Pedal for Scotland, riding from Glasgow to Edinburgh, is the Scottish equivalent of the London to Brighton mass participation ride. This year the money raised will support two Scottish childrens’ charities, Barnardo’s Scotland and Children First. It’s a 50-mile ride, mostly on quiet roads, with rest stops, refreshments and mechanical backup. The route is marshalled and signposted, there’s also free entertainment and the chance to talk to well-known personalities accepting the challenge beside you. The date : Sept. 17th (Sunday), choice of starting times between 9 and 10am. Entry costs only £7.50 and forms are available in most bike shops, or contact PfS, Box 13873, Portobello, Edinburgh EH15 3YE.
VeloCity is a one-week
major international cycling conference which is to be hosted next year jointly
by Edinburgh and Glasgow in mid September. It will coincide with the Pedal for
Scotland ride. Delegates will come from all over the world and we (CTC and Spokes)
will be asking local cyclists to offer accommodation (paid for, but at a budget
rate). The spin-off is the chance to meet interesting people who are enthusiastic
about cycling. The first two days will be in Edinburgh, the last two in Glasgow,
with a ride from Edinburgh to Glasgow (or part thereof) on the Wednesday. British
Waterways have agreed that the canal towpaths can be used - and even better,
they agree that the towpaths can be adopted as a Regional Cycle Route. The conference
will be the first to have an outreach programme to involve children and families,
to raise the profile of cycling in Central Scotland.
In recent years, the numbers attending on Wednesday evenings have been disappointingly
low. There is a variety of reasons - one might be a dull programme (I don't
think so!), another might be other engagements (quite likely - as Wednesday
is the middle of the week a lot of other organisations also meet on that evening),
another could be fatigue - too much bother to go out of a warm house into
the winter night. The Committee have been taking this one seriously. The Wednesday
run is one of the Club's more popular activities, and in the winter we tend
to get back about 4 o'clock as it is getting dark (and colder) by that time.
A shower, some dry clothes, food and it's about half-past six, another 30
minutes and we are dozing in front of the fire and the telly (do I sound as
if I'm writing from personal experience here?). The idea then of getting back
into cycling clothes to go up the hill and out to Roseburn, however good the
slide show might be, does not have a lot of attraction.
So we have decided to change the night to MONDAY, and are continuing the
practice of having a planned activity roughly every fortnight. Occasionally
things happen in the other week, but the Clubroom is open for those who want
to turn up. If by mid-December we find that the -˜blank' weeks are not being
used, then the committee feels that we should only open up when there is something
scheduled. It's a case of "Use it or lose it".
As the Burns Supper held in the Clubroom was such a success last year, it
is being repeated this session, and we have also decided to have the Ceilidh
in the Clubroom. These are MUST-BE-THERE dates.
We have a range of speakers (with slides) to share their experiences with
us. Most have not yet given us titles, so it's pot-luck - come along and be
surprised.
The Monday night sessions start on Sept 11th when Jimmy Kerray will help you fit mud-flaps. There's a break the next Monday (Edinburgh holiday) but the one after that is a DIY evening - come along with your holiday snaps and share them.
Please look carefully at the Calendar. As well as the runs lists, there are a number of other important events. Please put these in your diary NOW.
Last year, on 22 September, over 160 towns and cities in France, Germany
and Italy closed parts of their centres to cars for a day. This year there
are plans to stage a Europe-wide car free day on 22 Sept. - but not, alas,
in Scotland. However, the enterprising charity Active for SAMH, backed
by some of Edinburgh's biggest employers, are staging a Change Travel
Week, from Monday 18 Sept to Friday 22nd. The aim is to create an environment
in which we can all consider alternatives to car commuting - to try, even
just for a day, a different way of travelling about the city and the Lothians.
Active for SAMH believe gestures like this are a vital way of providing
us with a taste of how things might look with only small changes to our
commuting habits. Safer and quieter streets, where our children walk and
cycle to school and college, where buses trams and bikes take people around.
They believe they are not alone in wanting fewer accidents and deaths
on roads, less air pollution, noise, stress, community disruption and
economic inefficiency.
Regular car-free Sundays in more than 140 Italian cities, and the well-known
Home Zones in Holland, are enthusiastically welcomed by their people because
they make for safety, neighbourliness and a better quality of life. So
Active for SAMH invites you to make a change, try a different way to work,
to shop, to get around. To find out about the incentives available to
those who want to make a change, even for just a day, contact the Hotline
on 0131 467 7905.
 |
 The
traditional bike breakfast was augmented this year by the launch of
the National Cycle Network. Six rides were launched from Edinburgh,
to destinations as diverse as Melrose, St Andrews and Stirling. Receptions
with food and drink were held along the way, and rumour has it these
went on for so long that some riders never quite finished the course...The
biggest group however rode to Leith, where Transport Minister Sarah
Boyack hosted the reception and was nearly lifted off her feet by enthusiastic
children wanting to give her a hug. Better than dealing with traffic
congestion, no doubt! |
| CTC member, Don Johnson, being waved off from the City Chambers by the Lord Provost on June 21st |
A chance to hear the report of the year, put forward your views on how the Club should be run, and to vote for people to the Committee. Any organisation which attracts less than 5% of its membership to the AGM and has no competition for people wanting to join in its running would seem to me to be struggling for survival. The number taking part in the club runs is very small, yet the DA's membership is over 850. The committee needs feedback from members - why do you pay a subscription? what do you expect from the club? are we providing what you want? This is being done at a national level in the Vision 2000 survey, but we need to know at a local level as well. Come along, join in, vote.
