Off we go to Holland

 

VERY difficult to find any good news these days, with national strikes on the railways and in vital sections of the health service, to name but two.

Except there was one story of note which cheered me up last week, in The Guardian. This was news of a remarkable feat of engineering in Holland. Yes, Holland, my favourite stomping ground for cycling news.

This is the £53 million creation of an underwater garage for 7000 cycles, beneath the harbour adjacent to Amsterdam train station.

I know what you want to ask. Are snorkels provided to access this underwater bike park?  This wouldn’t pose any problems for Scuba diver cyclists, like Chris Boardman.

Joking apart, you have to marvel at the ingenuity of Dutch engineers who run cycle paths over school roofs and now put a cycle park under the bed of the harbour.

Nothing is impossible for this tiny nation, the most densely populated country in the world. Nevertheless, they create the space they need. What a contrast to that island nation across the North Sea.

Three decks of cycle parking over the water in Amsterdam, now complimented
with an underwater garage for 7000 bikes.

Oooh, what’s the name? I should know, I live there. Sadly, so do the 17 million misguided souls who voted to leave the EU IN 2016. At a stroke they ended free movement and thousands of vital foreign nurses and doctors went home, an exodus from which the NHS has never recovered.

If I ever visit Holland and wish to use this underwater garage, I will be able to park my bike there free for up to 24 hours and thereafter fork out £1.35 for another 24 hours if I so wish.

I will then step onto a moving walkway which glides upwards and into the train station, where 200,000 journeys start and end each day.

Red and green lights indicate what spaces are available.

Work began on the project in 2019. It was due to open on January 26.

There is also another new bike park on the other side of the station, with 4000 bike spaces.

Makes your eyes water when you realise the best British railway stations can offer is mostly inadequate. There are few hundred spaces, I think, at one of London’s biggest stations, Waterloo.  It might be more now, but you can bet it’s nothing like the Dutch capacity.

Cycle parking inside Brighton train station.

A spokesman for ProRail, the Dutch government organisation responsible for railway network infrastructure, said, “The Netherlands is a real cycling country, a lot of people come to the station by bike.”  The new garage means commuters will no longer leave their bikes crammed all around the station or into a temporary multi-storey bike rack which quickly became full.

Britain meanwhile still lags far behind the Dutch in providing for cycling, doing the talk but little else.

Still, there is a glimmer of hope.

The Scottish Government has committed £189m (a record amount for cycling and walking) for their active travel policy.

Cycling UK’s campaigns and policy manager in Scotland, Jim Densham, says: “These are early days, but it’s exciting that we may be seeing the first glimmers of a new dawn for cycling in Scotland.”

Also in Scotland, a new £2m fund has been launched by Transport Scotland  for new residential cycle storage and parking, reports Cycling UK, the national cyclists charity.

The money is to enable councils to install secure cycle storage facilities for residents in high-rise buildings.

In Wales they have a transport strategy to reduce transport emissions over the next 20 years and have set a target of 45 per cent of journeys to be made by public transport, walking and cycling. They intend to establish a transport hierarchy with cycling higher up the agenda to counter car use.  

But so far it’s still talk, talk.

To end on a sour note, several legal challenges are due to reach the courts this month.

This is the ongoing sad story of councils who ignored government directives by removing cycle lanes intended to improve active travel, including Poole in Dorset and Kensington in London. They would have got away with it if Cycling UK had not taken them to court, using money from their Cyclists’ Defence Fund.

Op de fiets, as they say in Dutch.

 

Folly of the National Trust

 

MANY’s  the time I ride over my local “alp”, Box Hill on the North Downs, up the zig zag road made famous by the 2012 Olympics road races.

Not so well known is a tower which stands on a ridge - the north western tip of Lodge Hill – above the second hairpin of the ascent and hidden by trees.

Sad to say, in National Trust literature I  have seen they reveal only part of its history and dismiss it as a 19^th century folly.  It was erected by Thomas Broadwood, of the famous Scottish family of piano makers who at the time lived in Juniper Hall, which is below and in sight of the tower.

Broadwood instruments have been enjoyed by such famous people as Mozart, Haydn, Chopin, Beethoven and Liszt. 

That much the NT literature will tell you, although curiously they give a passing mention to its true purpose on their website.  

For this “folly” stands in memory of one of the most important military victories in British history.

Thomas Broadwood had it constructed as a memorial to the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, when France’s Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by the Duke of Wellington. By so doing, Wellington, aided by Prussia, Austria and Russia, achieved what Nelson’s famous victory at Trafalgar in 1805 had failed to do, bring to an end the French Emperor’s rampage across Europe.

For after losing most of his ships at Trafalgar, Napoleon in 1807 tried to get his hands on Denmark’s fleet.  The British, unsure of Denmark’s intentions, put a stop to that by bombing Copenhagen, sinking Danish war ships in the harbour there.

Then came the moment of destiny, Waterloo, 1815.

But it was a close run thing, according to Wellington.

French forces were only narrowly defeated.

In one account of this period, I read that Napoleon was asked what he would have done had he won?

He replied, he would have sailed for Chatham and marched on London.

What he had planned next will remain pure speculation. Would he have declared Britain a republic? What would have become of the monarchy?

George the third was on the throne.

But no matter, Napoleon lost and the occasion demanded a fitting tribute.

And so Broadwood built his tower, the piano maker’s celebration.

He wanted a clear view of his creation from the windows of Juniper Hall below, as he ate his breakfast each morning. So he had trees cleared from the hillside to create a wide uninterrupted view, which remains to this day. And on each anniversary of the battle he would fly the flag from the tower.

Visitors to Juniper Hall,  now a field centre, will look up and wonder why is that tower there.

What a pity the National Trust don’t see fit to tell the full story.

Occasionally, I will ride up there on my mtb, and take a look at Broadwood’s tower. Folly, indeed!

The two story circular tower is constructed of flint with lime mortar with four window openings and one door opening on the eastern side. An overhanging castellated structure surrounds the top. There are no remains of the spiral staircase inside the tower. Recent renovations removed a small tree which had taken root near the top of the tower.