Twice over the Giant of Provence

 

RIDERS will  twice race over the feared Giant of Provence, the legendary 1910-metre high Mt Ventoux on stage 11 of the Tour de France in July!

Twice in one afternoon!

Wow. That was my first reaction, upon seeing the course in my Tour guide.

My second reaction was to ask, is this wise?

It is 54 years since Tommy Simpson died after collapsing in intense heat on the cruel slopes of Mt Ventoux, in the 1967 Tour. The temperature was over thirty two degrees Celsius.

He had been unwell. Drugs were said to a contributing factor, as was alcohol and a stomach complaint. 

The tragedy further tainted the mountain’s reputation as a hostile place, unlike any other climb.

Punishing mountainous terrain routinely push riders to their physical limits.  On the grand tours they represent the ultimate athletic challenge.

And the Ventoux is prone to sudden changes in the weather, strong winds which can blow you off your bike, extreme heat, extreme cold even in the summer months, fog.

Officials halted a sportive there some years ago now, when riders became distressed as the temperature dropped to near freezing at the summit.

This year, the race climbs it twice in the space of two hours, ascending via the south face as is usual, and descending the north, to pass through the lovely town of Malaucene at the base, finishing there next time round.

In 1967 Tom had been clearly unwell in the days before the Ventoux stage. “Why don’t you pack it in, Tom?” Sid Saltmarsh, reporting the race for Cycling, said to him, not unkindly.

Stopping was unthinkable for Tom, the first Briton to wear the famed Yellow Jersey

of race leader in 1962 when he finished 6^th overall.

He was a star of the single-day classics, most notably winning the Tour of Flanders; Bordeaux Paris; Milan-San Remo; and in 1965 a famous double, the World Road Championship followed by the Tour of Lombardy.

In 1967 he was lying seventh overall in the Tour, where he led a British team. He desperately wanted to win outright.

His dream cruelly ended two kilometres from the summit, when he collapsed when trying to a bridge gap to a group of favourites.  He was flown by helicopter to hospital where he died that same evening.

The Tour was shocked. The tragedy was reported across the world.

The memorial to Tom Simpson, erected and paid for with contributions from readers of CYCLING.

Was the Ventoux culpable, asked Mirror Sprint in their detailed report the following week.

Non, said the majority of riders.

So perhaps I’m over- reacting. After all, there are only two fourth category climbs before the two ascents of the Ventoux which is rated 1^st category.

Tour stages often include four or five, even six cols.

In 1967 that fateful stage covered 211.5 kilometres, not much further than the 198.9 this year.

But the overall distance of the ’67 Tour was much, much longer at 4,779.8 kilometres, making it 1,400 kilometres longer than the 2021 edition.

Modern day Tours are much shorter, so it is argued less stressful. On the other hand the speed is now higher.

Whatever the differences may be, the Simpson tragedy still sends shivers down the spine.  Tour riders feared that mountain more than  other climbs. Do the current crop of supermen feel that way?

It was 20 years following Simpson’s death before the Tour went up the Ventoux again. This was 1987 and I was covering the Tour for Cycling Weekly. The stage was a time trial, held later in the day, to avoid the midday day sun.  It was won by Frances’s Jean-Francois Bernard.

The rule is, never ride this mountain around noon, the hottest part of the day. And that goes for anyone, not just the Tour riders.

Mount Ventoux holds a special place in my heart. For in 1997, on the thirtieth anniversary of Tom’s death, I joined his daughter Joanne and a small group of her close friends and relatives including Tom’s teammate Barry Hoban to ride the mountain. The group included a grandson of Tom, who rode part of the way, plus his nephew, Chris Sidwells.

We were blessed with fine sunny weather, not too hot, hardly any wind.

Joanne’s aim had been to take the name Simpson to the top, to complete the course for her dad. And she did so in style; leading our group past the memorial to her father.  She was four years old at the time of the tragedy .

Then we all retraced to the memorial two kilometres below the summit, to the spot where he fell.

There we met up with the rest of the party. They included Tom’s widow Helen (now married to Barry Hoban), Joanne’s sister Jane, plus Vin Denson, another member of that ill-fated British team.

It was both an emotional and enjoyable occasion for Joanne and everyone there.

