More Brent pavement parking, and Exhibition Road

A correspondent living in Australia (it's nice to get an outside view from another Anglo-Saxon country), commenting on my last post, said:

I cannot believe the state-sanctioned dystopic practice of car parking on pavements.

That's a good way to put it. Parking on pavements is "dystopic" because it produces an ugly street environment, it damages the pavements, making them hazardous for pedestrains, it messes up the distinction between roadway and pavement, eroding, in the minds of motorists, the principle that the carriageway is the place for parking and the pavement (or sidewalk) the place for walking, and it leads to a chaotic situation where, in a place like north Brent, where parking pressure is very high, because of the urban density and the poor quality of non-motorised transport alternatives, people start parking their cars everywhere.

We see this in the euphemistically-named Village Way in Neaden NW10. This is the "spine" road in the rather un-village like residential area sometimes referred to as Neasden Village, a group of streets isolated from the rest of the borough by the North Circular Road to the east, the underground lines and depot to the south, the A4088 to the north, and the River Brent and the Grand Union Feeder Canal to the west. It is, as I pointed out recently, a deeply inaccessible place for those not using a car as their main mode of transport. This is another road in which Brent Council have designated on-pavement parking space using white lines and small blue signs.

Village Way, Neaden

Parking has only been permitted on the right-hand pavement in this view, but motorists have started parking on the opposite pavement as well. Parking is explicitly marked out on the roadway on the left-hand pavement, but they are parking on the pavement and the roadway as well, creating two lines of parking alongside one another. On the side-road off here, West Way, parking has been permitted on both pavements, so maybe that is why the motorists are thinking that they are allowed to park on all pavements in this group of streets.

West Way, Neaden

I think that when councils start down this "dystopic" road of confusing pavement with car-parking space, it just leads to a general erosion of respect for all pavements by motorists. It is analogous to that other shoddy, cheap practice councils employ, of creating "shared use" areas on pavements for cycling, which also erodes the sanctity of the pavements for pedestrians, leads to confusion and cycling on pavements where it has not been permitted, and fails to provide safe conditions for cyclists as well (particularly at junctions). That subject has just been covered nicely by the At War with the Motorist blog.

When I was active in Camden Cycling Campaign, we had regular meetings with councillors and officers in a forum called the Walking, Cycling and Road Safety Advisory Group. Being advisory, this group did not create council policy, but it had the potential to influence it. It was (and I presume still is) dominated not by cyclists, but by pedestrian and local amenity groups. There were always some conflicts of opinion between cycling and walking representatives, but one thing that all could agree on was the undesirability of parking on pavements. The view that this group consistently put to councillors was that, though the conversion of pavement to parking space was generally undesirable, should it be that certain streets really did have an unnecessary excess of pavement, and there was a politically impossible-to-resist local demand for more parking, then it would be preferable to rebuild the kerbs to transfer pavement space to the road, rather than marking parking on pavements.

I do not know whether this idea was ever formally accepted as Camden Council policy, but it seemed to have an effect. To have such a policy would immediately put a big damper on moves to transfer pavement space to parking, because to do it properly in this way would be far more expensive than painting lines, and officers would certainly think hard before recommending it. It does seem to be the case that Camden has far less pavement parking than Brent, and other boroughs, to this day, despite the huge inner-city parking pressure, so kudos should go to Camden Council for resisting the easy option of allowing motorists to take over the pavements. Camden also was the only council in London ever in a significant way to transfer road space to cycle tracks. Again, this was because Camden Cycling Campaign insisted that it did not want cycle facilities to be created at the expense of pedestrian space.

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One road where parking on pavements is impossible, because the pavements, in the sense of footways raised above road level, have been abolished, is the newly-rebuilt Exhibition Road in South Kensington. I paid a visit there this week to see how it is working. The results are rather different to what I expected. When it was being built, I expected the central line of pointed lamp columns to define the northbound and southbound carriageways all the way from Hyde Park to Cromwell Road. What has happened, rather, and I don't know if this was intended by the original designers, or was a later modification, or has just evolved, is that the road is in two parts, north of the junction with Prince Consort Road, and south of it. (I am ignoring the stub of Exhibition road south of Cromwell Road, which is effectively pedestrianised.)

There is a funny kind-of-roundabout at the Prince Consort Road junction, and, north of this, the two directions of traffic go on opposite sides of the lamp columns. South of it, both directions of traffic are on the east side of the columns. On this stretch, the west side is occupied with diagonal parking, Boris Bikes, and benches, with the space between all that and the building line acting as pavement. On the east side of the road the effective pavement all the way down is defined by the drainage grating and tactile surface, plus some trees and bollards. Though these features are present on the west side, they are only functioning to establish the effective pavement north of the roundabout.

