Bike Shopper pannier

I love my Ortlieb Bike Shopper! Kim and I have each had one for shopping and use around town for almost five years now. One of them started to come apart after a year or so, and it was replaced for free.

It's essentially just a big black bag with a zipper and a zip-loc type closure at the top, so it's waterproof too. There's one zippered pocket inside for keys or whatever, and long shoulder straps for carrying while off the bike.

One of the most convenient things about it, though, is that the clips you use to clip onto the bike can also clip right onto a shopping trolley, as seen here at Marks & Spencer in Marble Arch!

Electric police bike

We were in Primrose Hill watching the King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery practice the other day see pictures on Flickr, and among the heavy police presence was this chap on an electric-assist bike! He was friendly and posed for this picture. He said that the Met has two of them, and he apologised for the white battery pack not matching his silver bike.

I'm not quite sure what purpose they serve, since a fit officer on a decent bike can surely get up more speed than on the heavy electric Eco-bike.

The bike also had some interesting branding from the IPMBA, or the International Police Mountain Bike Association, which I haven't come across before, but which seems to do a good job at promoting emergency services on bikes.

Smith, and Weston, and Me

I spied a couple new Community Support Officers in Primrose Hill this afternoon, so naturally, I took a picture. Being all comunity focused as they are, one said hello and asked me if I liked their bikes.

I didn't particularly, but I was interested in who makes them. He said "Smith and Weston, the same that makes our guns."

Okay, first of all, it's Smith & Wesson (as any good Clint Eastwood fan knows). But not only are these guys not allowed to carry guns, neither are most Metropolitan Police officers.

This guy went on to tell me about the important work they do patrolling the royal parks and in communities. I didn't ask what, then, his partner was doing in Primrose Hill's chichi flower and nick nack shop. I'm sure it was just community outreach.

Reasons to love Oddono's

Reason one: they make the absolute best gelato I've had outside of Italy.

Reason two: Basilico, our fave pizza delivery in London, delivers their stuff in 2-flavour tubs

Reason three: they now have a stand on Oxford Street ouside Selfridges consisting of a massive three-wheeled work bike!

Hampshire ride

Did a lovely ride today, using a route from Nick Cotton's excellent series of English cycle routes. This one was called "From Whitchurch to Kingsclere via Hampshire lanes and Watership Down" from 24 One-day Routes in Dorset, Hampshire and Isle of Wight.

The ride started and finished in Whitchurch, which is just an hour on a fast train from Waterloo (but £18 return on a holiday? pure madness!). All the directions from the book were spot on, with a few exceptions where signs have been replaced. There were a few stints on busy A-roads, but nothing terrible, but the vast majority were on very VERY quite country lanes. Some were really lane-y, with high hedges on both sides and a gravelly hump in the middle - but there were also lots of very smooth paths that could have been mistakened for Dutch cycle paths if not for the presence of horse riders and absence of road markings.

Mostly really rural, with the odd bit of 1950s ugliness on the outskirts of bigger towns like Overton and Whitchurch. But that was more than compensated for by the giant country houses and thatched cottages! Lots of springtime animal scenes, too, with tons of ducks, horses, rabbits, cows, and lambs. I made sure to get lots of pictures of these for Gemma.

Despite the title of the ride in the book, Watership Down never made itself evident. I had a look at the map afterwards, and know exactly where it was, but it would have been nice to have known about it at the time. I'm telling myself it's where I got a good picture of the hare standing up on its hind legs...

The weather was the only downside of an otherwise perfect, lovely ride - it stayed very wet for most of the three hours or so I was riding.

I took the clunky Minolta along, and I've published a bunch of photos on my flickr photostream.

Carradice Barley Saddlebag

I've been hankering for a good bag for daytrips for a long time (ever since I got my Raven, actually). I've usually ended up using my Ortlieb shopping pannier (okay, but no structure thus very floppy) or an Altura rack bag (which my Tubus rack doesn't accommodate well, requiring a web of bungees to get it to stick).