I have crossed most of the major mountains in France when covering the great race - by car. The Ventoux is the only one I have ascended by bike.  And descended the other side!

Clearly I will be glued to the television coverage of stage 11, to relive my own experience.

Having raised my concerns at the severity of the Tour crossing the mountain twice, it should be noted that that the first approach is via the less severe climb from Sault – the Lavender Route - our chosen route back in ’97.  It is a less arduous ascent at 5 per cent average, but longer at 24 kilometres.

The traditional shorter but far steeper route via Bedoin is 21 kilometres of climbing.  And they take this route the second time up.

Both routes converge at Chalet Reynard, where the gradient ramps up for the final six gruelling kilometres above the tree line. Here riders are exposed to the glaring sun reflected back from the barren white rocky, lunar-like landscape.  This place can be like a furnace at the height of summer. 

The fastest schedule has the riders crossing the summit first time at around three thirty in the afternoon, the second time at around five.

The road over the Ventoux literally goes over the very top of the mountain, passing to the right of the observatory there which from afar looks like a rocket poised to go the stars.

They will catch the first glimpse of their target as they pass through Sault, the slim outline of the observatory atop a white summit ablaze in sunlight a long way away.  

Unlike many other mountain climbs which zig zag their way to the top, the

final six kilometres of the Giant of Provence makes a bee-line for the top. The road,  a thin ribbon of tarmac snaking  up around the  exposed flanks of the bald mountain under the glare of the sun,  rising inexorably  towards its distant goal, up there in the sky.

 And once the summit is reached you really are in the sky. There is nothing higher.  It is spectacular, a breath-taking panorama on a clear day.

Our “Simpson” group took an hour 40 minutes for the 24km from Sault to the summit.

We rode a measured pace, taking our time, chatting away - until conversation petered out on the steeper slopes after Chalet Reynard!

The race will climb this first ascent in just under an hour. Probably not much talking going on.

I took 40 minutes to descend cautiously the 21km to Malaucene afterwards.  It was both amusing and a touch disconcerting see a hang glider riding the thermals – below me!

The fastest Tour riders will take 20 minutes!

Malaucene is the stage finish, so the temptation could be to take risks on roads which broaden out as they sweep down to the valley. Perhaps crashing on this descent is where the real danger lies this year.

 

 

Froome, a shadow of his former self

 

I don’t know about you, but I can’t see Chris Froome being picked to ride the Tour de France for his team Israel Start Up Nation when it starts later this month. Not on his poor showing so far this season, as he struggles to find form after recovering from that horrendous crash in 2019,  when  the four times Tour champion was doing a recon of the tt course in France’s Criterium du Dauphine.

He’s riding the 2021 Dauphine as I write this - traditionally a selection race for the Tour. He's won it three times in the past! 

But he lost two minutes to the winner of the stage three 16km TT on Wednesday, won by Kazakh Alexey Lutsenko (Astana), an event he would normally be expected to win.

Commentators were agreeing Froome must be doubtful for the Tour, even though Froome himself insists he will be ready. Out of respect for his reputation as giant killer and for his resilience in refusing to give up, they are reserving judgement.

I’m watching ITV4’s nightly review of the Dauphine and enjoying every minute of the expert commentary from Ned Boulting and Dave Millar.

I prefer to record the program and view it immediately afterwards. This enables me to fast forward through ITV4’s  commercial breaks which are so long I almost forget which program I am watching.

ITV4’s cycling shows are every bit as incisive as the Breakaway team on Eurosport’s Giro coverage last month but minus the wow factor of Eurosport's  presenter Orla in her dazzling outfits.  

Of interest to Ned and Dave was the fact that the stage four time trial at 16.4 kilometres  was more or less the same distance of Boras’ Lukas Postlberger’s  surprise lone breakaway when he gamely held off the charging pack to win stage two and take the yellow jersey .

Would knowing the distance was the same inspire the Austrian national road champion to greater efforts in his defence of the yellow jersey? It probably did, and wearing the coveted leader's jersey is known to boost confidence. But a solitary  race against the watch  brings with it different pressures.

Boulting asked Millar to compare the effort required.

Millar explained that really there can be no comparison. In a stage race time trial (not withstanding it comes in the middle of event) you start fresh. 

