Well as it was such a nice day today so I thought I'd take my road bike out for a bit of a spin.
I set out in the early afternoon and proceeded to follow the 20-mile circuit that Rosie and I have adopted following the Oxfordshire Classic bike ride last year. This ride takes me over the hill to Cholsey, up the straight roman road to Wallingford, over the thames a couple of times and back through Long Wittenham.
I do like the way in which life becomes so simple when I'm out cycling. I can just focus on the road, keep up my steady rythem of pedalling, and enjoy the countryside. In particular I like the feeling of swift and steady progress that comes with road cycling.
Something else that has struck me recently is how comfortable I have become riding my bike on the road these days. I used to be quite squeemish about tackling a busy road, but my confidence has grown enormously in the last few years. I guess the lesson is that riding on the roads isn't really as daunting as it may have seemed at first, and with that realisation comes a feeling of freedom.
Rosie and I are certainly planning to do lots of road cycling this year. Last year we managed 78 miles in one day, when we did the London to Brighton, so this year we are going to aim for a round 100 miles. Something to look forward to!
Saturday 21 February 2009
Friday 20 February 2009
High Speed 2
I thought I'd write a few words on a story that I've been following for the last couple of years.
As I may have mentioned before I enjoy travelling by train and will do so as my preferred choice of getting from A to B if it's a sensible option. I like being able to sit liberated from the necessity of focusing only on tarmac and brake lights for hours at a time. All in all it's much nicer to watch the countryside go by, read a book or magazine, and actually interact with other human beings. It's also nearly always cheaper than driving, unless one is silly enough to believe that petrol is the only per-mile cost of running a car (a surprising number of people, if asked, actually do).
Eurostar's new terminal at St Pancras has been open for over a year now and in that year they have seen an enormous growth in passenger numbers. Part of this is due to better connections with the rest of the UK due to its location, but journey times are also much shorter. Paris is now just 2 hours and 15 minutes from London and this is because St Pancras is connected to High Speed 1 (HS1, formally known as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link). Whilst trains on the most of the UK rail network are limited to 125mph, trains on HS1 operate at up to 186mph. They cover the 67 miles from London to the Channel Tunnel in just 37 minutes!
Given that the UK's existing main rail lines are fast approaching their capacity, and passengers experiencing the current overcrowding on some routes would argue that they're well beyond that already, one could argue that expanding further lines like HS1 across the UK is a bit of a no-brainer. A high speed line has more passenger capacity than a motorway and yet has a fraction of the environmental footprint. It also provides much faster journeys city centre to city centre than cars or short haul flights. Projected benefit-cost ratios for high speed rail projects are high, in the area of 3:1, and these benefits manifest themselves in the economies of the cities they link. Shifting intercity trains onto dedicated track also provides significant increases in capacity for local and freight services on the existing lines.
Unfortunately a couple of years back the government's white paper outlining the future of the railways completely ignored the concept of more high speed rail. As far as I could tell the idea was to double the passenger capacity of the rail network by 2030 without laying a single metre of new track. I'm not sure how that one was supposed to work; perhaps the civil servants at the DfT think the way to work out the capacity of a train is to divide the internal volume of the carriages by the average volume of a person and then implement a 1.1x compression ratio for when the doors are closed.
Thankfully newer policies seems to be closer to the point of sanity. Andrew Adonis, the new transport minister, seems to have taken the task of rolling out high speed rail across the UK to be his personal mission. A company, called High Speed 2, has been created to examine where the next high speed line in the UK should be built; London to Birmingham and Manchester appears to be the most likely choice.
It will be interesting to see how this story develops.
As I may have mentioned before I enjoy travelling by train and will do so as my preferred choice of getting from A to B if it's a sensible option. I like being able to sit liberated from the necessity of focusing only on tarmac and brake lights for hours at a time. All in all it's much nicer to watch the countryside go by, read a book or magazine, and actually interact with other human beings. It's also nearly always cheaper than driving, unless one is silly enough to believe that petrol is the only per-mile cost of running a car (a surprising number of people, if asked, actually do).
Eurostar's new terminal at St Pancras has been open for over a year now and in that year they have seen an enormous growth in passenger numbers. Part of this is due to better connections with the rest of the UK due to its location, but journey times are also much shorter. Paris is now just 2 hours and 15 minutes from London and this is because St Pancras is connected to High Speed 1 (HS1, formally known as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link). Whilst trains on the most of the UK rail network are limited to 125mph, trains on HS1 operate at up to 186mph. They cover the 67 miles from London to the Channel Tunnel in just 37 minutes!