Exhibition Road west side looking north from the Science Museum

Exhibition Road west side looking south from the Science Museum

Exhibition road east side looking south from the Henry Cole wing of the Victoria and Albert Museum

The whole thing seems to me to be complex, cluttered, and, well, pretty much as far from a "naked street" as it is possible to get. There clearly is still "carriageway" and "footway" here, they have just been marked off in an unconventional way. There is no "sharing" between pedestrains and motorists, to speak of, and the normal relationship between motorists and cyclists prevails, though the street is more pleasant than it used to be because of the 20 mph limit. The funny roundabout where the road-use changes, but without the lining and signing one would expect, causes drivers a lot of doubt about what they are supposed to be doing here. Such confusion is held to be a good thing by some of those arguing the Shared Space line. This thinking however, as I have pointed out before, as well as having a "black is white" quality, is at variance with the European road safety mainstream, as summarised in the EU's PRESTO Cycling Policy Guide (p 18):

Creating recognizable and comprehensible traffic situations is essential for safety. Consistent design solutions on roads with similar functions (in terms of road hierarchy) makes potential conflict situations more predictable for cyclists and other users, while also inciting everyone to behave more predictably.

Of the many blogposts to appear commenting on the new Exhibition Road, one of the most memorable was that by Londonneur, who compared the paving to "a giant Argyle sock laid down in the road". The price of this Argyle sock, and oddly placed benches and parking, was around £30 million. I reckon that should have been enough, alternatively, estimating at £7 million a mile, for one high-quality, capacious, safe, segregated cycle highway right across central London from Paddington to the City: just what Camden Cycling Campaign proposed 14 years ago, with their Seven Stations Link idea, the only part of which that was ever implemented (in badly compromised fashion) being the cycle track through Bloomsbury. Think how that scheme would have transformed London if carried out in full.

Then again, the Dutch built the longest cycle bridge in the world, the Nescio Bridge (to British designs, ironically), in 2005, for less than £10 million at today's prices. So we could have had three of those across the Thames for the price of Exhibition Road. Think of what that would have done for cycling in London. We continue to wait for a proper cycle route across London, and for safe river crossings for cyclists, while extraordinary sums are spent on odd, bodged public space "transformation" compromises like Exhibition Road, Piccadilly and Haymarket (£14 million), and the next one the Mayor intends, Euston Circus (cost unknown).

Next Saturday, thousands of London cyclists will congregate in the middle of London to tell the next Mayor that they want Streets as safe and inviting for cycling as those in Holland. It's pretty obvious that we have both the money and the space in London to achieve this aim, and in a relatively short time too. As always, we await only the political vision.

A damp but colourful Spring Clean, and pavement parking in Brent

I am sure Climate Rush's Spring Clean protest against London's filthy air quality, and against Boris Johnson's policy of trying to conceal the problem by gluing the pollution particles to the roads by treating them with calcium magnesium acetate powder near monitoring stations, would have attracted a much larger crowd, had not London been deluged with heavy rain for most of the day on Thursday. As it was, a small but spirited and colourful crowd marched from DEFRA in Smith Square to Parliament Square waving feather dusters and banners, to make the point that obeying the UK's legally-binding international treaty obligations on clean air should not be regarded as optional by the government and the Mayor of London. The lives of those who die because of our polluted air (estimates range from between 19,000 and 29,000 per year for the UK) should not be treated so lightly.

Spring Cleaners at DEFRA in Smith Square

Feather dusters to the fore at Pasrliament Square. The police would not allow an occupation of a lane of Westmister Bridge, so a picnic was held in the square instead.

Another group who seem to think that obeying the law is optional are some of Brent Council's drivers. Here I witnessed not one, but two of Brent's vehicles parked on the pavement in Stag Lane NW9. The more distant one is clearly making the footway impassable.

Brent Council minibuses on Stag Lane

Perhaps the drivers of these vehicles have become confused about the function of the footways because of the way in which Brent, along with many other authorities, is now designating parts of them, in many places, for parking, as here, not far away, in Church Lane, Kingsbury NW9.

Church Lane NW9

I have looked up Brent's criteria for deciding where the designation of footway parking is appropriate.
It says here:

Brent Council has the power to exempt certain streets from the regulations to enable drivers to park either partially or fully on the footway to maintain the safe flow of traffic. At the same time, the conditions must be right to protect pedestrians, so where exemptions are granted, there is sufficient access for pedestrians without being forced into the road. There are certain criteria which have to be met before a street is granted exemption and they have been approved by Brent Council's Highway Committee.

So it's to do with maintaining "the safe flow of traffic". But here is a wider view of the street in question.

This pavement parking exemption is clearly just here to allow parking outside this small parade of shops to be doubled up, both sides of the service road, and still allow space for a car or van to get through. There is in fact pavement parking allowed on both sides of the service road.This has nothing to do with maintaining a "safe flow of traffic". The flow of traffic on the road is unconnected with this, being maintained by the presence of double yellow lines. And note how the word "traffic" is here being used implicitly to mean "motor vehicles", not pedestrians or cyclists. And note, again, the enormous total width available on this road, as so often in suburban north Brent, but that clearly there is not seen to be the space available for any sort of cycle facilities. Well, there are "cycle facilities", if you include cycle parking stands with that phrase. The part of the pavement that remains after the chunk taken out of it by the car parking has also been used for these curious, newly-installed stands by the "Biking Borough".

