By James Styring in Oxford Mail

[see live programme for latest details of Bike week rides ]
Forecasters are predicting warmer, drier weather for the rest of June, so there are no excuses for not getting out and about on a bike.

This year’s National Bike Week starts on Saturday, under the dubious banner of “Team Green Britain”, and in Oxfordshire there are a lot more rides than usual.

Cyclox, the organisers of the past six or seven local Bike Weeks, has joined forces with other county cycling groups to offer nearly 20 rides, from local jaunts with Cyclox for all ages and abilities, to a 60-mile CTC leg-stretcher. For full details, see cyclox.org.

Cycle Oxford (cycleoxford.com) will take you to the cycle speedway in Horspath, including (on 27 June) to watch local champions Horspath Hammers in a match against Southampton.

I have long intended to go on a Cycle Oxford “alleycat” – an interactive bicycle treasure hunt. On Friday, just before Bike Week officially starts, there’s a fancy dress themed alleycat, ending with a barbecue at their base in Glanville Road. And don’t miss Cycle Oxford’s introduction to bike polo on Wednesday next week, a novel and fun way to spend time on two wheels.

Sustrans and Isis have organised lots of rides mainly in the 10–25 mile range, taking you out into the Oxfordshire countryside. Remember, 25 miles isn’t far on a bike. An inexperienced cyclist can easily do 12mph on the flat, making 25 miles a two-hour breeze.

Sustrans is a sustainable transport charity which has built up the national cycle network, some parts of which feature in their rides.

Of particular note is National Route 5, linking Oxford, Abingdon and beyond. This virtually car-free route should be the default choice for any Abingdon–Oxford journey for at least nine months of the year: it is a gem.

New kids on the block Bainton Bikes are leading a ride to the Wychwood Brewery in Witney on Sunday, June 27. While all the other Bike Week rides are “turn up and go”, you have to book for this one.

The brewery normally charges for the tours but have kindly agreed to show Bike Week riders around for free. Book at info@baintonbikes.com, or call Oxford 365658.

Newcomers Abingdon Freewheelers are doing a tour from Abingdon Market Place visiting nature reserves, while Witney BUG are also arranging rides in west Oxfordshire, see cyclox.org/about/witneybikeweek2010/.

For those of you with workmates, it isn’t too late to get involved in the Oxford Cycle Challenge – a free, fun competition for employees trying to get as many of their colleagues as possible to cycle for just 10 minutes.

People can ride wherever they feel comfortable and at any time. It’s not just about cycling to work or cycling the most miles. It’s all about getting more people to experience cycling.

There are lots of prizes that you could win just by taking part. Register at oxfordcyclechallenge.org.uk or call organiser Dan Harris on 07526 690410.

The Oxford Cycle Challenge is part of a national CTC campaign in various UK cities, including Cambridge, which hopes to outdo Oxford’s efforts. Can Oxford do it? Yes, we can!

It was about time I cycled, I realised, rather than spending all my time writing and talking about it. Too often I’m asked what big rides I’ve done and I have to admit: I don’t cycle all that much. Sad but true.

That’s partly because I work at home and partly because I have to walk the dog any time I do a leisure ride. Don’t get me wrong, I do cycle everywhere that’s under 10 miles, but that isn’t a whole lot. The shops, the pub, a mate’s house, err… repeat.

Oxford Cycle Workshop is the antithesis of me. From the emails it sends to members, it clearly devotes time to long rides, short rides, fast rides, social rides, alleycats (treasure hunts), bike polo, fixing up your own bike – the list makes me feel positively lardy. So when I received the invitation to cycle on a Friday afternoon out to Wood Festival, 15 miles south of Oxford: “Dammit,” I thought, “Dammit! Yes, I can.”

And so the day came and the sun was shining brilliantly. I’d taken the afternoon off and spent an hour preparing for the ride in an ebullient mood. Miffed that I couldn’t find my Lycra shorts and wicking vest, I mustered all the tools I could carry and slipped them into a Camelbak with a ‘bladder’ full of water.