Given that the UK's existing main rail lines are fast approaching their capacity, and passengers experiencing the current overcrowding on some routes would argue that they're well beyond that already, one could argue that expanding further lines like HS1 across the UK is a bit of a no-brainer. A high speed line has more passenger capacity than a motorway and yet has a fraction of the environmental footprint. It also provides much faster journeys city centre to city centre than cars or short haul flights. Projected benefit-cost ratios for high speed rail projects are high, in the area of 3:1, and these benefits manifest themselves in the economies of the cities they link. Shifting intercity trains onto dedicated track also provides significant increases in capacity for local and freight services on the existing lines.
Unfortunately a couple of years back the government's white paper outlining the future of the railways completely ignored the concept of more high speed rail. As far as I could tell the idea was to double the passenger capacity of the rail network by 2030 without laying a single metre of new track. I'm not sure how that one was supposed to work; perhaps the civil servants at the DfT think the way to work out the capacity of a train is to divide the internal volume of the carriages by the average volume of a person and then implement a 1.1x compression ratio for when the doors are closed.
Thankfully newer policies seems to be closer to the point of sanity. Andrew Adonis, the new transport minister, seems to have taken the task of rolling out high speed rail across the UK to be his personal mission. A company, called High Speed 2, has been created to examine where the next high speed line in the UK should be built; London to Birmingham and Manchester appears to be the most likely choice.
It will be interesting to see how this story develops.
Monday 9 February 2009
The next "I want!"
In accordance with my persuit of the goal of owning optimum number of bicycles (see my previous post on this) I have been aiming big for my next aspiration. This is to stop my current fleet of bicycles snowballing in size too ridiculously quickly.
Here it is: A road tandem, designed for the open road with thin tyres and drop handlebars. I wouldn't mind betting a steady cruise at 20mph would be quite easily possible on this mean machine.
Rosie and I have hired a tandem before on the Tissington Trail and that was a heck of a lot of fun. The idea of doing some cycle touring on a tandem is even more fun.
Sadly as this bicycle carries a price tag of £2,500 I don't think we'll be investing in one for a good many years.
Here it is: A road tandem, designed for the open road with thin tyres and drop handlebars. I wouldn't mind betting a steady cruise at 20mph would be quite easily possible on this mean machine.
Rosie and I have hired a tandem before on the Tissington Trail and that was a heck of a lot of fun. The idea of doing some cycle touring on a tandem is even more fun.
Sadly as this bicycle carries a price tag of £2,500 I don't think we'll be investing in one for a good many years.
Friday 6 February 2009
A short Friday
Well the ride to work wasn't so bad. I tried to go my usual route but with the bridleways under several centimetres of snow I wasn't making any progress so I turned around and continued on the roads instead. This was slightly interesting at times, but at no point did I come near to skidding or falling off.
There was practically no traffic at all on the quiet country roads and, unlike yesterday, in the couple situations where people had somehow managed to get their vehicles completely stuck I was simply able to cycle around them.
The A34 was at a complete standstill as I passed over it. I love the smug feeling I get when I see a traffic jam when I'm on my bicycle, even though I guess it's quite cruel.
According to a couple of stranded drivers I bumped into at the Chilton junction the jam was caused by the authorities failing to grit the ridgeway, and so nobody could make it over the hill. Hence the lack of traffic in the opposite direction.
Gertie, my semi-trusty mountain bike, suffered no ill effects from the ride to work with the exception of the cassette starting to ice up somehow. This forced me to keep changing up to stop the chain jumping.
When I did finally get to work I found the place to be completely deserted, with even fewer cars in the car park than yesterday. In contrast to the day before, none of the roads or paths had been cleared and the site had a ghost town quality to it. A couple of snowmen from the previous day almost doubled the number of staff on site.
Unfortunately for me one of the few people who had shown up was my boss, so I was unable to follow the example of my other colleagues who hadn't made it to site; to go home and have the day off. As it was I got sent home at about 12:30 anyway.
Riding home was a bit easier because a lot of the snow on the roads had melted, although it was still snowing. I also had to plough through a couple of deep puddles of ice cold water where the snow had melted.
Apart from the cold snow on my face the ride was actually quite pleasant. I was toastie warm complete with my gloves and ear warmers. Even though my cycling kit looks a bit ridiculous it does the job very well and I wouldn't wear anything else. It feels great to enjoy a comfortable body temperature and yet also complete freedom of movement and no rubbing as one cycles along.
The countryside was quite beautiful too under a blanket of snow, although my phone camera never really did it justice.
Now, having gotten home, I feel completely exhausted. Not sure if that's the cold or if it's the fact I've not cycled nearly enough recently. Nice to have the afternoon off though.