But that's not what I mean by "cycle facilities". For Church Lane is a difficult and intimidating street to cycle along, being a rat run, with high speeds, intermittent blocks of parking and stopping buses which a cyclist needs to pull out around into the 30+ mph traffic stream, wide lanes in both directions encouraging these high speeds, with occasional pinch points at the pedestrian islands where drivers tend to try to overtake cyclists dangerously, and prevalent poor driving standards, the norm in north Brent. By "cycle facilities" I mean space in which to cycle with a measure of subjective safety, which would mean cycle lanes or cycle tracks. The space is clearly there, but the street would need some rearranging to accommodate them. At present, it is arranged to allow lots of parking, and excess space on the road, which leads to speeding. Note how none of the several cycle stands are in use, in the middle of a working day. This is a measure of how little cycling there is here, itself a measure of the bad environment.

But to go back to Brent's pavement parking "exception criteria", we read:

• Exemption to be granted only where parking of vehicles wholly within the carriageway reduces the carriageway width to less than 3 metres.
• A minimum footway width of 1.2 metres be available for pedestrians.
• Roads in shopping and other busy pedestrian areas not to be considered.

There are more criteria, you can read them if you wish. But note that the first three have all been disregarded here. The parking of vehicles wholly in the carriageway would not reduce the width of the carriageway to less than 3 metres, even if it were allowed on both sides, because the carriageway is the main road, not the service road. And even if you interpret carriageway as the service road, which I think is technically wrong, you could still have more than 3 metres width, with parking, if you put double-yellow lines on one side. There is no law, national or local, which says you need parking on both sides of a narrow service road.

The second criteria is also broken: there is not 1.2 metres available for pedestrians on the outer pavement. Look at the placing of the tree in the first picture of the row of parked cars. And, clearly, this is a shopping area, so the third criterion is violated.

I would like to know why Brent's traffic planners are ignoring the council's own criteria for allowing pavement parking. Of course, I know why. It is due to political pressure. There is a recession on. There are lots of small local shops going out of business. There is a prevailing public feeling here, in the outer suburbs, that trade for small shops is inextricably linked to the availability of car parking, and that parking restrictions, and even parking charges, are a contributory factor in businesses going under. There is a feeling that these shops cannot compete with supermarkets, with shopping centres like Brent Cross and Westfield, and with the retail sheds, for the want of the practically unlimited free parking that these provide. I have encountered this view at the Brent Council local Consultative Forum for this area. The alternative view, that of course I have tried to put, that most shoppers, even in these car-dependent suburbs, do not actually arrive by car, and that dedicating the streets to cars in this way produces an uninviting shopping environment for those using bus, foot, and bike, gets very little shrift.

The truth is that shops are having a hard time irrespective of parking regimes, and they would be having a hard time if there was not a recession. People don't have to go to shops now. I rarely do so. There is the on-line alternative, for everything. The more unpleasant the streets are made, to try to pack in more parked cars, the less shopping I will do in small local shops like these. I suspect I am not alone in this. To compete with the internet and the shopping malls, the small parades of suburban shops need to be able to provide something better than this inconvenient shabbiness on the fringes of a dangerous rat-run. And that's down to local authorities having a bit more backbone, and planning vision, than this.

Brent scoops the pollution prize in time for the Climate Rush "Spring Clean"

Brent has the most polluted location in London, it is revealed by the Brent & Kilburn Times:

According to the London Air Quality Network (LAQN), Neasden Lane reached the maximum of 36 Bad Air Days per year on Tuesday (11).

This means any further days could be breaking legal requirements on pollution levels.
....

It is claimed that the poor quality of air is due to waste transfer activities at Neasden Goods Yard and the proximity of the North Circular Road.

Last year the maximum amount of pollution allowed was exceeded 77 times, more than double the acceptable level.
.... 

Simon Birkett, founder and director of campaigning group Clean Air in London, who work closely with LAQN in their attempts to combat pollution said levels were ‘dangerously high’. 

He said: “This is not dust these are invisible and dangerous airborne particles including some which are toxic or carcinogenic. 

“The Neasden Lane breach is the latest evidence that there has been a failure to address the biggest public health crisis for decades.” 

Brent council confirmed that a monitoring station which had been set up on site showed that standards for air quality were ‘repeatedly breached’.

So, as we are only one quarter of the way through 2012, and Neasden Lane has already had more days over the "safe" limit than are "allowed" for a whole year (I am not sure why any days over the limit are "allowed" at all, but there you are), it appears that pollution in Neasden Lane (which I often cycle on) is twice what it was last year.

As I have discussed before, this is one district of London where cycling for practical journeys is to all intents and purposes impossible, because of the severing of the whole area by infrastructure that is almost impossible for cyclists to negotiate: the North Circular Road barrier (creating much of the pollution), the appalling huge gyratory junctions around Neasden, which force cyclists to take extremely circuitous and inconvenient ways round (and walk), or else take on motorway-style slip roads and the terrifying "Death Valley" underpass, plus the barriers of the railway corridors: the Chiltern Line, with no bridges between the North Circular and Wembley Hill Road, a distance of 1.5 miles, and the Metropolitan and Jubilee Lines, with no bridges between the North Circular and Bridge Road, Wembley, again a distance of 1.5 miles, plus the nasty lorry-filled one-way roads of the Wembley Park industrial estate, should one manage to get across the North Circular, and into that impassible triangle of land between the diverging railway lines that separates Neasden and Willesden from Wembley (only possible via the North Circular itself, and Great Central Way).