I arrived at OCW in Magdalen Road riding a flash carbon-fibre racing bike with clipless pedals. Instantly I felt like the jerk who’d turned up at a genteel cocktail party in outlandish fancy dress.

I was glad about that missing Lycra. Everyone waiting for the ride was – well – normal, with regular city bikes, open-toed shoes and panniers full of camping gear. One couple was even towing a trailer with a toddler in it.

I feared a plodding pootle but, in fact, the ride was awesome. We followed National Cycle Route 5 via Abingdon to Didcot and beyond, to Braziers Park.

There were a few stretches of fast-traffic roads, but mostly we followed cycle tracks and shady lanes. This is a ride anyone with an OS map or an iPhone could organise for themselves. I know I’ll be back for more.

The English countryside at this time of the year is jaw-droppingly beautiful. The nearer we got to Wood, the more picture-postcard perfect the landscape.

The two-hour ride took us three-and-a-half thanks to a few punctures and a broken spoke, and was all the better for this extension.

We arrived at Wood an hour before dark.

Immediately I wished I was staying for longer than one evening. The organisers are serious about getting festival-goers to avoid cars, and most gallantly award anyone who cycles to the festival a free pint. I claimed mine in a large tent labelled The Hippy Arms. The Cotswold Spring Lager was the best I’ve had all year.

As I reminisced on the way home, via Goring station (on the Oxford–London main line), three miles from Wood, I vowed I’d go to Wood for the full three days next year, though I will take advantage of the OCW courtesy van which carries cyclists’ baggage.

In the meantime, why not cycle to Wood’s sister festival, Truck, at Steventon in July?

Go on… you know you can!

Oxford is absurdly well-served by bike shops. Old and new, made-to-break jalopies, and top-end to-die-fors – you can get any bike under the sun.

Yet Cyclox has always been stumped by requests from Americans and Germans who want to hire bikes for work or leisure.

I give them the numbers of a few local shops that seem to hire bikes more by accident than design. You’ll see them, the cheaper ranges, chained in lines outside ready to be sold or (less commonly) hired to passersby. But to hire them online? You must be joking.

The Americans and Germans then want to discuss their plans for a bike tour of the Cotswolds on a tandem. Or a week’s jaunt along the Thames towpath to Windsor and back. And my heart sinks as I picture these poor souls labouring up steep Cotswold inclines with half a ton of Chinese steel between their legs.

Few of Oxford’s bike shops even have a web presence never mind offer bikes for hire online. And if you do hire a bike it costs so much in the medium term that you might as well have bought it in the first place.

The lack of bike hire is an absurd gap in a wide-open market. Or was, until Bainton Bikes appeared. Kevin Moreland and Honour Tomkinson have cycled all their lives in Oxford. Like me, they have a bike for every occasion and would end up lending them out to friends and family all the time. So much in fact that they realised Oxford was crying out for a proper bike hire service.

Today, you can hire any of 70 Bainton Bikes at great rates that plummet over time, making them as reasonable a proposition for 10 hen-party girls who want bikes for one day next weekend in the Chilterns, to visiting academics who want a hassle-free six-month hire. The service is web-savvy; they drop off and pick up, provide lights, locks and maps. They even repair and service your bike as required – and that includes puncture repair.

Hired a bike and got a flat in Wheatley? No problem. Kevin will be there as fast as his legs will carry him. And that’s quite fast – he rides a lovely Kona. Or if you get lucky it’ll be Honour.

The business is already doing so well that she has jacked in her day job as a teacher and is now Bainton Bike’s first full-time employee. And their top mechanic. Kevin admitted ruefully that Honour (who he trained) is now better at indexing gears than his is.

Bainton’s bikes are all recycled from the municipal pound. They look great in their black livery with one of Honour’s bespoke red saddle covers, and there are many flavours: city bikes, hybrids, mountain bikes, BMXs, even a tandem.

Oxford is full of tours on foot and by bus. But my American and German chums weren’t interested.

