2wheel kid meets Islabikes

I have heard of Islabikes but I have never ridden one. I guess it stands to reason as I am not a child or a small person - which is the target market for this range of bikes. A few local female cycle racers who are 5ft tall (1m 50) ride them and they have given good feedback about them.

When I was offered the chance to test one out I was obviously unable to try it out myself. Instead I found a willing volunteer - my niece.

As she is only just starting out with bike riding she is trying the Cnoc 16. I must say the bike looks pretty cool. We've got it in pink, one of her favourite colours - no surprises there for a little girl!

The first thing I noticed when I lifted the Cnoc 16 out of the box was how light it was. Some children's bikes can be quite heavy. But this was surprisingly light. It would surely be an advantage for the little girl who will have to wheel it around and ride it!

I haven't put the pedals on it yet, as right now we are using it as a pseudo balance bike. Apparently that is the more modern approach to teaching children how to ride a two-wheeler.

And the verdict so far on the Cnoc 16 from my niece? "It's great!" she says.
More updates on how she is getting on will follow.

Shoot Story - Virginia Water

In the latest edition of Cycling Active is my article on a bicycle ride around Virgnia Water and Windsor Great Park.

The photo shoot for this took place almost a year ago - in August, on the day of the Ride London bike festival. As I was also going to be reporting on that event which was taking place in Central London I needed to do this photo shoot quite early in the morning so as to finish early.

I met with Roo, the photographer at around 8pm. It was a lovely sunny morning for this - perfect for a leisure ride around the park. It was also handy to get there early as there were more and more dog walkers turning up - and in those areas the pooch rules the roost! The folks around there turn up with their prestigious purebreds, and they have priority over the paths. This is no place for a cyclist to be hogging the path when people are giving their King Charles Spaniels and their Dalmatians and their Beagles a doggie parade along the catwalk in front of Virginia Water Lake!

It had been a couple of years since I was last at Virginia Water. The last time I was there was about four years ago - this time with a different photographer, and on a longer route. That was a more challenging day for me as I hadn't been feeling very well and the photographer had travelled down from Sheffield to do the work. I hadn't even been able to appreciate the beauty and splendour of Virgina Water Lake and the adjoining Windsor Great Park.

Today was a different matter. I had a real feel-good factor as it was the height of summer. Also, as I was on a leisure bike dressed in civvies everything felt quite leisurely, especially as the ride was just 10 miles. Having said that, the ride wasn't without effort. The ride up to the Copper Statue near the Long Walk was still just as challenging, and I had to push a fair bit. My bike for the day was a Raleigh Cameo Green, which I was testing out. I have to say that even though the bike doesn't have the range of gears on a road bike it still did the trick getting me up the hill and I felt quite comfortable in the saddle.

Also there was a long section around the Savill Building where the path was unsurfaced so it was more like an off-road ride. I was later rewarded by a lovely descent from the Windsor Great Park Village back into Virginia Water. We stopped off at the Village Store and Post Office for a tea stop - a popular stopping point for cyclists. But I have to admit I was more in the mood for an ice cream from one of the many Wall's Vans dispersed around the route.

I would definitely recommend this route - even if you're not on a bike this is a lovely place to hang out. And you don't even need to have a dog!

10 soundbites from.....the Aviva Women's Tour

So the Women's Tour has been and gone. I wasn't able to follow the first edition of the race last year, but I managed to follow the different stages this year. Trying to second guess how the race would unfold each day, and who would be the overall winner was pretty exciting, and there was some exciting racing throughout the week. This has become a great event on the women's pro cycling calendar. I caught up with some of the riders and they were very positive about how their week had been.


Stefan Wyman (Director Sportive, Matrix Pro Cycling): "We had a few goals in the race and to be in the feature break was one of them, and to be on the podium either with a stage or a jersey was the key goal for us, so we did it. Elinor [Barker] is an unsung hero, and it is really difficult to transition from the track to the road so it was nice that she had the best British rider jersey for a time. It wasn’t all Laura [Trott] and it took the pressure off Laura. I think they did really well as a team so they should be really happy."