There was practically no traffic at all on the quiet country roads and, unlike yesterday, in the couple situations where people had somehow managed to get their vehicles completely stuck I was simply able to cycle around them.
The A34 was at a complete standstill as I passed over it. I love the smug feeling I get when I see a traffic jam when I'm on my bicycle, even though I guess it's quite cruel.
According to a couple of stranded drivers I bumped into at the Chilton junction the jam was caused by the authorities failing to grit the ridgeway, and so nobody could make it over the hill. Hence the lack of traffic in the opposite direction.
Gertie, my semi-trusty mountain bike, suffered no ill effects from the ride to work with the exception of the cassette starting to ice up somehow. This forced me to keep changing up to stop the chain jumping.
When I did finally get to work I found the place to be completely deserted, with even fewer cars in the car park than yesterday. In contrast to the day before, none of the roads or paths had been cleared and the site had a ghost town quality to it. A couple of snowmen from the previous day almost doubled the number of staff on site.
Unfortunately for me one of the few people who had shown up was my boss, so I was unable to follow the example of my other colleagues who hadn't made it to site; to go home and have the day off. As it was I got sent home at about 12:30 anyway.
Riding home was a bit easier because a lot of the snow on the roads had melted, although it was still snowing. I also had to plough through a couple of deep puddles of ice cold water where the snow had melted.
Apart from the cold snow on my face the ride was actually quite pleasant. I was toastie warm complete with my gloves and ear warmers. Even though my cycling kit looks a bit ridiculous it does the job very well and I wouldn't wear anything else. It feels great to enjoy a comfortable body temperature and yet also complete freedom of movement and no rubbing as one cycles along.
The countryside was quite beautiful too under a blanket of snow, although my phone camera never really did it justice.
Now, having gotten home, I feel completely exhausted. Not sure if that's the cold or if it's the fact I've not cycled nearly enough recently. Nice to have the afternoon off though.
Arctic Explorer
Yesterday we were sent home from work early because of the snow. That was Thursday afternoon.
It's now 7am on Friday morning and I've just called in to the automated number I was given to see if work is open. If anything the conditions outside look worse than yesterday. There's a fresh layer of snow and it's still snowing heavily. Despite this the crazy fools are saying that RAL will be open!
I'm going to wrap up in my best winter gear and get on my bike. I don't have any high hopes of being able to get to site in my car this morning. At least it's harder to get stuck on a bicycle!
If you're reading this, and I've not posted another entry within a few days please send out the search parties.
It's now 7am on Friday morning and I've just called in to the automated number I was given to see if work is open. If anything the conditions outside look worse than yesterday. There's a fresh layer of snow and it's still snowing heavily. Despite this the crazy fools are saying that RAL will be open!
I'm going to wrap up in my best winter gear and get on my bike. I don't have any high hopes of being able to get to site in my car this morning. At least it's harder to get stuck on a bicycle!
If you're reading this, and I've not posted another entry within a few days please send out the search parties.
Thursday 5 February 2009
Be careful...
...what you wish for.
Earlier this week I was feeling quite disappointed at the amount of snow we'd had. Well this morning I was very surprised to wake up to find that we'd had about 3-4cm of snow overnight.
Undeterred I located the large pile of snow that marked where my car had been when I parked it last night and rumaged around inside it to find the driver's door. The drive out of Didcot in my self-propelling igloo was very slow but it was also uneventful.
It was the hill between Upton and Chilton that presented the most problems. Actually the road was okay, it was just that the person in the car about three ahead of mine had decided that it wasn't and was somehow managing to make absolutely no forward progress. I was having no trouble making a very slow but steady progress along that road but re-starting, which was necessitated by Mr Stuck up in front on more than a couple of occasions, required a bit more work. Fortunately my procedure of flailing my arms and legs to manipulate the steering wheel, gear stick and pedals into all possible combinations seems to get the car moving again.
On arriving on site I found that the roads at RAL, unlike anywhere else in Oxfordshire, had been snowploughed and gritted. I was impressed!
When I did finally roll into the car park it only had about a third of the number of cars it usually has in it. I suspect that this is because surprisingly few people at RAL, or indeed the country, subscribe to my particular brand of "live near to where you work" witchcraft and so decided not to even try driving in. Perhaps I can learn a lot from them, as a day off work just playing in the snow would have been welcome.
Since I've gotten here it's snowed again quite a bit. I'm hoping, hoping, that the drive home won't be too bad. Who knows it might even be possible!
It does amaze me how the country's whole transport system goes to pieces with just a few centrimetres of snow, but then I guess it's a question of how often we have to cope with conditions like this. What use is a huge and expensive fleet of snow ploughs if they only get used on a couple of days every few years?