Whereas to attempt to time trial away in lone break late on a road stage after already putting in a few hours hard work in a long breakaway with others (as Postlberger had done) your body has changed and you’ve got a different head on.

Which brings me to Postlburger himself who raised his game and surprised by battling through the time trial to hold on to his overall lead by a slender margin.

He’s funny, a great sense of humour. His unusual hand gesture as he crossed the line when winning stage two had everyone guessing – his hand cupped in front his nose. What was that all about?

That hand gesture?  That was his way of saying the effort he had made was so bad his brain hurt.

I’ve got lactic acid spewing out of both ears he said, grinning behind his mask.

He didn’t expect to keep the lead for much longer. His job was to look the other more likely GC contenders in the Boras team.

As I write this, Geraint Thomas, INEOS top man for this event and the Tour which follows, confounded everyone after his disappointing result in the time trial yesterday by winning stage five today. Postlberger surprised again, by clinging on to his overall lead.

 

 

Best Bib and Tucker on Eurosport's Giro d'Italia Breakaway

 THE Giro d’Italia has gripped me solid these past two weeks.  Eurosport Television’s daily coverage has been especially enjoyable, but what makes it extra special is the expert race analysis provided by Breakaway, the half-hour programme which follows the live coverage presented by Orla Chennaoui.

It’s also a kind of fashion show, with everyone wearing their Best Bib and Tucker. One reason for watching is to see what Orla is wearing. She choses a different stylish outfit for every stage. She has so many clothes her wardrobe must be the size of a team bus.

In vain her guests try to match her flamboyant style and only Adam Blythe with his curly mop gets close,  one day choosing to wear a beautifully pressed shirt, one of those festooned with buttons where no buttons are needed. He looked a dead ringer for John Travolta in Grease.

Sir Bradley Wiggins, sporting a lot more muscle these days, preferred plain tee-shirts and skinny leg-hugging jeans – swopping these for what looked like thermal underwear for Saturday’s program. The plain look nicely offsets the blackened tattoos, a work of art, covering both arms.  I fancy it’s a tapestry, perhaps recording his major victories. It’s all complimented by a shaved head and Captain Birds Eye full beard. Next day he was in  Sunday best, black suit but no socks.

Dan Lloyd, meanwhile, is conservatively turned out in similar gear every day – black jeans and black tee-shirt bearing the letters GCN, standing for Global Cycling Network, the entertaining TV show he presents.

Sean Kelly. Er, I cannot for life of me recall what Sean was wearing. But he looked and sounded fine, there on the red sofa.

So, anyway, Orla, a former All- Ireland triple jump champion and formerly Sky’s chief correspondent for the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games before becoming Eurosport’s lead presenter for cycling, gets the prog. underway with a summary of the  stage finish we've just watched.  If you’re like me, I’m often left thinking what happened there, where did he come from.

Not to worry, Orla has it all worked out and soon directs her sofa full of pros to dissect the action as only pros can, providing a tantalising insight into what the hell is going on.

That’s because they’ve all done a bit themselves.

My arm’s not long enough to list all their achievements.

Kelly was one of finest classics riders of all time until his retirement in 1994.

Winner of nine road classics, and 193 professional races in total.

Seven times winner of Paris - Nice, winner of Tour of Spain, four times winner of the green points jersey in Tour de France. It goes on.

As for Wiggins, well! 

The first Briton to win Tour de France in 2012. Say no more. Well, just a bit.

Four world track titles, three Olympic titles, and he’s worn the leader’s jersey in all three Grand Tours. That's just for starters.

Adam and Dan palmares are more modest, but they’ve travelled the same road in the big Continental races, ridden for big teams and probably suffered more, and they know the sport inside out.

Dan is now lead presenter on GCN and does other commentary work besides.

The stage win which had me out of my seat - and the Breakaway team  off the sofa – was the 198km stage thirteen finish at Verona when the reigning European and  National Italian road race champion Giacomo Nizzolo did what has narrowly eluded him many times before.  After 19 second places in Grand Tour stages – 11 times second in the Giro – this time he at last won!

His was most devastating long sprint out of the bunch that I have seen -  and into a headwind!

Thanks to Dan’s video presentation which enabled me to focus exactly  how that chaotic sprint played out.

