darkened room with a drip feed of carbs and protein."

It's great to see people coming up with different ideas for cycle trips (or challenges!) and whilst part of me thinks 'bugger, by the time I set off in May everyone will be sick of hearing about them' , I reckon that this can only be a good thing for cycling and will encourage more people to get on their bikes.

I sent him a message asking him to let me know if he fancies any company between the Fort Augustus and Inverness leg of his trip. Hopefully he'll use the south road on Loch Ness rather than cycling up the A82 - he'd be taking his life into his hands!

Sod all training for me this week, a combination of laziness and crap weather has meant that I've really done very little. I'm hoping to make amends for this today with a wee jaunt on the Mountain bike between Corrour and Spean Bridge.

A new milestone!

Just a quick post before bed.

I took the 0900 train from Inverness to Strathcarron yesterday morning with the intention of cycling back home to Inverness. It was to be my longest trip on the bike totaling 60 miles. A flurry of texts on Friday night managed to persuade my workmate Ben to come along (although to be fair he didn't need much persuading, he's very keen!) for what promised to be a clear day with a stiff tailwind to help us along.

As promised the weather was good and the tailwind did it's best to make life as easy as possible, the odd impatient motorist tried to put a dampener on things by driving too close or beeping at us for having the audacity to cycle side by side... For the record we were on a mile long straight with no traffic coming towards us and visibility was good, the Highway code states that it's safe to cycle side by side 'when it's safe to do so'...

Ben is a lot fitter and lighter than me and when it came to going uphill would leave me behind, this was a bit frustrating but just makes me more motivated to train and lose weight. I don't find that the hills are particularly harder it's just that I've just got more weight to get up them! The one benefit of having to spin at a lower speed was the fact that I was able to take the time to admire the scenery. I feel privileged to live in the Highlands of Scotland and yesterday was definitely one of those days. On the pull away from Achnasheen I was lucky enough to spot a Golden Eagle making its way towards the Fannaichs. I'm not so sure that Ben was particularly impressed with my poo identification skills when I spotted what looked like fox poo beside the wall at one of our rest stops. If I call correctly the response was "well.. thats very interesting.." followed by a strange look!

The whole trip took three and a half hours and an average speed of 17.7 miles, much faster than I expected us to take. Not only was it the furthest I'd cycled in one trip but it was my first coast to coast, starting at the sea loch of Loch Carron and finishing up in Inverness on the Moray Firth!

Hopefully I can start to build on this, my total mileage on the bike for last week was 94 miles, if I can increase this to about 100 miles on a regular basis then I'll be very happy indeed. I need to up the miles on the longer weekend trips as the Ullapool Mor sportive is in 4 weeks time and as it stands I am nowhere near fit enough to complete it!

Oidhche Mhath,

Toby

Cyclists Welcome? Inverness' latest 'Cycle Path'

I'll let you be the judge!

So you start here:



Note the 'no entry' sign and the fact that you're going against the flow of traffic. It's not like it's a particularly wide piece of road either



So you pootle along for all of 20 yards when the cycle lane suddenly peters out:



Where do you go? Do you get off the bike and walk... do you carry on .... do you cycle on the pavement? You can see the the road narrows and it's unclear whether you can continue on the road. After all you'd be going against the one way system..



Then you hit the 'shared surface'. At least I think that's what it is? It's not really clear... the council didn't really bother to let anyone know.



At least there are double yellow lines to give a bit of definition and give folk an idea where the cars are supposed to not stop. No kerb though. And does anyone actually know what the grey bollards are for? Answers on a postcard please.




But look, the cycle lane is back, all ... uh... 4 metres of it? Thanks Highland Council for being so considerate to us cyclists!



But wait... this is a one way system and the traffic lights appear to have been switched off for traffic coming out of Ness Walk on to Young Street.. So if I try and go right I'm likely to get flattened by traffic who probably quite rightly aren't expecting me to pop out the 'wrong' way from a one way system.



The point is that cyclists should follow the rules of the road too and this rather bizarre cycle lane that they've created seems to be giving us cyclists a bit of a headache. I've tried to use it a couple of times but I really don't believe that it's safe to do so. I get looks of consternation from motorists when they see me cycling the 'wrong way' down a one way street. Surely it would have made more sense to have the cycle lane follow the flow of traffic not go against it?!


I gave up trying to figure it out and took a slightly nicer picture instead!

Shared Spaces

As well as the Cycle Around Scotland stuff I’ll use this blog as an opportunity to witter on about issues relating to disabilities that I come across and that wind me up. (We’ll not mention the lazy individual at work who sees an empty disabled space as a legitimate parking spot, even though there’s nothing wrong with her other than pathological laziness. …..Did I mention she was lazy?)