Dame Sarah Storey: "The first four stages were very samey, but the last stage was a lot more interesting. We need to get to a point where we don’t have five bunch sprints. It’s quite exciting potentially for watching, but as riders it’s nice to have another opportunity to put other types of riders up to win a stage. I would have liked to have seen long hilly climbs. They are the races I tend to target. The support we got from the side of the road was absolutely phenomenal, so to the people who supported us, I can’t thank them enough."


Lisa Brennauer (Yellow Jersey): "This is the biggest victory of my career so far. I have really enjoyed the racing here in the UK and it was great to see so many crowds when we were racing."


Melissa Hoskins (Queen of the Mountains): "I came into the QOM competition for a bit of fun and something for the team to do, but then I decided to do everything I could to defend it. It was something unexpected, even for myself. It’s been brilliant racing in England. The crowds have been fantastic.  I was overwhelmed with how many people were so interested in what we are doing. We don’t get that anywhere else in Europe. It’s a nice change to feel important for what you are doing, and inspiring young kids to do cycling."


Helen Wyman: "I have found the week fun, with really safe riding. There’s not been very many crashes. This is fantastic training for the 'cross season. You need to be as fit as you can be to train hard for 'cross. These are just really great base miles."   


Hannah Barnes (Best British Rider/Stage 5 winner): "In America we are one of the biggest teams, but here we are one of the small teams so we wanted to get stuck in and not be afraid to show our face. I’ve been focussing on my climbing this winter and my coach Jenny Gretton has helped me improve a lot this year. I always made sure I was in a good position when going into the bottom of the climb and I was on the right side of the split. In the last stage I just stayed near the front and hoped for it to come down to a sprint. I love following Alexis’s [Ryan] wheel during the race. She’s really nice to follow. I call her the Alexis bubble! The roads are wider in the States. So in terms of positioning you get a bit lazy because you know that in two seconds you can be at the front, whereas here it can take you an hour to get to the front, and less than a minute to drop to the back!"



Rachel Heal (Director Sportive, UnitedHealthcare Procycling): "With Hannah being at home and with the race being local to her she has had a lot of other pressures to deal with so the last couple of days we tried to kind of relax Hannah so she could be able to just focus on bike racing. Hannah has been sprinting really well all week and she had got top 5 a few times so we knew that she was fast enough
to get a win. To put it all together, and to be in the right place and to sprint at the right time, is just fantastic, especially on the last day." 



Sue Barnes (Hannah Barnes's mum): "It was so close, and I didn’t realise Hannah had won until they said so on the tannoy, and I was just jumping up and down. I am very proud of her right now. I work in a stationery shop – Colemans in Arundel. I did a Hannah window in the shop. It’s gone a bit viral on Twitter and the takings have gone up massively this week! I am keeping it there until the end of the National Championships where my other daughter, Alice will be racing too. We all do a bit of cycling but the girls' granddad was a very good time triallist in his day so they must get that from him as well. I have been to all the stages, and Hannah's gran, who is 87,
has been to three of the stages with me. We were at the start, the finish and lots of different parts of he course. It has meant a lot to Hannah to have her family there."


Will Mangar (Race doctor): "I have felt the racing has been faster this year and more flowing and more seamless. There's been a palpable shift in quality and skill level with the ladies' riding this year. It was difficult last year, with the rain. We had so many girls spinning off and there was lots and lots of road rash, This year everyone's been good. What I've noticed is there's less injuries but to be honest, these girls are tough. They are really made of strong stuff and it takes a lot for them to not want to get back on the bike."





Marianne Vos: "The crowd support has been fantastic! It's really cool to see all the schoolkids around and coming out of their schools, supporting, cheering for the riders and cheering for the Tour. You really feel that cycling is really popular in Britain."