As Edoardo Affini opened a big lead with 500 metres to go, Nizzolo saw the danger immediately and attacked, rocketing clear of the rest, devouring the tarmac but the line seemed so far away.

Affini was way ahead on the right of the road.  To reach him Nizzolo dived first to the left, into the cover of wheels of another charging group, and almost immediately struck out into open space switching to the right and eating up the ground to reach Affini’ rear wheel.

A split second of respite, and incredibly, Nizzolo lit the blue touch paper for the third time and launched himself off Affini’s wheel and into clear daylight as others tried to close up.

The victory, so often taken by others, was his at last. He punched the air again and again and again, before finally coming to a halt to be swamped by rivals who forgot their own disappointment and instead were queuing up to congratulate him. He made it at last!

Meanwhile, it's back on the sofa for the final week of the Giro.

Can race leader Ergan Bernal win the overall? Has second overall Simon Yates got what it takes to snatch the victory?

 I'm plugging Cycling Weekly which is one hundred and thirty years old this year and to celebrate they are featuring many of the individuals who have significantly changed the sport in that period.

 

It's a great read and I know I'm biased, having worked for them once upon a time, after answering an ad for a lad to clean the editor's bike and empty his ashtray. They also gave me a pen and a notebook and  sent me out to report.

There are many people who have helped make the sport successful. 

I nominated Alan Rushton for bringing British television into cycling when he promoted the city centre pro criteriums in the 1980s, followed by the Pro Tour of Britain and World Cup road races featuring the Continental stars and in 1994, bringing the Tour de France to Southern England for two stages. 

Also listed is Chris Boardman (above) whose gold medal at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 set British Cycling on track to becoming a top cycling nation two decades later.

For his success helped seal the bid to build the Manchester Velodrome which was key to everything which followed in the New Millennium, as British cyclists began to dominate the  Olympics thanks to the  pioneering sports science of Peter Keen. When he handed over to Dave Brailsford he took Olympic success to another level and also drove Bradley Wiggins to that historic first British Tour de France victory in 2012.

The issue is packed with great stories about remarkably talented individuals who have shaped the sport not just in Britain, but across the cycling world.

Of course there is always room for more nominations and I would like to give an honorary mention to John Potter, creator of the famous  London to Brighton bike ride in the 1970s for this big ride became the daddy of them all, raising money for the British Heart Foundation. The London - Brighton was the first big charity cycling event in the UK and it inspired many other charity rides and brought tens of thousands of people into the sport.  

OK, OK....let me get my coat off

The Rolling Stones, Melody Maker and Cycling

FUNNY, how amusing moments can stick in the mind, some of them from way back.

I’m writing about some of them instead of a story about how cyclists and pedestrians have been barred from using the Humber Bridge because of suicides there. When I started writing that story up it made such uncomfortable reading I binned it.

Instead, a few funny things, not all of them cycling related.

Here goes.

“On the left”…. Trevor Bull’s shouted command in a British pro road race sprint finish in the 1970s cost Phil Bayton the win – because he obeyed and moved over!

The affable Bayton (known as the “Staffordshire Engine” and hard to beat) laughed fit to burst that he should fall for that one.

Phil Liggett, the cycling TV commentator when a humble staff man on Cycling magazine in the 70s relieving the boredom of subbing the racing results and keeping the rest of us entertained by calling every rider by the first name of Harry.

Ken, the genial post room clerk in an engineering firm I briefly worked for, doing virtually the same thing, coincidentally also calling out  aloud  “Harry” -  instead of the real name on each envelope as he popped them in their various pigeon holes.

And for good measure, listening to an imaginary conversation going on around him by occasionally calling out “Oh yeah”, as if in agreement with what was being said.

The Dog. This was the moniker given Merseyside pro Geoff Dutton on training runs, whose call “coming through” – sounded more like a gruff bark.

Egg. This was Terry Dolan, now a reputed frame builder to the stars, who I recall rushing around the deck on the overnight Isle of Man ferry, snatching cushions from under the heads of sleeping passengers. No idea why Terry was called Egg.

 

“Can’t stop there…” Liggett winding up his companions by refusing to pull over for a café stop when driving ahead of the Tour de France – if the café was on the wrong side of the road, only to relent after howls of protest. Can't recall which side was "wrong".