In fact bet there are conditions in Britain that we take for granted that would make other countries grind to a halt. Indeed, countries like Canada may be well equipped to cope with snow blizzards every other week, but let's see them cope when they're faced with... er....
Goodbye!
Earlier this week I was feeling quite disappointed at the amount of snow we'd had. Well this morning I was very surprised to wake up to find that we'd had about 3-4cm of snow overnight.
Undeterred I located the large pile of snow that marked where my car had been when I parked it last night and rumaged around inside it to find the driver's door. The drive out of Didcot in my self-propelling igloo was very slow but it was also uneventful.
It was the hill between Upton and Chilton that presented the most problems. Actually the road was okay, it was just that the person in the car about three ahead of mine had decided that it wasn't and was somehow managing to make absolutely no forward progress. I was having no trouble making a very slow but steady progress along that road but re-starting, which was necessitated by Mr Stuck up in front on more than a couple of occasions, required a bit more work. Fortunately my procedure of flailing my arms and legs to manipulate the steering wheel, gear stick and pedals into all possible combinations seems to get the car moving again.
On arriving on site I found that the roads at RAL, unlike anywhere else in Oxfordshire, had been snowploughed and gritted. I was impressed!
When I did finally roll into the car park it only had about a third of the number of cars it usually has in it. I suspect that this is because surprisingly few people at RAL, or indeed the country, subscribe to my particular brand of "live near to where you work" witchcraft and so decided not to even try driving in. Perhaps I can learn a lot from them, as a day off work just playing in the snow would have been welcome.
Since I've gotten here it's snowed again quite a bit. I'm hoping, hoping, that the drive home won't be too bad. Who knows it might even be possible!
It does amaze me how the country's whole transport system goes to pieces with just a few centrimetres of snow, but then I guess it's a question of how often we have to cope with conditions like this. What use is a huge and expensive fleet of snow ploughs if they only get used on a couple of days every few years?
In fact bet there are conditions in Britain that we take for granted that would make other countries grind to a halt. Indeed, countries like Canada may be well equipped to cope with snow blizzards every other week, but let's see them cope when they're faced with... er....
Goodbye!
Tuesday 3 February 2009
The Harbour Lights
Over the last couple of weeks I've been listening to a couple of CDs by a Derby based band called The Harbour Lights. They write their own music and it's very strongly influenced by folk music, but there are other genres that seem to creep in from time to time like rock and country.
This is absolutely excellent music if you ask me. I think the songwriting, production and the singing are all at such an incredibly high standard that it would be easy to think this was a professional group. I simply can't get enough of it.
Their website features samples of their songs and it's definitely worth a look.
This is absolutely excellent music if you ask me. I think the songwriting, production and the singing are all at such an incredibly high standard that it would be easy to think this was a professional group. I simply can't get enough of it.
Their website features samples of their songs and it's definitely worth a look.
Monday 2 February 2009
Coping with snow
It seems that a big proportion of the country
This morning presented me with a nice eye opener as to how just a little bit of snow can make driving even modern cars very difficult. The road just beyond my cul-de-sac is never gritted despite being very busy and so it frequently develops a nice layer of well compacted ice. As I was crawling toward the junction onto this road, well aware from previous experience of how bad the ice can be, I applied the brakes to stop and give way. What happened was quite startling; the ABS went crazy and the car just didn't slow down at all. Like the titanic steaming headlong toward the iceberg I just continued straight out onto the road with a slow yet painful inevitability.
Fortunately, very fortunately, there was nothing coming.
Anyway, this morning's snow reminded me of a postcard I once saw when I was on holiday in the USA, which I thought I'd share with you now. It illustrates to me that the key to coping with snow is being well prepared, or rather more prepared than I was.
Flying's clearly the way forward when there's ice on all the roads.
This morning presented me with a nice eye opener as to how just a little bit of snow can make driving even modern cars very difficult. The road just beyond my cul-de-sac is never gritted despite being very busy and so it frequently develops a nice layer of well compacted ice. As I was crawling toward the junction onto this road, well aware from previous experience of how bad the ice can be, I applied the brakes to stop and give way. What happened was quite startling; the ABS went crazy and the car just didn't slow down at all. Like the titanic steaming headlong toward the iceberg I just continued straight out onto the road with a slow yet painful inevitability.
Fortunately, very fortunately, there was nothing coming.
Anyway, this morning's snow reminded me of a postcard I once saw when I was on holiday in the USA, which I thought I'd share with you now. It illustrates to me that the key to coping with snow is being well prepared, or rather more prepared than I was.
Flying's clearly the way forward when there's ice on all the roads.
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