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Fun at the Women's Tour



  

Fun at the Women's Tour

The Women's Tour was in town the week before last. I wasn't able to go down to watch all of the stages as I was working all week, but I did make it down to Marlow to see the final stage.

Having been to Marlow the previous week to meet the Wiggle Honda girls for a press ride to recce this stage I knew where I would need to go to track down the event.

Actually, it wasn't that difficult since all the bunting and road closures that I found when I got into the Marlow area were a sure sign for exactly where to go.

The first people I saw on my arrival, even before I'd picked up my media accreditation badge were the race doctors. Very handy as I was due to write a story about the doctor's role in the race for Cycling Weekly.

After quickly introducing myself and picking up my badge I caught up with the doctors, Will Mangar (right) and Matt Gray, who had been the first to the scene when Lizzie Armitstead crashed immediately after winning stage 1. It's always good to be able to be able to get one of your key interviews done early so you can focus on other aspects of the event for stories.

My next job was to sort out how I was going to get to the finish town at Hemel Hempstead. I didn't have a car, there were no direct trains and the indirect trains would not get me there in time for the finish.

Marianne Vos (centre) club run

The race route was around 100km, but there was a 40km short cut across the Chiltern Hills. World and Olympic Champion Marianne Vos was not racing the Women's Tour due to injury but she was in the UK to co-present TV coverage with Ned Boulting for ITV. On a few stages she had led a group ride to get from the start town to the finish town via a direct route.

On this day she was planning to do the same, but I felt too unfit to join her. I would have had to bust a gut to keep up with Marianne Vos's leisurely pace. (I had already experienced that a few days earlier when riding with the Wiggle Honda girls!) 

Hannah Barnes Best British rider

I feared I would arrive in Hemel Hempstead a sweaty, tired mess, trying to interview pro racers. They would look fresher after racing 100km than I would look after riding 40km! Travelling in a car was the most sensible option.

Thankfully, Sarah from Pro Women's Cycling website put me in contact with Alistair, who was driving the Press car that week, and is also the President of Scottish Cycling. So I managed to travel with him and Larry from VeloUK Cycling Mag to Hemel Hempstead. Really grateful to the guys for helping me out.Once those tasks were out of the way I managed to chat to different folks, take a few photos and enjoy the day - especially the victory of Hannah Barnes on this last very hilly stage. All in all, it was a fun day.



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10 Sound bites from....the Aviva Women's Tour

Election campaigning - Vote bike??!!

It's been going on since January. These four months of General Election campaigning have been filled with pledges for this, pledges for that, Punch and Judy politics, politicians feeding cute lambs and reading stories at less than enthusiastic primary school children! David Cameron has even declared himself a football fan - shame he got confused about which team he supports! And we've even had a big pink bus - specially to attract female voters (??)

Thankfully we are in the home strait, even if we have no idea who's gonna win the election race. This lack-lustre general election campaign has been a glut of vacuous policies, peppered with repetitive backbiting. How are we to decipher who to vote for??

I guess as a start point I could see what the parties promise for cycling.

These guys must have a bit more to say than "long term economic plan" and "tighten our borders and leave the EU"....

What do they have to say to the about the everyday man or woman in the street on a bicycle?

After all, the Infrastructure Act was passed earlier on this year, requiring the government to set a cycling and walking investment strategy on our roads. Furthermore, with all the campaigning being done by the likes of CTC, The Times Cities fit for Cycling, and Cycling Commissioner Chris Boardman, some of that must have rubbed off onto the politicians.

So what do the different political manifestos say?

The Labour Party gives a couple of mentions on cycling:

"We will continue to support the construction of High Speed Two, but keep costs down, and take action to improve and expand rail links across the North to boost its regional economies. We will support long-term investment in strategic roads, address the neglect of local roads, and promote cycling."

"We will embark on the biggest devolution of power to our English city and county regions in a hundred years with an English Devolution Act. It will transfer £30 billion of funding to city and county regions, along with new powers over economic development, skills, employment, housing, and business support. This will include control over local transport systems so that in future, local bodies can integrate trains, buses, trams and cycling into a single network. We will enable city and county regions to retain 100 per cent of additional business rates raised from growth in their area."