The situation of Neasden Lane, courtesy of Google maps

"Death Valley" for cyclists, at Neasden (A4088 underpass beneath North Circular)

North-south journeys through Neasden are restricted to Neasden Lane (the B453) or Dudden Hill Lane (the A4088) because of the North London freight line. Both these roads take you inexorably to the Neasden gyratory mess, unless you use the pedestrian footbridges illegally. Neasden lane itself is a very unpleasant road to cycle on, being quite wide in parts (but always one lane) and narrow in others, particularly by the tube station, and where the road passes under the North London freight line. Here, cyclists are squeezed between the constricting kerbs of the pavements, aggressive "Titan" kerbing which has been used for central traffic-calming islands, and cars and lorries roaring up from behind.

Here's the view I got when I called up Neasden Lane on Google Earth. The Google camera got it spot on: typical conditions: narrow lanes dominated by heavy industrial vehicles, with no space for cycling.

The part of Neasden north of the North Circular, totally divorced from the southern part, is sandwiched between the vast Underground railway depot, the River Brent (a tiny stream, but one with strangely few crossing points), and the Brent Reservoir. It would be lovely if there were a connection for pedestrians and cyclists from the north to the south side of the reservoir in Neasden, other than the deeply unpleasant race-track of Neasden Lane North, and I discussed the possibility that such might be created with Brent Council and British Waterways (who own the reservoir and land around it) years ago, but British Waterways kiboshed the idea because they thought it would be a "security risk" to have pedestrians and cyclists near the dam, and nobody at Brent Council was prepared to push the idea. (Why it would be a security risk uniquely here, when pedestrians and cyclists use dams for access all across the rest of the UK and Europe, I have not a clue).

The end result is that Neasden and Wembley are the most cycle-impermeable suburbs you are likely to find anywhere in Britain, and travel on foot here is also awkward, inconvenient and unpleasant. It is not in the least bit surprising that, for almost everybody, the only practical means of transport here are the car, bus, and train. It is not in the least bit surprising that Neasden Lane is the most polluted place in London. The record has no doubt been worsened by the low rainfall we have had this year. Some of the pollution is due to the waste transfer station adjacent to the road. Some may be due to the Chiltern Line, which has some diesel units, though I expect not much. Mostly it will be the traffic, particularly the diesel lorries. Neasden Lane is actually in a slight valley, into which the pollution from the North Circular will sink.

And all this is little more than a mile from Wembley Stadium, the national sports stadium, the biggest of the six stadiums hosting the 2012 Olympic Games. Wembley however only will host two Olympic events: men's and women's football. That's probably just as well. We don't want too many of the athletes of the world to be given asthma at the London "greenest Olympic Games in history". As to our own teams that play there regularly, well, they are British, they must be used to it by now: lungs of steel, and all that.

If you are seeing the Olympic football, or any other match, or any other event at the stadium or concert arena, my advice is not to try to get to Wembley by bike. Unless you live in the part of London to the north of Wembley, which you probably do not, it would be a major challenge. There was a plan, about five years ago, to create "greenway" cycle and walking routes to Wembley Stadium from all directions, in time for the Olympics. Sustrans was involved. It was called, cleverly, the Wembley GOAL project, standing for Greenways for the Olympics And London. Of course, as usual for these things in this country, there was no funding for it, beyond the initial studies, and nothing ever happened, save for employing consultants for a few weeks, and wasting a few days of LCC volunteers' time. Pretty coloured maps were produced, residential streets and parks were cycled around, "stakeholders" were consulted, and the project then vaporised. I could write a whole long post just on this scandal – it is a story that has not yet been told – but I will not do so today. Little enough has been done for cycling and walking access to the main Olympic Park in East London, as many other bloggers have mentioned, but at least something happened there. At least a new platform was constructed to allow the route along the Lea canal to be continuous, even though it looks like that route, crazily, will be closed for the Olympics themselves because of, again, the absurd "security" obsession. But precisely nothing happened in Wembley, or in Brent.

The fantasy "greenways" conceived for the Sustrans Wembley GOAL study of 2007, never built

Here is a newer version. Sustrans still propose (or was still proposing in 2009) this contorted Greenway "network" for Brent. Apart from the fact that it has made practically no progress, in my view, this entire concept is wrong, of attempting to push cyclists onto obscure, un-useful byways. Large-scale popular cycling will only ever be achieved by giving people on bikes direct, convenient, safely segregated routes on main roads, as they have done in the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany.


So pollution in Boris Johnson's London continues to spiral out of control, killing 2,200 people per year, according to the latest research reported by the BBC. This is about ten times the number of people killed in road crashes in London. And of course everybody's health must be affected, not just that of those who die as a result of the pollution. Johnson's "solution" is to put pollution suppressants in front of air quality monitors, so reducing the number of occasions on which the PM10 value is reported to be breached and reducing the number of smog alerts, both preventing the public from being warned of the dangerous conditions, and attempting to circumvent the discovery of legal breaches, and application of fines. This is what the Campaign for Clear Air in London, a non party-political organisation, condemns as "public health fraud on an industrial scale". And as the MP for Brent North, Barry Gardiner, said in a Tweet yesterday: "Boris's pollution suppressors near air quality monitors is like putting breathing apparatus on the canary in the mines!"

