I don’t really want this blog to become just a regular whinge. It may already be too late. It’s just that if you’re a bike rider you do sometimes feel a little unloved. My local village newsletter flopped through the letterbox yesterday morning.
This month, among the local news (there is a pothole on Church Street – be careful) and the local churches’ propaganda, is a complaint about inconsiderate cyclists using the footpaths that run beside the busy A-road through the village. Which, I’m bound to say, would feel less like persecution if the footpaths weren’t designated and signed as shared-used paths.
It would feel even further from persecution if the main road itself was not the most dangerous place to ride a bike I’ve ever seen. I’ve mentioned this before, and often, but if you lived here you too would find that you talk of little else. I’ve ridden round Hyde Park Corner on a folding bike at night with less concern for my longevity that I have ever managed on the village High Street. Just in case the speeding lorries were going to miss you, the council has installed traffic islands every hundred yards or so to narrow the road and make damn sure they don’t. I’ve had more near misses and arguments in the 800 yards to the paper-shop than I’ve had in the rest of the county put together.
It’s the same everywhere else – you can ride on the shared-use paths and get shouted at to get onto the road, or you can ride on the road and get shouted at to get onto the path. I usually go for the road, because most of the time I reckon it’s safer. That and the fact that the shared-use paths are often rutted, strewn with glass, and sometimes so narrow that there isn’t space to pass a pedestrian.
None of this is really news to anyone. What worries me is I let myself get far too annoyed by these things. It’s similar when I’m out on my bike – someone chucking something at me from a passing car, even if it’s as innocuous as a plastic bottle – will irritate me for the next hour, when more laid back friends are capable of ignoring it altogether.
I know that I’m not alone in this – from my Cycling Weekly column, I know that nothing generates reader emails like writing about road safety, or the hostility of other road users. It’s tempting to write about things like that every week, simply because it’s always nice to know that someone is reading. But it doesn’t half start to get you down after a while.
So. More thoughts about spring, birdies, daffodils, bunny rabbits, and the sheer joy of the open air.
Until the next time I’m belted up the arse by a bottle, obviously. Probably tomorrow afternoon.