“What you doin’ down there, Hardi’?”…Former national road race champion Pete Matthews to his Liverpool Mercury club mate Keith Hardiman who was sliding by on the road, still fastened to his pedals. Hardy had been the first to fall on a greasy bend in the Circuit of Ashurst, the Merseyside season-opener.

Many others skidded and fell that day, including yours truly in the exalted company of Tour of Poland stage winner Billy Perkins.  That was my claim to fame and it earned me a pint from a club mate at the Jazz Club that night.

 

“Good morning, my English friend, have you had your bacon, eggs and fried bread…” a French pro’s greeting to Tony Hewson, the new boy to Continental professional road racing during in 1950s, recalled in his splendid book “In Pursuit of Stardom”.

The Tour  of Sweden pro-am 1984: Peugeot’s Sean Yates distracting the Dutch amateur team from setting a furious pace – by whistling as he sat on their rear wheels.

Also on that same Tour of Sweden, Peugeot’s Allan Peiper chasing down an amateur who had attacked through the feeding station. Having got alongside him, Peiper thrust a ham sandwich into the trouble makers face, shouting, “Eat you stupid sod, eat – or you’ll never last the week.”

Assistant Editor Sid Saltmarsh, arriving at Cycling’s offices each the morning irritated by a question from a colleague before he’d barely got in the door… “OK, OK… let me get my coat off.”

Sid tapping his fingers on the window pane of the office partition with music paper Melody Maker, calling out “two minutes”:  his time limit for turning down the volume on the racket from a Rolling Stones album. And when they didn’t, shouting: “Oh, for FUCK’s SAKE!

 

 

 

 

 

Grant Shapps snaps up BLAH OF THE YEAR AWARD

 

 “The government has a long history of setting targets to increase cycling without providing the funding to support them”…

Roger Geffen, Policy Director, Cycling UK

Shock, horror, Cycling UK has spilt the beans and all but admitted that the government is doing its best to avoid funding the eight billion pound cycling and walking strategy.  It’s all blah, blah, blah and very little action.

It means  that Grant Shapps, because he is transport top dog, is singled out for Blah of the Year Award, even though he might not be the villain at all, simply the messenger delivering confused tidings.

He might be kept guessing like the rest of us, told what to say by the Oracle, someone guiding policy from deep in the heart of government, some Blofeld figure with a glass eye sitting in an armchair and stroking a cat. Or it might even be Dominic Cummings who has never really gone away.

We’ll never know.

What we do know for certain though, is that nothing has changed since that great deception of 1996, when the National Cycling Strategy was launched with no funding whatsoever.

Loathe as I am to follow up my most recent blog on government deception with another tilt at the devious bunch, I changed my mind upon learning that Cycling UK’s Policy Director Roger Geffen is pleading for ministerial help to get the delayed Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy Report published.

Geffen says that for over a year now the government “has been sitting on a report showing how much more funding it must spend to meet its own targets to increase cycling and walking by 2025.”

His report published last week in a Cycling UK news email to members is full of complex detail but I think I've got the gist of it.

About year and half ago Geffen persuaded an MP to table a parliamentary question asking when the Strategy - commissioned in 2018 - might be published.  He learnt it would be ready for publication early in 2019, almost a year later than promised.  There had been delays!  Guess what? It wasn’t published in 2019.

 

This from Geffen: “Unfortunately, the Treasury didn’t want this to happen – presumably because the research said that meeting the Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy targets would require a lot more money than the Treasury was prepared to spend.”

Which was a fraction of the 27 billion pounds they are prepared to spend on new roads.

Last year when Geffen asked if the report would be published in full, he was told that the DfT might publish parts of it…blah,blah, blah… but not the whole of it!  They were being as inscrutable as the panellists on Television’s “Would I Lie to You”.

He continued to press for the release of the missing parts of the report, before and after the country went into lockdown.

There was then more government blah blah, building up all our hopes, when transport secretary Grant Shapps announced 2billion for cycling and walking over five years. Well, this pleased the campaigners, until they realised it was a few billion short of what was required.

For although it was a six-fold increase on the funding announced in 2017, it was but a fraction of what is required now –between six and eight billions pound, if the government is to meet its 2025 targets.

Then in July hopes were raised again when Blah in Chief, the Prime Minister announced blah, blah his “Gear change” vision for cycling and walking, together with new cycling infrastructure design guidance. 