Those living or working on or near main roads like Neasden Lane and the North Circular Road are the ones at the sharpest end, the ones who will pay the heaviest price for this truly criminal public health fraud. But its all connected, and we all suffer, from the failure to control motor traffic in London, the failure to provide decent routes for walking and cycling, the failure to live up to the spin of "the greenest Olympics ever", the failure to arrest the degradation of the environment.

If you can, support the Climate Rush Spring Clean walk and cycle march, rally and direct action, today, Thursday 19 April, at 6:00pm outside DEFRA, 17 Smith Square, London SW1. And of course, come on the LCC Big Ride, calling for "streets as safe and inviting for cycling as they are in Holland", on 28 April. Most importantly, do vote in the London mayoral election on 3 May for a candidate who does not think the best way to combat pollution is to try to glue it to the road.

Something for cyclists in Barnet

I noted in a previous post how parts of one of the few pleasant traffic-free routes for cyclists in the Borough of Barnet, the path along the Dollis Valley in Finchley, marked on earlier editions of the Transport for London Cycling Guides as open between Waverley Grove, off Hendon Lane, and Dollis Road, and on the current guides as running not so far north, up only to Hendon Avenue, had been closed to cyclists by Barnet Council, apparently at the behest of local residents.

In exploring the Brent Cyclists route to the Great Divide Ride starting point at New Southgate, I was able to confirm that at least one small good thing has happened for cycling in Barnet recently (which I had already read of in newspaper reports): the stream-side path from Hendon Lane to Hendon Avenue, through Windsor Open Space,  has been re-vamped, and given new (rustic, wooden) signage, and the signs banning cycling are gone (though I did not see any specifically encouraging cycling either).

The new path, seemingly intended for cyclists and pedestrians, alongside the Dollis Brook through Windsor Open Space

It would appear that this is now intended to be a cycle route, and it appears that this aspect of the Open Space improvement works was pressed on to the normally cycle-indifferent (to put it charitably) Barnet Council by Boris Johnson. According to the Hendon & Finchley Times,

The bulk of the money for the scheme came from a £400,000 grant from the Mayor of London, with £250,000 was also secured from Transport for London for cycle and footpath improvements.

The plan won a competition for funding from the mayor back in 2009, in which the public were asked to vote on-line. The cycle route was mentioned at that stage, when the relatively enlightened Cllr Andrew Harper was Barnet's environment chief. I am certain of that, despite the fact it is not mentioned in the newspaper articles, because I recall that cyclists on the internet were mobilised to support the plan, which is possibly why it won. It fell to a new (or back in the job again) Barnet environment chief, the notoriously anti-cycling Cllr Brian Coleman (also London Assembly Member for Camden and Barnet) to finish the job, and I can only assume that Boris must have leant on him, for, in spite of a vociferous anti-cycling lobby in the area (in reality probably only one or two bigoted people, as usual), he did so, though the quality of execution of the work, and its state of completion, remain locally controversial. So it is curious that perhaps the best bit of cycling in Barnet has been put in place, against the wishes of some of his constituents, by a man who once wrote:

I consider cycle lanes to be an unnecessary obstruction to cars, for which of course, roads were built.

But they say there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner that repenteth...

The new shared path is only half a mile long, and there is some merit in the arguments of opponents, to the extent that it is not actually wide enough for sharing. Beyond Hendon Avenue the path continues but has not been resurfaced, and is un-cycleable, so one must return to the road. The cycle path could, in principle, with sufficient investment and political will, be made to go the whole four miles or so along the stream from Totteridge in the north to Hendon in the south, or even to Brent Cross, and link in to another path, now banned to cyclists, east-west along the Mutton Brook from Hendon to East Finchley, which would give cyclists a nice route parallel to part of the North Circular Road. But such grander "Greenway" plans have never made much progress in this part of London, despite some abortive efforts by Sustrans. (Ken Livingstone is promising £10 million for Greenways should he win the election.)

There is another cycleable section of the Dollis Valley, in Totteridge, where, surprisingly, Dutch-style separate paths for cyclists and pedestrians were provided, years ago. To connect between the two off-road sections one is supposed to use a quiet "back street" route that runs to the east of the brook, between Dollis Road and Whetstone, marked as part of the London Cycle Network. Dollis Road itself, unfortunately, is a particularly nasty piece of narrow rat-run where it runs under a constricting arch of the Northern Line (Mill Hill Branch) viaduct. This has always been the problem point on this route. I have seen signage indications that an off-road route may have been provided here as well as part of this work, but I have not tested it. The on-road LCN route north of Dollis Road is not bad, as it is not a rat-run, though has a difficult crossing of Argyle Road, which is a rat-run, as it forms part of one of the few east-west routes for motor vehicles across the middle part of Barnet, along with the famous Partingdale Lane, over which Brian Coleman successfully battled environmentalists, residents, judges and cyclists to open it to through-traffic, and subsequently widened it. I have encountered several conspicuous examples of motorist aggression on this route.