Could I tell them where to find a bike tour? By the time I’d explained how to get from Folly Bridge to the Isis pub they had, quite understandably, put the phone down. No longer. Bainton Bikes have offered bespoke bike tours for a while now and are about to launch a full range of regular tours.

The hire and tour business is booming so much there is little time for bike repairs, which is a pity.

They seem, however, to be transforming cycling in Oxfordshire.

Long live Bainton and all who ride her bikes.

For all its vibrancy and variety, the chronic traffic on Cowley Road in East Oxford is unbearable. Over the years, Oxfordshire’s love of the car has gone stratospheric.

Most of Oxford’s arterial roads, and those in the market towns, have heavy traffic at commuter times. A few, like Cowley Road, are rammed all day long.

The crawling queues start at 8am and stop-start traffic appears endlessly, car after car, all day until mid-evening. Certain events such as the Friday afternoon mosque time paralyse the local transport network for an hour, and school and Brookes terms make a big difference, but otherwise traffic is slow but relentless.

The preponderance of cars with single occupants is astounding. The cost of car driving has plummeted annually since the 1970s. Way too many people can now afford to drive, and they do so way too often.

Heavy traffic is stressful, but the invisible spectre of air pollution should not be forgotten. Even modern vehicles emit a lethal cocktail of gases such as nitrous dioxide.

Poisonous gases are at such toxic levels on the congested arterial roads that Oxford may become an Air Quality Management Area (AQMA). County Hall applauds the individual’s choice to drive, but when that choice renders the road network useless and we all choke on the fumes – what kind of choice is that?

The AQMA means the county council will have to come up with special anti-pollution measures. What measures?

The obvious answer is fewer drivers, more cyclists. All the evidence shows that no one measure works in isolation. The approach adopted by the first six cycle demonstration towns, including Aylesbury, using a range of “soft” and “hard” measures has resulted in a huge rise in cycling.

The soft measures are the most effective but time-consuming. Council officers go door-to-door offering tailored “personal travel plans”. When people realise how quickly and cheaply their three-mile commute or school run can be done using a bike, it is amazing how many people make the switch from car. Eighty per cent of UK journeys are shorter than five miles and 50 per cent are shorter than three miles, so you can see the potential for increases in cycling.

The hard measures mean putting bikes first at junctions, giving bikes filters at traffic lights and making the cycle route network properly joined up and suitable for novice and regular cyclists. Proper mass-cycle parking systems are needed in the city centre.

In Oxfordshire, the big institutions should play their part. A huge number of cars in Oxford belong to students. Brookes in particular needs to do more to discourage students from driving. It should enforce the rule that students in halls can’t bring cars – hundreds flout it.

Oxford University should find a way of making its colleges relinquish hundreds of their car parking spaces.

The Post Office seems to be going backwards. It should encourage posties to use those lovely red Pashley bikes to do their rounds, instead of phasing in vans.

The city council has a pathetic record for ensuring that new properties are built with the legal number of cycle stands. Some worshippers do cycle to the Manzil Way mosque, which has parking for 100 cars, but there is not a single cycle parking stand.

How long must we wait for the cycling nirvana?

Sir – Your 20mph speed survey (Report, March 4) came to an odd conclusion. Despite finding that more drivers are obeying the law, it starts, “Driving experts questioned the need for Oxford’s 20mph limits after it emerged motorists are still ignoring the restrictions.”

Must drivers only comply with laws they believe are fair, then? No one would apply this weird logic to any other law. If a law is flouted, surely lack of enforcement is the problem, not the measure itself.

The speed survey on Morrell Avenue found a ten per cent improvement in motorists obeying the law since September 2009. Only 38 per cent were going over 25mph. That’s a great improvement on a road where speeds were often over 40mph. Nationally, speeds on 30mph roads average just over 30, and on 20mph roads just over 20. This is, I suspect, what planners want for Oxford.

It is ironic that Morrell Avenue isn’t technically 20mph. The 20mph zone “entry” sign at the bottom of the hill has never been installed, so perhaps no one broke the law after all!