The latest Government fad seems to be the introduction of ‘shared spaces’. This is an urban area that has been developed so that there is no clear definition between where the road and the pavement starts and finishes. A definition found on Wikipedia states:

Safety, congestion, economic vitality and community severance can be effectively tackled in streets and other public spaces if they are designed and managed to allow traffic to be fully integrated with other human activity, not separated from it. A major characteristic of a street designed to this philosophy is the absence of traditional road markings, signs, traffic signals and the distinction between "road" and "pavement". User behaviour becomes influenced and controlled by natural human interactions rather than by artificial regulation.^[3]

One of the concepts behind shared spaces is that pedestrians and motorists make eye contact to establish who has priority….. that’s right… ‘eye contact’. Now that immediately puts blind people at a disadvantage for what I would imagine are fairly obvious reasons.

This doesn’t just affect blind people. Children and other more vulnerable road users are going to struggle with this. What about an individual with a learning disability who may not be able to decipher what the rules of the shared surfaces are? It might not be to everyone’s overly politically correct tastes but it has to be considered.

The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association have the following statement on their campaign website:

“Blind and partially sighted people, particularly guide dog owners and long cane users are trained to use the kerb as a key navigation cue in the street environment. Its removal, without a proven effective, alternative feature, exposes blind and partially sighted people to greater risk, undermines their confidence, and so creates a barrier to their independent mobility. The kerb is also vital for children's safety when using roads. From an early age children are taught as part of the Green Cross Code to Stop, Look, and Listen at kerbs. If these kerbs are removed, how will children know where to stop?

Guide Dogs supports the aim of creating attractive ‘people-friendly’ street environments but opposes the use of shared surface streets to achieve this. For background information on our previous campaigning work on the issue of shared surface streets, please read a copy of our Campaign report."

In Inverness we have a new shared space on Ness Walk, it’s all very pretty with benches where you can sit and take in the ducks, seagulls and goosanders on the River Ness. It has one particular flaw which will cause issues for the people that use it. It’s a one way street..... fair enough. It also has a cycle lane…. In a shared space? Ok so it only runs for a couple of metres at the start and finish of the space so I suppose that’s ok…. But it goes in the opposite direction of the one way traffic! I’ve used it on the bike and I’ve been given dirty looks by motorists and pedestrians as they quite rightly presume that I’m going the wrong way on a one way street. When you get to the junction to turn on to Young Street there is no safe way of doing it as there is no traffic control in place to deal with traffic (ie me on a bike) coming the ‘wrong way’ on to the junction

And why is it that Councils seem to be intent on installing uniform grey bollards that blend in to the rest of the street in these shared spaces? There's no clear definition on them and they seem to be at the perfect height for the unsuspecting person with a visual impairment to crack their knee off.

I'm going to take a few photos tonight and get them posted on here.

Cairngorm Classic

No updates for a while, apologies to anyone who may have been following this..... anyone? :o)

The training has been going reasonably well, I've found a nice flattish 25 time trial route that takes me round the Beauly Firth. So far I've got my time down to about 1 hour 50 but I know I should be able to knock at least 2o minutes off that over the next few weeks. The goal... get it down to an hour! That means doing a steady 25mph but if I lose a bit more weight and get the hours in, it should be possible.

I took part in my first cyclo-sportive on Saturday. The Cairngorm Classic starts and finishes at the Cairngorm ski carpark at an altitude of 650 metres (ish). It starts with a fantastic downhill freewheel into Glenmore and on through Nethy Bridge round Spey bridge, Loch Garten and .... back up the ski road carpark. Ouch! I chose to enter the 50 miler being a way off having the fitness to do 100 miles in a respectable time. I set a target of 'under 5 hours and I'm happy, under 4 and I'm delighted'.

I'm delighted to say that I finished it in 3 hours 44 minutes. The results are here.

I was chuffed to bits to get up the final hill without having to stop and get off the bike to push. That was the bit I was probably most worried about, I didn't want to be seen as a bit of a bumbly!

Not a bad effort for a first go at a Sportive and if I hadn't stopped for a blether (and a flapjack or 3 ) at the feed station then I would have done it in even less time than that. The actual riding time on my bike computer reads 3 hours 30. So make of that what you will. (less time stuffing my face and more time cycling methinks!)

The weather was grim to start with. Heavy rain and a clagged in carpark made for a chilly start. I was soaked through within about a minute but that didn't dampen mine or anyone else's enthusiasm. The camaraderie was great and I didn't hear a word of complaint from anyone.

Hopefully HandOnEvents will have some photo's online soon. I'll post them on here provided the sight of my sweaty carcass doesn't give too much offence.