At its intersection with a path called Lovers Walk, the LCN route also sports one of the most ludicrous anti-cycling barrier constructions I have ever seen. Cyclists are require to dismount and wiggle through two caged sections to get between Gordon Road and Brent Way. And what all that extra barrierage adjacent to the footpaths is for, I haven't a clue. When I first saw this, I was incredulous. I could hardly refrain from shouting out loud "Bananas! Absolutely bananas!" as I remounted and cycled away from the spot.

Candidate for Cycle Facility of the Month? Junction of the Dollis Valley route with Lovers Walk, looking towards Brent Way, Barnet.

Remember, there is no road running through here. This is just the intersection of two paths. That somebody in the council office, with a drawing board, though that all this steelwork was necessary to protect walkers using Lovers Walk from cyclists using the Dollis Valley route is quite incredible. It is probably more evidence of a local hostility to cycling. Only in a nation completely clueless about utility cycling could something so absurd exist. Barmy Barnet: I rest my case, m'Lud.

Great Divides

The Great Divide Ride on 25 March, highlighting the brutal severance of north London for cycling by the barrier of the North Circular Road, attracted about 80 cyclists from Barnet and adjacent boroughs: quite a turn out for a cycle protest in the outer suburbs. A special mention should perhaps go to Mustafa Arif, Campaigns Coordinator of the London Cycling Campaign, and his wife, for cutting short their honeymoon to come on the ride: true dedication – though it was in Mustafa's patch. A splendid planning job done by the organisers, Toby Jacobs and David Shannon of Barnet LCC, the work of the ride leader Charlie Holland (of Kennington People on Bikes) and the marshals (particularly memorable was Patrick Field racing up and down the side of the pack like a bullet on his recumbent, telling motorists "We'll only hold you up for two minutes") meant that the event went off safely and largely free from stress. Cycling on the roads and junctions tackled on this ride is not normally so stress-free. None of them have anything resembling satisfactory facilities for cycling, except possibly the first, and most easterly, crossing of the North Circular we used, Pegasus Way, a new, largely traffic-free, bridge, part of a new housing development in New Southgate.

Ride gathers at New Southgate Station, in a car-park graced by a strange, out-of-place Victorian ironwork relic
(picture by Shaun McDonald)

As a resident of Brent, and previously of Camden, only closely familiar with the western part of Barnet, the thing that struck me was that the crossings of the North Circular are in fact a lot less bad on the eastern side of Barnet. There are several bridges and underpasses in this area that allow one to cross the road without negotiating mega-junctions. As you go west, things get steadily worse, with the newly rebuilt Henlys Corner junction with Finchley Road (which Boris Johnson, bizarrely, in his current transport manifesto (page 35) seems to claim as an improvement for cyclists) creating a severe test of vehicular cycling confidence, with its new left-turn only lanes, that few would like to see their child or grandparent attempt. And this is but a taster for the true spaghetti-junction awfulness of the Brent Cross interchange with the A41 further west, the Staples Corner East roundabout, the start of the M1, and the Staples Corner West junction with the A5, on the Brent border. This latter was tacked by the mass ride from every possible direction, going round the roundabout, over the flyover (taking both lanes), and round the peculiarly pointless West Hendon gyratory system.

In the Hendon area: not the Tweed Run (picture by Shaun McDonald)

Staples Corner East roundabout (picture by Shaun McDonald)

The ride did not go further into Brent. Perhaps that is for another day. Suffice it to say that Brent is even worse than Barnet, with no, legal, practical crossings of the North Circular for cyclists for two and a half miles west of Staples Corner, until you come to Harrow Road. That junction is hardly a dreamy place either, but at least it is a simple signalised crossroads, or pair of crossroads, with no badly conflicting traffic movements. Between Golders Green Road, the last "easy" signalised surface-level crossing of the North Circular in Barnet, and Harrow Road, is a distance of four miles: four miles of a Berlin Wall like curtain across the borough of Brent that demands great determination by cyclists attempting to cross it, either by tackling the dangerous junctions head-on, or negotiating an indirect, slow, illegal way via pavements, pedestrian overpasses and underpasses. This Berlin Wall explains very largely the extraordinary drop-off in cycling rate in Brent between the southern wards, like Queens Park, where it is up to 4% of trips, to the northern wards, like Kenton, where it is down to 0.5% of trips. A fall-off would be expected anyway, or course, when going out of easy commuting range of central London, but the collapse of cycling in Brent at the North Circular barrier is visible and sharp. No other borough has such large differences in cycling rates between wards.

"Taking the lane" on the A5 flyover at Staples Corner West (picture by Shaun McDonald)

A game young rider. Shouldn't he be able to get about this area on his bike without all these people to protect him? (picture by Shaun McDonald)

The Great Divide Ride finished with a picnic in a huge grassy open space, the centre of the Staples Corner East roundabout: a spot that can be made to look, strangely, almost idyllic in a photo, when you cannot hear the roar of motor vehicles from all around and above you, and taste the particulates in the air. It takes a lot of walking on very narrow footbridges and paths to reach.