So last weekend, I ordered a Carradice Barley. Carradice is a venerable English company that specializes in cycle bags and other cycling bits.

I got a chance to test it out today, and it's fantastic! It fastens on very securely, with leather straps that fit perfectly through the mounts under my Brooks saddle and around a wooden dowell inside the bag; and another strap that fixes the bag to the seapost. My initial concern was that my legs would hit the bag when I pedal. It turns out that my thighs do actually touch the bag on the downstroke, but it in no way hampers movement. Strangely, it feels quite comforting to have it there - being able to feel it replaces my compulsion of reaching down to make sure my panniers are still there.

The seven litre capacity is perfect for a day's ride. Today, I packed a big bag of DIY trail mix, a couple bananas, my toolkit, some tissues, and my big Minolta digicam - and there was plenty of room left over. There are two side pockets, into which I put my saddle cover, a bunch of faux fig newtons, and some Frusili bars. I wasn't sure how I'd use the side pockets since they don't close as securely as one might like, but it turned out that the loose-ish flaps do hold stuff in, but it's easy to pull goodies out without unbuckling, while riding!

Inside the main compartment, there's a drawstring that closes up the opening some, but not all the way. I'm not tremendously keen on this feature, but it works okay. It would also be nice to have some compartments inside for keys and change; I ended up hanging my housekeys from the plastic loop using a mini carabiner.

And despite what I'd read about the cotton duck fabric many of the Carradice bags are made from, I sort of doubted that they'd actually be waterproof. And I got ample opportunity to test my skepticism today! For much of my ride, it was very wet, but the bag kept everything bone dry. The bag itself never got a proper drenching because of its position behind me, and the mudguards kept it protected from below. I remain optimistic for my next full-on drenching, though!

This bag is a design departure for Carradice - most of their cotton bags are black - but if they start producing other bags to match this one, I could be pursuaded!

View more pictures on my flickr photostream .

LBS parking relocated

I've been quite pleased about the cycle parking at London Business School, and I made my own little contribution to the facilities by writing some cycling directions for the LBS website (see post Cycling directions to LBS are up!).

When I arrived today, I found that the main cycle park was torn up for unrelated construction, and there was a series of signs like this:



It turns out that they've temporarily relocated the main cycle parking facilito to the courtyard facing Regents Park - it couldn't be a lovelier spot, but it's much less convenient than the regular place. It's also a bit awkward to navigate the narrow passage filled with bikes!

Dream bikes

I've just posted the following on the SJS Cycles Forum; follow the discussion here.

Don't get me wrong - I love my Raven Tour, and it's definitely the most versatile bike I've owned. If space and funds allowed, though, I'd have all sorts of exotic stuff. Here's my list of dream bikes.

• Steel road bike: I'm torn between Mercian, Waterford, and Rivendell
  
• Titanium road bike: Independent Fabrication Crown Jewell Ti
  
• Utility bike: Christiania trike
  
• Tandem: Thorn Raven Discovery (of course!)
  
• Folder: new Brompton Titanium
  
• Recumbent: A tough one! Probably a Burley, though
  
• Misc: A hand-built Moulton of course, a Pedersen, and maybe a six-passenger Delfino!

What's on your list?

(BTW, if it seems like I'm going a bit stir crazy, subsituting online time for road time, that would be accurate! I've been traveling a lot, but I'm looking forward to hitting the road again soon!)

Bicycle built for six

When vacationing in Palm Beach this month, we wanted to do some cycling on the Lake Trail. We'd planned to get a load of bikes and child seats to accommodate the four adults and three kids, but the Palm Beach Bicycle Trail Shop didn't have enough of the seats.

Instead, we rented a Delfino four-wheeler, which accommodates four pedaling adults, a kid (with potentially precariously dangling feet) in between each pair of pedalers, and two kids in the front. What fun that was! I think the only place I've seen them before is in the Villa Borghese in Rome. It worked out perfectly for us, and we spent 90 mins or so on the trail. The shop also has one of these with only one bench seat. It was a bit hot (high 80s F), and the canvas top was missing, but the breeze off the lake kept us pretty cool.