Accidents aside, there are many reasons why 20mph matters. Communities across the city asked for streets that are quieter, pleasanter places to live.

Novice cyclists are encouraged to venture out in slower, less threatening traffic.

Everybody can cross roads more easily. People can sleep better. The limits weren’t introduced to benefit drivers, so it can be hard for drivers to see the point. Yet lower speeds make life better for everyone at little cost to drivers.

While 20mph might feel “too slow”, driving at 30mph makes scant difference to cross-city journeys. You are simply zooming to the next queue.

Better road designs that support 20pmh are incredibly expensive. Until we can afford them, why can’t our police enforce the law?

James Styring
Chair, Cyclox – the cycling campaign for Oxford
07792 375423 www.cyclox.org
letter

IT IS six months since Oxford’s 20mph zones were introduced. How are they treating you? Your answer will probably depend on whether or not you drive.

On the one hand, drivers can’t see the point of 20mph. On the other, 20mph is better for people who walk, cycle, or use wheelchairs.

Pretty much everybody in society benefits – even the most hardcore drivers walk sometimes. more

Read more.

Cycling in the snow is fun. In case you missed it, here’s how to do it next time we freeze up.

Preparation is key
Clothes-wise, the rules for cycling are the same as walking around in-5 ºC. Feet need hiking boots or, for the serious snow cyclist, neoprene overshoes. Leggings of some sort under the jeans are essential: what feels chilly on the flat will feel like you’re having your legs peeled when you’re freewheeling down a (gritted) hill. Breathable or wicking layers on the upper body will prevent you from turning into a boil-in-the-bag lobster.

At slow, snowy speeds, a woolly beanie may seem more important than a helmet. If you want to wear a helmet, you could wear wrap-around ear-warmers that fit below where the helmet goes. Whatever you choose, I’d counsel against perching a helmet on top of any sort of woollen hat. This not only looks ridiculous but, more importantly, it’s pointless. At the risk of stating what should be blindingly obvious: helmets don’t fit and therefore won’t protect your head if worn over a hat.

Falling snow makes it hard to keep your eyes open. You’ll need clear cycling glasses to cycle while it’s snowing – maybe builders’ eye protectors would do the trick.

In very cold weather, you might as well leave your bike computer at home. The batteries freeze below about -10 ºC. Don’t worry if you forget, as the cold won’t damage the computer, it’ll just carry on working once it’s warmed up again.

No front braking
The single most important thing to remember is not to use your front brake. In normal conditions, you should use the front brake first. The rear brake is a weak auxiliary. In the snow and ice, the rules are reversed. Avoid the front brake! If it locks up, you will lose control instantly. In my case, this was easy to remember. The front brakepads on my mountain bike are worn out, so I only had the option of using the rear brake. On your bike, it might even be worth disconnecting the front brake so you can’t use it by mistake. Just remember to reconnect it when you get to a snow-ploughed and de-iced main road.

At corners, turn slowly and wide. Never brake while you’re turning. Brake in a straight line. Use higher gears than usual to avoid wheel spin. On roads that have been cleared, ride in the middle of the cleared area, away from the slush. On side roads, it may be safer to cycle through loose snow rather than snow that’s been compacted by car tyres as this is often very slippery and icy. Watch out for sliding cars and speeding snow ploughs. Listen out: scrunching snow is good. Silence means ice – and danger. Black ice is especially dangerous and hard to spot. If you find yourself gliding silently over ice, never brake – just freewheel to a stop, then get off and push.

Skinny tyres with no grip are as useless in snow as car tyres without snow chains. Some hybrid bikes have tyres with chunky enough treads, but ideally you want mountain bike tyres fully pumped to avoid snakebite punctures. You can actually buy ice tyres with metal studs built in, but they’re more for the Pennines than the Headington Hill.

So, with the next big snowfall, get out on a fat-tyred bike, relax and enjoy. You’ll probably have the road to yourself most of the time.

James Styring

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