Not a bad spot for a picnic: Staples Corner East

Gathering on the hill for the final photocall

Video of the ride compressed into 7 minutes, by Shaun McDonald

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There are many Great Divides. There are physical Great Divides like the North Circular Road, that isolate communities. Then there are attitudinal Great Divides, such as those between cyclists and non-cyclists, in how they perceive the road environment. And there are Great Divides between cultures, between how different societies approach similar problems and come up with radically differing solutions.

The Great Divide Ride pre-publicity attracted the attention of Dutch cycle blogger Mark Wagenbuur, inspiring him to put up a post Huge roads do not have to be huge barriers, contrasting the junctions on the North Circular with a comparable trunk-road/motorway junction, Goyplein in Utrecht, built about the same time (1971). Ample, comprehensive and direct cycle path provision, fully separated from the roads, was part of the original Dutch design even then, and this was before the Dutch became really keen on cycle infrastructure, in the 80s and 90s.

At this time, the thinking of the UK government seems to have been that cycling was an old mode of transport that would disappear over time naturally, and that it should not be facilitated, as to do so would create a dangerous mix of slow cyclists and fast motor vehicles on the roads. So nothing was constructed for cyclists when the North Circular junctions were built, and, despite a change of rhetoric since then, there is nothing now: save for a few pathetic "shared use" pedestrian facility conversions – conversions of facilities that are inadequate even for pedestrians on their own, as Charlie Holland has pointed out.

Mark Wagenbuur wrote:

I recently came across a video of a crossing of London’s North Circular Road. The way cyclists have to maneuver through traffic, some of which heavy goods transportation, is shocking to anyone I believe. But if you are familiar with the situation on Dutch roads even more so.

So a Dutchman thinks that the conditions cyclists have to endure to make what should be simple journeys in the North London suburbs are "shocking to anyone". Here is a cultural Great Divide. For they are clearly not shocking to most British people. If they were really shocking to them, they would be changed. When British society became shocked at the exploitation of child labour under terrible conditions in the 19th century, things were changed. Why is it not shocking to most British people that children, like the boy pictured above, cannot (normally) cycle between adjacent suburbs of North London without having to cycle through junctions that have 40 mph design speeds, and actual speeds often in excess of this, full of motor vehicles including heavy lorries, where their risk of getting killed will be very great indeed? This shocks me, it is a scandal to me, as it is to Mark, but not to most British people. Why?

The violence of motor vehicles evident on the infrastructure on the Great Divide Ride. Pedestrians clearly need these barriers, but cyclists are given none. Cyclists are trapped on the wrong side of the barriers, given training and helmets and told to "keep their wits about them". (Picture by Shaun McDonald)

Physical barriers are used to separate one lane of motorists from another, because of safety, but the same consideration is not applied to cyclists. (Picture by Shaun McDonald)

To understand the lack of shock about the shortage of safe provision for cycling in the UK we need to consider separately two sections of British society: the 1% who cycle, and the 99% who do not. The former probably are shocked, or have been shocked, in the past, but it has worn off to an extent. It is hard to go around permanently shocked by the daily reality you see around you. It is not a very sane state to remain in for long. Cyclists in Britain have to adapt to survive, or they give up cycling, and become part of the non-cycling 99%. They become used to the conditions, and many come to believe that these conditions are natural or inevitable in some way, and cannot be changed. This is just a standard human mental coping strategy.

Dissatisfied cyclists may lobby by writing to their representatives, or writing to newspapers, but they discover, maybe over years and decades, that this results in little change, and it becomes dispiriting to keep on at such an apparently lost cause. They may join and support the activities of cycling organisations, but they find that even such organised lobbying has little effect on government, when it is on behalf of a widely-despised 1% of the population. They may also find that such lobbying efforts are often partially undermined by differences of opinion on appropriate solutions between different cyclists and groups. This is because the mental effects of the brutal road conditions are pernicious: they create their own mindset, where cyclists have to become hardened, to adapt, to survive – they have to transform into that mythical beast, the "vehicular cyclist", and in some cases they start to imagine that this is what cycling, fundamentally, is all about, this adaptation and hardening process – that is is a thing any cyclist must go through, and that, fundamentally, protection from motor traffic is not what cyclists need. This is another coping strategy. It is the one adopted by our cycling mayor, Boris "keep your wits about you" Johnson. So many people who start by wanting to "change the world", in cycling terms, end up by concluding either it is unchangeable, or does not need changing.

Then we have the 99% of the population that does not cycle. If they think about the problem at all, they mostly think, I suspect, that there is some "other way round". Many think, incorrectly, that cycling is legal on pavements. Others think, incorrectly, that it is legal to cycle in parks (it is not in any Brent parks or in most Barnet ones). Others may think that there is a "cycling network" that works, but they don't know about it because they have never looked for it. They may think that cycling on minor roads for the whole length of a typical cycling journey is practical, and that cyclists don't need to be on the major roads and junctions at all. They may have seen the bits of cycle lane around the place, and, because they haven't actually cycled, not discovered that the routes are not practical, they don't go where people need to get to, and that they are massively discontinuous and flawed.