Biking Disney World

Okay the title isn't quite accurate. But we did have a nice little bike around the Fort Wilderness campground, where we stayed during our three-day Disney vacation.

Fort Wilderness is right on the Disney grounds, so it was as convenient as any of the big resorts; but we still had the autonomy of our own little cabin. The campground was ridiculous, really, with cabins scattered among hook-up points at which million-dollar RVs were stationed. And while not exactly "wilderness", it did seem like it to Gemma, who really enjoyed our little deck and walks around the grounds.

See more photos from our excursion on on Flickr.

On our last day, we rented bikes and cruised around the grounds a bit. Nice bike/walking paths, which are used liberally by RVers on their own rubbishy bikes. The real revelation was that Gem enjoyed the rear-mounted seat! This could have something to do with her opening up my butt pack and finding my wallet, of course, which is one of her favourite things to play with...

First cycle maintenance workshop

My buddies at the Camden Cycling Campaign have organised a series of three cycle maintenance workshops, and today was the first. It was held in the basement of Velorution, my new favourite cycle shop in central London. The workshop was conducted by mechanic Andrea (as opposed to proprietor Andrea, who also chimed in here and there).

Thoroughly enjoyable, but not as hands-on as I expected. We looked at all the parts of a bike and variations between different sorts of brakes, headsets, and transmissions. I got lots of questions in, and at the end of the day, I always enjoy talking about bikes!

I'm hoping the next session is more practical, and that I'll actually get some grease under my fingernails!

American curiosities

Weather, travel, and time have conspired to keep me off the bike recently (which really bites!).

I noticed a couple interesting things on my recent trip to the US...

Pizza delivery bikes in NYC

Sign on Cambridge (Mass) sidewalks

The standard Cambridge bike rack

Great North Way ride

Back in January, I did a nice long ride up to Bedfordshire via the Great North Way. It's a well-marked route between Potters Bar and Letchworth in Hertfordshire, following Sustrans route 12 for much of its 32-mile length. Navigation was made all the more easy by a great map published by the county, and available free from the route's website. (along with other maps of good routes in the area).

I biked up to Potters Bar via my usual route through Hampstead and Barnet, then followed the route precisely all the way up to Letchworth Garden City and got the train home from there.

The ride was really nice, all in all. But it was more interesting as a tour of suburban cycling infrastructure than for the scenery. It's actually much nicer off the route in the area - going straight through Welwyn Garden City and Stevenage are is a bit of a nuisance, but the cycling facilities in both towns are good and comprehensive, particularly the latter.

The start after Potters Bar is really very nice, but it's a little treacherous around the M25 underpass - it's nice to have a marked, traffic-free route, but the surface is no good and could be dangerous if any miscreants were loitering about. When I did the ride, it was just approaching 7am at that point, and the only illumination I had was my single headlight; I'd want to do it in real daylight next time.

There's a mix of surfaces over the route, including muddy nastiness (not too much, though), trafficked roads, and lots of nice traffic-free hardpack. One high point of foresty goodness is in Stream Woods (I think), alongside Hatfield.

Stevenage has a remarkable network of cycle paths which generally run along the main roads and then pretzel around under the many roundabouts. It's great if you want to go from the town centre to a giant box-shifter superstore on the outskirts, and there were plenty of walkers and cyclists who were clearly using the paths for transport. As a scenic sunday ride, though, I'd prefer to stick to the countryside.

A final highlight was around Letchworth, where there's a really nice network of traffic-free paths Garden City Greenway.

The biggest disappointment of the ride was my failure to get a look at Knebworth House (a giant privately-owned country mansion), despite skirting around the grounds for at least 20 minutes!