This included the excellent government funding for “Pop Up” cycle lanes when lockdown was prematurely ended last year. Sadly, the Pop Up lanes are now a distant memory as many of them have since controversially been ripped out.

Last month when Shapps gave evidence to the Commons Transport Select Committee he avoided answering a question as to whether the much delayed report Geffen is keen to see actually  exists.

Instead he  throws more blah into the ring, announcing the government’s target is to increase cycling and walking by 50 percent in towns and cities and the target date to achieve this was to be extended by five years. So, pushing it back a few more years. More delaying tactics.

This of course begs the question, 50 per cent of what? 50-per cent of 2-per cent? That’s the current woefully low figure which has remained largely unchanged for some three decades? That would lift cycling trips to the magnificent figure of three per cent of all modes, whereas in Holland bike use is 27 per cent of all modal trips.

Then comes another below the belt punch -  the government blah, blah makes a 15 per cent cut in the active travel budget!

And all the while, no one has seen the government funding report which is supposed to say exactly what needs to be done.

 BLAH, blah, blah, blah………….

 

THE DISTORTIONS AND LIES AT THE HEART OF GOVERNMENT TRANSPORT POLICY

 

TWO legal cases caught my eye last month.

The first was Cycling UK’s legal action against West Sussex County Council, objecting to the removal of a successful pop-up cycle lane installed following lockdown last year.

The second legal case reported recently was Transport Action Network’s bid to halt the government’s controversial 27 billion pound expansion of England’s road network, on environmental grounds.

Good luck with that one!

It is claimed that transport secretary Grant Schapps overrode official advice to review road building plans when it became apparent the scheme would mean the UK breaching the Paris Agreement to cut pollution levels to zero by 2050.

Schapps says the claim is baseless but will not justify why it is baseless.

Because he can't, probably.

Of course, government lawyers back him up saying that Schapps has no need to provide reasons for saying so.

Only last week it was revealed in a European Union court that the UK has consistently failed to control air pollution for a decade, in particular from diesels.

The case began before Britain left the EU and the legal limits remain in UK laws.

The report says that dirty air causes 40,000 early deaths every year in the UK.

Britain will do its best to fudge  this ruling, and dodge the issues over their road building plans.

Proving yet again that it takes a lot to shake a moronic  cabinet when it has decided on a course of action, even when it will pump more shit into our lungs. Nothing must be allowed to spoil their love affair with their pals in the road construction business. Road building  is considered a vote winner whereas cycling, despite all the many health benefits for the nation,  is not.

However, we can take heart to recall  one monstrous road scheme they were forced to abandon. 

It brings to mind an interview I had with a transport minister in the 1980s, when Robert Key – if I recall the name correctly – defended plans to build Link Roads either side of the M25.

The M25 London orbital was built to relieve London of heavy traffic going to and from the Channel ports and other key destinations.

However, it also attracted local traffic diving on and off, using it to reach the many out of town superstores which were springing  up all over the country. And so the M25 became too congested.

Cue to build Link Roads either side to relieve the M-way. Except by now it had become established that new roads often generate even more traffic. How to balance this phenomena with the need to reduce vehicle pollution which is now seen as an absolute necessity.

Answer, stop building more giant roads if, as is likely, more traffic will be generated as a result. 

He was a portly man, was Key, a cheerful friendly guy, bit like the liar who is now our prime minister.

The proposed Link Roads would make the M25 12 lanes wide! At our meeting he went out of his way to avoid admitting this.

No, it’s not a 12-lane motorway, he insisted. The Link Roads are separate.

But the link roads, as you call them, will be laid right next to the M25, all the way around London, and that makes it a 12-lane highway, I said.

 No, no, it’s not a 12-lane highway, he insisted.  The link roads are separate.

Look, I said, if you view this from the air, you will look down on your Link Roads system and see it has  three lanes running  on either side of the six-lane (four lanes near Heathrow) M25.

That makes 12 lanes – 14 near Heathrow. And they will be connected by huge interchanges twice the size of what’s in place now. And they will become a barrier to vulnerable road users wanting to cross it on the normal highway.

I said to him how did he imagine cyclists would cope with threading the huge interchanges if no provision was to made for them? Because no provision was made for cyclists.