That's a bit slim, and no specific detail is given to exactly how much will be spent on promoting cycling. At least the Conservative Party give us some numbers.

"We will make motoring greener and promote cycling, to protect your environment. Our aim is for almost every car and van to be a zero emission vehicle by 2050 – and we will invest £500 million over the next five years to achieve it. We want to double the number of journeys made by bicycle and will invest over £200 million to make cycling safer, so we reduce the number of cyclists and other road users killed or injured on our roads every year."

I'm not sure how much can be done for cycling throughout the whole of the UK with that sum over five years. Currently Paris is embarking on an a project to improve its cycling infrastructure. The budget for the French capital alone is €150m. Shame on the Tories with its £200m for the whole country!

If the two major political parties don't have much to say about cycling in their manifestos the smaller political parties don't seem to fare much better.

The Liberal Democrats mention cycling in their manifesto in relation to policies on improving air quality, an pledge to introduce "New incentives for local schemes that cut transport-related pollutions, and encourage walking and cycling."

The manifesto continues:

To promote innovation and greener transport choices we will:

• Support options for an intercity cycleway along the HS2 route, within the overall budget for the project.
• Implement the recommendations of the Get Britain Cycling report, including steps to deliver a £10 a head annual public expenditure on cycling within existing budgets.
• This will allow greater investment in cycling including bike lanes, high-volume secure bike parking, and road safety measures to keep cyclists safe.

How happy would I be riding along a cycle path with high-speed trains zooming past me every few minutes. Hmm'nice! Of course the big question with the Lib Dems, more so than other parties is will they actually implement these plans if they entered a coalition government, or will they keel over and renege on things like they did with tuition fees?? 

It's no surprise that the party that gets five stars on its cycle policy is the Greens, which has cycle policy at the heart of its infrastructure and environmental policy. Using the work they have done in Lancaster and Brighton as the example, the Greens pledge to continue the work they have done to make the streets more welcoming for cyclists by restricting speed limits on the streets to 20 mile per hour, developing cycle hubs at train stations, setting up priority access for cyclists at junctions, and building more areas for secure cycle parking.

Neither UKIP nor the Scottish Nationalist Party give specific mention to cycling in their manifestos. The Welsh Nationalist Party (Plaid Cymru) has a one liner saying it "will ensure funding for urban cycle paths and between communities, particularly in travel to work areas."

A number of politicians are seen cycling around Westminster. There is an All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group, which organises a cycle ride every year. But I guess that's just as gimmicky as David Cameron proving his sustainability credentials by cycling to work while his ministerial car carrying his suit and shoes follows behind him!

So, there you have it - a rather sorry picture of government cycling policy in this country. None of the mainstream parties have got their wheels properly into motion!

Vote bike?! Well, that's going to be easier said than done.

10 soundbites from......David Millar

I caught up with David Millar at the recent Bike Expo in Manchester. I must say, having gotten used to seeing him in cycle racing kit over the course of the last twelve years it was quite refreshing to see him in civvies. And he looked quite stylish at that. Since rounding off his 18-year professional racing career last October he's been pretty busy, writing a book, designing a new clothing line, and becoming a Maserati ambassador for the Tour of Yorkshire.

He managed to find a few minutes to chat to me for before he did his Questions & Answers session with Rob Hayles on the stage. Here are a few quotes from my interview with David Millar and when he was on the stage with Rob Hayles.

"When I stopped racing it didn’t feel as though I’d stopped because I had 3 months of having operations and having things done with my hands after crashing during the Tour of Spain.

We do thrash ourselves a fair bit over our careers and you only really realise it when you stop. I am quite shocked to know I do this much damage to myself.

I was quite surprised to be asked to represent the Cyclistes Professionelles Associes (CPA) at the extreme weather protocol meetings. I never ever thought I’d be doing stuff with the union that’s for sure. I used to think, "gee shoot me in the head".