I rode all the way up to Bedfordshire, then turned around and came home. I probably won't do that ride again (unless I do it with others), but it was a nice objective for a day.

I took a crummy camera, but here are a few shots that came out.

A sustrans way marker in Stevenage

Where I had a good bacon sandwich

Many Stevenage paths are shared with mopeds

One of the better hardpacked dirt trails

Markers on Garden City Greenway

The end of the journey

Thorny gets a trim!

I took my Raven to Bicycle Workshop finally last Saturday for a quick tune and (more importantly) to get the top of the fork trimmed off. It looks much tidier now! I've also put on a Klik Fix map holder, which is great - it obscures the cyclometer, which doesn't cause any trouble because it isn't working anyway!

Advice from the Met

We saw this sign affixed to the cycle racks in Cavendish Square, behind John Lewis. Seems more like the work of a resourceful criminal looking for easy pickings than legitimate advice from the police!

Report on CCC Waltham Abbey ride

I've written up a small report on the ride I "led" to Waltham Abbey on December 18th on the Camden Cyclists website.

Kindred spirits at the zoo

No, not the residents of the monkey house! As we were on our way out, another couple cycled in with their 17-month-old perched in another Bobike seat just like ours, complete with windscreen!

I'd passed this couple with thier baby on the canal before, but that would have been a highly inconvenient time to talk. We had a quick chat this time, though. The Bobike Mini was mounted on a Dutch Filipak from a shop in the Netherlands called 't Mannetje. I had a look at the website, and there's some really interesting stuff there - lots of exotic but practical city and cargo bikes.

I told the chap at the zoo we're expecting another baby, and he recommended the t'Mannetje Filiduo for us. Interesting, but but I don't know about having TWO kids behind (let alone one), and the next one will be a bit young for that sort of thing anyway.

I wish we'd managed to exchange details, but I'm sure we'll run into them again - that bike is hard to miss!

Gem's first bike

I've been looking forward to this since before Gem was even conceived. When I saw the Like-a-Bike a few years back, I began anticipating the day when I'd have a child to buy one for, and that day has finally arrived!

We picked out the special edition Puffin from Velorution and Kim ordered over the phone. (It has a cute striped saddle, and it comes with a little puffin to ride along!) We had thought about getting the propstand with it, but Andrea assured us that we didn't need one, but we did go for a red matching saddle bag that drapes over the crossbar (of sorts).

I'd hoped to be able to pick it up myself, but work plus holiday pandemonium scuppered that plan. Instead, Velorution arranged to have it delivered by Zero Couriers on a three-wheeled Christiania, which attracted lots of attention by passers by when it arrived.


We kept it under wraps until Christmas morning. Gem was delighted with it of course! She's a bit small as yet, only able to touch both her tippitoes at once. She loves being pushed along, though, and she has lots of fun stuffing various things (the puffin included) into the saddle bags. We went out on Boxing Day for a trial run and she had a great time. We'll head out again once the weather improves a bit, or when we've got time to head to Kilburn Grange where she can have a proper go.


This is the start, though - her own custom-built Thorn just like daddy's is only around the corner!

London cycling around the holidays

Seems like ages since I last posted... well, that's the holidays for you. Since my last post, I had a lovely ride up to Waltham Abbey along the canals with a nice chap I met through the CCC - but nothing really notable to report apart from a nice pub lunch.

Visiting relatives and brutal colds all round then scuppered any chance of good cycling for a while. I did do lots of biking around for domestic stuff - picking up the Xmas turkey, seeking out proper marshmallows at the various American shops in NW London, etc. And with the closure of the Jubilee Line between Xmas & New Years (for train lengthening) and the Underground strike over New Year's, I've been all the more thankful for a reliable means of transport!

Cycling directions to LBS are up!

The cycling directions I wrote for London Business School are on their website now! I was pleased that they were so receptive, and they posted the blurb I sent virtually unchanged. May be a small thing, but I think I'll start offering to do this for others as well, and encourage my fellow activists to do the same.