He hadn’t given cyclists a thought.

I am pleased to say the Link Roads were never built thanks to long-running and huge campaigns staged by Friends of the Earth and communities around the M25. This action succeeded in generating massive press and TV coverage.  One major newspaper ran a front page story with an artist’s impression of the giant roadway across the full width of the page. The editorial described it as the biggest road system in Europe, the equal of the multi-lane highways of LA.

The public learned of the expected impact of extra pollution and increased traffic flow on local roads connecting to the new highway. Such was the furore the government were forced to abandon its plans. Or put them on hold! Keep any eye out in case they ever try this one again.

Meanwhile, on a much smaller scale – but one which could  resonate nationwide -  is Cycling UK’s legal case  against West Sussex County Council for taking take out a popular cycle lane introduced in Shoreham-by-Sea during lockdown.

The case rests on Cycling UK’s claim that the council failed “to carry out an equality impact assessment before making the decision to remove the cycle lane.”

It had only been in place two months and thirty thousand rides were registered on it. This was one of a spate of pop up cycle lane removals across the country as local authorities acted with unseemly haste to get rid of them in response to minority groups protesting that loss of road space was causing congestion!

It was mostly all bollocks

In West Sussex’s case the council chose to ignore its own data revealing its popularity with users and which reported no negative impact on journey times nor increase in air pollution during the very little time the cycle lane was in place.

In general, transport planners just don’t get cyclists and pedestrians, despite the many campaigns and reports explaining how to do so. They never have and there is no sign they ever will.

It was this ignorance which led to civil engineer John Grimshaw MBE to

put cycling routes on the map in the UK, quite literally. He did so in the 1970s by creating Sustrans (Sustainable Transport) and set about converting disused railway lines into cycling and walking paths. He followed this by creating the 16,000mile National Cycle and walking network, funded in the beginning by the Bicycle trade and the Millennium Commission in 1995.

Grimshaw was one of the few engineers who understood the needs of cyclists. He rode a bike purely for utility purposes and pretty quickly realised how hostile the road network can be and a deterrent to cycling for many. He told me he was frustrated by engineering colleagues who just didn’t understand the needs of cyclists and pedestrians who over the years have been designed out of the road system. 

Grimshaw realised that many people, and especially the young would simply never ride a bike and therefore not acquire any road craft if the roads were not made safer for them.

That’s why he determined to create traffic free paths along disused railway routes, as safe places to ride, so that with confidence gained, they would eventually venture on to the roads.

I must also mention the National Byway (National Byway Trust), covering  over three thousand miles  around  quiet roads in England and parts of Scotland and Wales, connecting with sites of historical interest. It includes 60 loops for one day rides. Three sections remain to be sign-posted.  They need funding to do this, plus funding for a three-year marketing plan and staff to meet public demand and run a PR program.

But  the sums involved in helping create both of these fine networks 

fall far short of the billions of pounds required to make the national road system safer for cyclists. 

Even when ministers do a good talk on the need to make th e roads safer, they often fail to follow through. For instance when a new traffic layout at Kings Cross in London was completed a few years ago, cyclists needs had once again been ignored. I'm not sure if any remedial work has since taken place.

A few years ago in an interview in Cycling Weekly, a minister was asked if she thought traffic planners were any closer to understanding the cyclist-pedestrian concept.

She replied that, sadly no, they have still have some way to go!

And only a couple of months ago I heard from a civil engineer who himself is a member of Cycling UK who  regretted to say that in his experience  civil engineers in general still had no clue how to plan for cyclists and pedestrians.

FINALLY.......

Last week’s Budget contained no extra investment for cycling, leaving Cycling UK red faced and very angry. No surprise there.

It proves yet again that Britain has no interest in improving the safety of the highway for cyclists,   beyond providing peanuts here and there.

Cycling UK’s policy director Roger Geffen will be feeling especially aggrieved, for he received an MBE in 2015 in recognition of his tireless efforts promoting cycling, with a  huge chunk of his time devoted to lobbying government for decent funding. 

In retrospect perhaps his award was really for banging his head against a brick wall.

What Geffen said in 2015:

 “I’m humbled to be appointed an MBE but I still wish the government would find some serious funding for cycling, far more than me having three letters after my name!

Give it back, Roger.