Author: Cris Bloomfield

After having been exceptionally busy recently riding has taken a back seat. Saturday was spend athome getting things straight and just having a rest. I felt exhausted. I decided that today I would go for a decent ride and somewhere new. Recently a lot has been said about how ace the North York Moors are, so I headed in that direction and wound up at Dalby Forest.

The £7.00 for the day entry fee was an unexpected cost. It is the most I have ever had to pay to gain entry to one of the country’s forest parks. Given how busy it was they must have been coining it in. Anyway I suppose that for the money you also get a useless map, It is absolutely no use in telling you where you are on the trails, so I left it in the car.

I’d taken the singlespeed with me because the Ti Deluxe is still in South African mode and it’s now the only other offroad bike. I headed off on the red and started doing various bits of black. In honesty, the black run wasn’t anything like the Scottish routes in terms of difficulty, but there were some great sections, including a boardwalk section that dropped down a sunken way and a great little bike park with skinnies, 4X course and dirt jump rhythm section.

About 45 minutes into the ride my shorts decided to disintegrate at the seams and I spend the rest of the ride with my saddle wearing my shorts as well as me. It let to some ‘interesting’ moments, usually on some quite difficult technical bit. Given this I decided to head back to the start and buy some more shorts. Easy right?

Well it turned out that today there was a British Heart Foundation charity event on, the signage for which confused me because it was so similar to the signage already up for the trails. As a result I ended up riding around for 5 hours (effectively doing the red, the green and all the black bits and spending about 30 minutes in the bikepark at Dixon’s Hollow).

I ran out of drink, but eventually made it back to the cafe at Forest Drive just as they were closing, managing to run over a slow worm sunbathing on a patch of sand on the way. I went back to check the little fella out and he was already slithering off into the undergrowth.

John Wilkinson, IMBA UK’s Executive Officer has just sent out the latest IMBA update. In it, he states that Rupps (Roads used as Public Paths) now no longer exist, and have been re categorised en masse as Restricted Byways which can only be used by walkers cyclists and equestrians. IMBA has been concerned for some time that the regulations did not appear to prevent ploughing – but’s Defra has now told us that these routes continue to be proper carriageways – and can’t be ploughed. Good news for the East Anglian riders then…

Slightly worrying is the fact that the Discovering Lost Ways Review isn’t really going anywhere. This is the project which was introduced as part of the Crow Act 2000 as a sop to landowners keen to prevent new bridleways being established over their land. The  idea is that all such Lost Ways will be in place by 2025 after which no new routes can be established. Seven years later, and with the clock ticking, progress has progressed at a snails pace, a Natural England Report notes that to date only Cheshire is close to completing the research phase.

Next on the list is Shropshire, where work is already underway, so rapid progress into other counties does not appear to be likely. We should all be concerned about the slow pace of this project – so a note to your MP emphasising the importance of this to cyclists and others is well worth considering.

Finally 34 miles network of mountain bike trails is now ready to ride in the 8,600-acre Dalby Forest near Pickering in the North York Moors. Built with £141,000 from the European Union by local trailbuilding club SingletrAction working with the Forestry Commission, the £400k network is now the most extensive in the UK to be found outside of Wales or Scotland and could become part of  the training facilities for mountain biking events at the 2012 Olympics.

Apparently unlike many previous Olympics where competitions had been used to find the winning logos, London 2012 had been through a lengthy and painstaking brainstorming process before identifying theirs. Unfortunately Marketing Chief Chris Denny said they were after something “that would capture the hearts and minds of everyone, give them an emotional attachment” – in the same powerful way Apple were perceived to have done so successfully with their simple apple logo.

£400,000 wasted and absolutely no comparison to something as iconic and simplistic as the Apple logo. No wonder the Olympics are over budget. They chose that over this? It seems the very sensible and quite nice logo was what they used to win the bid has now been ditched in favour of the new London 2012 brand designed by a colour blind five year old Wolff Olins. As has been pointed out else where, if you see it as a kind of Picasso/Keith Haring girl with an Olymic-sized head sucking London’s cock, then it is an absolute masterpiece and you do wonder if they spot these things in the focus groups and meetings.

Anyway you can tell Wolff Olins how good you think it is by contacting them:

Press contacts
For all press enquiries please call us,
Europe: +44 (0)20 7713 7733
US: +1 212 505 7337
or email: publicrelations@wolff-olins.com

Avoid their website however. It could be up for an award for a particularly poor piece of design.

Biker has been in touch. He’s back in Como running his Kite Surf School after a slightly odd winter during which his leg took a while to heal after being broken kiting in Egypt last Autumn. Clearly it didn’t stop him from styling this gap jump…

Ben Davies’ been in touch too. He’s still up in Aviemore working in the bike shop and riding lots. There’s a video of him riding his new secret trail in th ‘more. He then went on to break his ankle in the pub, ’nuff said about that though.

Urban Cyclist are now Urban Velo. Jeff and Brad haven’t said what spurred the change in title, but issue two is now in production. Check out the website for more details.