I am based in Girona so I see some of my friends there like Ryder Hesjedal and Dan Martin. I will definitely hook up with them to ride on their recovery days. I won’t join them on their training days, that’s for sure!

We had a great year when Brad (Wiggins) was with us (in Garmin) in 2009. It was a bit complicated the way he left, but we had great times when we were racing together. He was always very serious and very professional.

The modern British cyclist is different to the cyclists of my generation or before. We had to ship out to France, Spain, Italy or Belgium and learn the language. Now you can become a pro and live in Essex, and never have left!

At my first Tour de France in 2000 racing for Cofidis, people thought we were at the vanguard of technology but it was far from that. I had just one bike to race and train with and bought my wheels and my handle bars.

I would have like to have ridden for team Sky, but with zero tolerance it was impossible. I was very lucky for the final part of my career to be on a team that I loved.

[Following the death of Wouter Weylandt in the 2011 Giro d'Italia] Wearing the pink jersey was something I’d always dreamt of doing. And there I was trying on the pink jersey and the whole place had fallen to pieces. The next morning I realised I had to take control and lead the peloton and it was such a very sad day.  I was quite proud that I was given that responsibility.

I had originally wanted to go to art college, but now with my new clothing line I have designed I have ended up doing what I always wanted to do I suppose." 

 

My interview with David Millar can be found in the latest Cycling Weekly magazine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leisure Cheshire Bike Ride

A ride through the hills of the Goyt Valley or the Cat and Fiddle climb near Macclesfield is lovely on the eye, but tough on the legs - especially when you are unfit, like me. Instead, the Cheshire Plain is a less onerous alternative.

One route that I like is to ride from Macclesfield via Broken Cross and then down the sweeping country lanes towards Siddington. There is a main road to cross, the A34, after which you arrive in the village of Lower Withington. I have good memories of this area as it's where I did a "lads 'n' lasses" 2-up time trial with the Manchester Wheelers. All I had to do was to ride in the slipstream of a guy who made a big hole in the air for 10 miles. The road was flat and I was shielded from the slightest wind. I wish all time trials were like that! Then we went for a pub meal afterwards at the Red Lion pub. Happy days!

From Lower Withington I find some even quieter roads which lead to the famous observatory at Jodrell Bank. I would have liked to ride a bit closer to the radio telescope but some of the roads shown on my map turned out to be off limits on the bike, so I pressed on with the rest of my ride to other nearby villages.

The best thing was that once I had left the main A535 road there was barely any traffic at all. At one point the road swooped down a lovely twisty descent, below the railway line and I felt like I was just out in my own private world of cycle lanes. Well, my world of Peover and Chelford!

I finally reach "civilisation" in the shape of the Chelford Island - not particularly exotic, it's just an asymmetric roundabout on the Knutsford Road. Soon I'm heading out towards the Chelsea of the North, Alderley Edge. In fact, I don't reach the heart of the Village with its smattering of Mancunian soap opera actors or footballers. I prefer to go properly to the edge - the chalky escarpment that gives views all over Cheshire and beyond.

Escarpment, I hear you cry? I said it is a flat ride, but in fact, dear reader, there is one teeny climb in the ride - Artists Lane. It's a popular climb in the area and often included in cyclosportive events. I said teeny, but in fact, dear reader it goes on for about 10 minutes if you have average fitness.

So, compared to Alpe d'Huez or Tourmalet it is a tiny baby! The only thing is because the road twists you are never quite sure when you are near the top, and that makes it a real slog at the end of your ride. That's exactly how it felt for me, as an unfit forty-something. At least I wasn't alone, for this is a popular road with cyclists - some of whom gave me sympathetic encouragement!

After tea and cake at the Wizard Pub and a quick look at the Cheshire plain panorama it's a nice steady descent back to Macc. Not a bad little leisure ride.  

Route map for this ride.