Because of constraints on resources - people and money - we need to look
at what we do. For the last three years we have used Cycle Forth to communicate
with members in Lothians, Borders and parts of Dumfries & Galloway.
How effective is it? Is it worth it? What kind of newsletter should it be?
Should we make a charge? Should we send it only to those who specifically
ask for it? How do we tell people about our activities - social, runs, special
events, other relevant cycling events?
You can help us in one (or both) of two ways. We have arranged for an Open
Forum on this for Monday 16th October at 2000 in the Clubroom. (We could
also take questions and points on other topics at that meeting if time allows).
If you cannot make that evening because you live in deepest Dumfriesshire
or have another engagement, please email or write with your comments. Your
comments and encouragement would be welcomed.
Cycle Forth doesn't have to be written by just one or two people! You
can share your experiences with other members - little snippets of stories
or full accounts of your cycle touring holidays are all grist to the mill.
Last year when "Lothian Link" ceased to be produced by Don Johnson we
said that we would be happy to include narrative accounts in Cycle Forth.
It's obvious that all the interesting stories that appeared in "LL" did
so only because Don pestered people to put pen to paper. This is us, pestering
you now - how about some contributions?
Email them to Secretary-at-CTCLothians.org.uk, or post them.
The routine work of the Rights Rep - monitoring planning applications -
can be time-consuming but occasionally a success is a great boost to the
morale. Look at this, among the conditions for the residential development
on the former Powderhall Stadium site : "details of the proposed pedestrian/
cycle bridge to St Marks Park shall be submitted to the Head of Planning
before work is commenced... the bridge shall be completed within 6 months
of occupation" (reason: to provide occupiers with access to the adjacent
cycle route)"
"Prior to occupation, cycle path links are to be provided at the following
locations : a) between the site and Warriston Road, b) between the site
and the existing cycle route to the east of the site, c) along Logie Green
Road between site access and Warriston Road""(reason: to encourage cycling
as an alternative form of transport)"
"the developer shall provide traffic signals at the Broughton Rd/Logie
Gn Road junction"" "traffic calming schemes are to be installed on Warriston
Rd, Beaverhall Rd and Dunedin St" (reason: to stop rat-running (though not
put like that!))"
"traffic calming features to be placed on new roads within the site...and
a Traffic Regulation Order to be promoted, to limit vehicular speed within
the development to 20 mph".
Clearly the Council, with conditions like the last one, are moving in
the direction of Home Zones. It makes infinite sense to ensure that big
new residential developments like this (337 units) have the infra-structure
built in at the earliest stage, to give some priority to pedestrians, cycles
and children, rather than having to change the designs later at great expense.
These conditions grant everything we asked for, and more. City of Edinburgh Council are to be congratulated! If you see or write to your local Councillor, tell them so - they always like some good news! You could also congratulate them on the on-road cycling measures they have recently installed.
Routes 1 (Dover to Inverness) and 75 (Leith to Glasgow) both pass through the city, so the Council have been very active in devising appropriate routes and applying liberal doses of red paint, as you will have noticed. Teams were apparently working at 5am on June 21st, for completion by the deadline of that day - and they ran out of red chippings!
A big thank you to those who have already written to their MSPs about
the threat to the cycle route which crosses the A1 east of East Linton.
If you haven’t written, it’s still not too late. The closure of the route,
which will come about through the dualling of the A1, is in contradiction
of the Trunk Roads Cycling Initiative which promises ‘special consideration
to cyclists in all trunk road schemes’, and ignores the representations
made to the Public Inquiry by CTC, Spokes, Scottish Rights of Way Society,
the Ramblers, and over 20 individual cyclists, none of whom were consulted
when the original survey of use was carried out. The route is marked on
East Lothian’s cycling leaflet, and links directly to Tyninghame (coffee
shop) as well as to the John Muir Country Park and N Berwick. A footbridge
over the new road would cost less than 1% of the project! Ask your MSP to
raise the issue with Transport Minister Sarah Boyack.
Another new initiative was started this year as part of the Millennium
- a Cycling Festival with a difference in the Borders. The difference being
that the cycle rides were interspersed with entertainment, either music
or poetry, at rest places en route - usually pubs and cafes. The idea is
to celebrate the rich veins of literary and musical creativity for which
the Borders are famous. The Festival was based this year on three centres,
Peebles, Duns and Hawick. Rides of different lengths and grades, to suit
different abilities, were arranged from each centre over three days, and
a 'challenge' ride went from Peebles to Duns to Hawick, 170 miles over the
3 days.
Being the first year, numbers of participants were small, but the Festival
was voted a great success and the weather was excellent. The Borders is
much under-rated for its scenery, and the variety of terrain and the very
quiet roads make it an ideal choice for cycling. Certainly, those who came
from Down South couldn't believe how one could ride for so long without
meeting a single vehicle!
We hope the Festival will continue and become as popular as the Walking
Festival, which has been going for five years, at a different centre each
year. One problem is the lack of budget or hostel accommodation (an opportunity
for someone here!) but the area is very handy for Lothians cyclists. Don't
miss it next year - if it happens!