Government introduces a Freedom on Information Act (2000) under which members of the public can ask for various documents. Public raises a eyebrow or too and then get planning how best to use this. Some time later the government says, too many people have cottoned on to the fact that they can request information from various government agencies. The government have decided that this is quite pesky and that they would prefer people to make fewer requests for information. Government initiates plans for the not so free freedom of information of act. Crafty? Politicians? Getthehellouttahere.

I love bikes and being out there riding them. I particularly like riding them fast and adding to the experience by pushing the limits of grip of tyres in the corners and testing my nerve by going for gaps in the traffic when commuting and slaloming trees in the woods on the singlespeed. Not that I claim any particular level of skill in riding, but I think I can hold my own.

Now my main vice is that I have a penchant for cars, particularly fast cars. The term fast is relative to your experience of the sensual overload that speed induces. In about 30 seconds you’re ready to go faster and then faster again. At some point you discover that your car isn’t as fast as someone else’s and that puts you in your place and/or you discover that the combined driver skill (or lack of) and the mechanical engineering of the car are no match for the laws of physics and either gracefully (or not) you end up in a ditch, wrapped around a tree or trading paint with some other unsuspecting user of the Queen’s highway.

Now irrespective of the speed of the car, the highway code makes it clear that overtaking is fair game. Basic scenario. Driver in front is going slower than the speed limit of the road under the given conditions. Your stuck behind them and when the opportunity arises, you pass them. Before overtaking you should make sure:

• the road is sufficiently clear ahead
• the vehicle behind is not beginning to overtake you
• there is a suitable gap in front of the vehicle you plan to overtake.

Overtake only when it is safe to do so. You should

• not get too close to the vehicle you intend to overtake
• use your mirrors, signal when it is safe to do so, take a quick sideways glance into the blind spot area and then start to move out
• not assume that you can simply follow a vehicle ahead which is overtaking; there may only be enough room for one vehicle
• move quickly past the vehicle you are overtaking, once you have started to overtake. Allow plenty of room. Move back to the left as soon as you can but do not cut in
• take extra care at night and in poor visibility when it is harder to judge speed and distance
• give way to oncoming vehicles before passing parked vehicles or other obstructions on your side of the road
• only overtake on the left if the vehicle in front is signalling to turn right, and there is room to do so
• stay in your lane if traffic is moving slowly in queues. If the queue on your right is moving more slowly than you are, you may pass on the left
• give motorcyclists, cyclists and horse riders at least as much room as you would a car when overtaking (see Rules 188, 189 and 191.

Now none of this is rocket science. So why is it that so many people are prepared to sit there while someone drives 20mph below the speed limit? Why do so few people understand the concept of Mirrors – Signal – Manoeuvre? What is the correct way to react to people pull out to start their overtaking manoeuvre when you’ve already midway through yours? Maybe I should stick to riding bikes.

A highlight of Saturday was spending some time reading through the Top 100 Facts for Chuck Norris. Chuck has the same kind of legendary status as Mr T, except Chuck just doesn’t seem to know when to stop.

Remember kids, “Leading hand sanitizers claim they can kill 99.9 percent of germs. Chuck Norris can kill 100 percent of whatever the fuck he wants.”

Given the Irish name of this website it’s only fair to bring a little news from the emerald isle once in a while:

Iran ‘cycling team’ make a break for it

The FBD Insurance Rás cycling race will start tomorrow minus one team, following the disappearance of what was believed to be an Iranian national selection. Shane Stokes reports.

Following months of negotiations between the race organiser Dermot Dignam and what appeared to be a legitimate vice-president of the Iranian national cycling federation, visas were granted for five riders and four team officials to travel to the race, marking the first entry from the Middle Eastern country.

The first indication that something was amiss was when four of the group arrived a week earlier than scheduled. Mr Dignam arranged for them to check in early to the official pre-race accommodation venue but they did not show up.

More here

There’s a new Michael Moore film in the pipeline. It seems that the American people either love or hate has been getting into the head lines for reasons other than the controversy surrounding his latest film. Michael has stumped up some cash to help pay the familiy medical costs of one of his biggest critics. Publicity is always a good thing to have, but I suspect that there is a bit more to this than just trying to get some positive media spin out of a situation.

Andy has setup a WIKI with a Google Maps plugoin that lets Mountain Bikers add their recommendations for places to stay. I’ve added the one’s I’ve used although not the crap one in Llangurig (maybe I should say something to deter people going there) that Tyrrell, Chilly and I stayed at when we did the Trans Cambrian Trail.

Here’s the link to the AAAAG. You need to register to use the WIKI, find the place on Google Maps, centre the location of the B&B or guest house inte map window and then use the question mark symbol to get the coordinates, copy these, then edit the page code, paste the coordinates in and add a description (and if relevant a hyperlink) and save. It’s pretty simple to do really. I know that I’ll use it in future to find people’s recommendations of where to stay.