Often some people in power, and some people in power who sometimes cycle, have similar ideas. A week after the Great Divide Ride I was at a Barnet Cyclists meeting at which the MP for Chipping Barnet, Theresa Villiers, spoke. She is a Minister of State for Transport, and she regularly cycles, or did until a recent accident in which she broke her collar bone (I wish her a speedy recovery). In discussion on the Great Divide Ride and the North Circular junctions, particularly Henly's Corner, though she expressed some sympathy with the points raised, and admitted that we need big improvements to London's cycling infrastructure, and that we could usefully learn lessons from other places (the Netherlands, obviously), she seemed to think that:
1) Shared facilities, as in the new staggered sheep-pen crossings for pedestrians and cyclists at Henly's Corner, are a sensible solution for many cyclists, and,
2) That cyclists don't need to use the A41 or the A5 to get to central London from Barnet, that there are other ways.

Well, there are other ways, in the sense that it is always possible to go round three sides of a huge square five miles across rather than take the direct route, and go up and down at least 100 metres of unnecessary elevation, but is that a way to ever get people cycling to work? No, I think not. I think people will take the bus or train or car instead. This  ignorance of the physical infrastructure characteristics of "her patch"of London, from the point of view of a cyclist, was what I found most disappointing in Teresa Villiers' responses. An important point is that North London is hilly, and the straight, direct routes, the A5 and A41, are the flattest routes.

She had not actually seen the new Henly's Corner, so was not fully conversant with the issues there (but "Why not?" one might ask). But she was in favour of "cycle infrastructure", and thought the crossings at Hyde Park Corner rather good. I have to admit they are better than they were ten years ago, but regarding these constricted, low-priority, semi-shared, already grossly over-capacity crossings as decent cycle facilities just shows how low our standards are in this country.

The Great Divide Ride was one of a series of protest rides held recently in London to highlight the dire state of our cycling infrastructure. It followed on the heels of the Blackfriars flashrides and the Tour du Danger. At least it generated some new discussions with some different politicians, it created some local publicity, and it sent a message to the world (including the cycling world) that London cycling is not just the City, it is not just Hackney and Southwark, but "We are here, we are up here in the northern suburbs, and we have a terrible cycling environment, and can't we have a bit more attention please from government, TfL, media, Sustrans, and anyone who will listen, really?"

The next big event in London will be The Big Ride on April 28, just days before the mayoral election, the results of which will surely have a huge impact on how cycling develops all over London in the next four years, and there is also on that date a Scottish equivalent, the Pedal on Parliament. Be there, or there, or keep riding round three sides of that square.

Join the Great Divide Ride this Sunday

The Great Divide Ride is coming up this Sunday 25 March.

The ride will be a good-natured protest highlighting the issue of the division and impermeability of the boroughs of Barnet and Brent for cycling because of the North Circular Road. Particularly it will be highlighting the rebuild of Henly's Corner by TfL last year, which made it much more dangerous for cyclists. The policy TfL carried into operation at Henly's Corner is the same single-minded prioritisation of motor traffic flow above all other considerations, especially pedestrian and cyclists safety and convenience, that is evidenced also in their recent changes at Blackfriars, and coming up at Kings Cross. We can expect more of this, at more junctions all over London, unless we can make them see that a large number of Londoners are not happy with this agenda.

If you have any doubt about the issues around the North Circular, Barnet LCC have made this brilliant video showing just what the protest is about, including what it is like to cycle at Henly's Corner and Staples Corner. See also the letter to the mayoral candidates asking them for their views on the issue.



Though primarily a north London event, we expect to be joined by cyclists from all over London. It should be quite a carnival, and, with a large group, which will be thoroughly marshalled, negotiating some of the worst junctions in London should be easy even for children (who are welcome to come if they are up for something like a 20 mile round trip from Brent). We expect media and quite a bit of publicity. The ride ties in both with The Times's Cities Fit for Cycling campaign (which is calling for redesign of Britain's most dangerous junctions) and LCC's Love London, Go Dutch campaign, which is calling for London's streets to be "as safe and inviting for cycling as they are in Holland".

The ride will start at New Southgate Station at 10:00 am, but you could also join one of the two feeder rides from Brent and SW Barnet:

1) Start 9:00 am from the forecourt of The Crown pub, Cricklewood Broadway. Ride will be led by Mustafa Arif (mob. 7966 924728).

2) Stat 9:00 am from Kingsbury Station. Ride will be led by David Arditti (mob. 07866 456390)

After uniting at New Southgate we will head back west, crossing the North Circular about 10 times, finishing around lunchtime with a picnic at the "secret park" in the centre of Staples Corner (no, I've never been there either).

So get your picnic together, and I hope to see you there.

The Great Divide Ride will allow you to cycle safely with your children through junctions like Staples Corner West. Take the opportunity: it could be a once-only occurrence.

'Cities fit for cycling' flashride and debate – the Ship of State moves

I have not yet reported on the 22 February protest ride organised by ibikelondon, Cyclists in the City and the London Cycling Campaign, in advance of the Commons debate on cycle safety inspired by The Times's Cities fit for Cycling Campaign.

Well the ride was a huge success – as we knew it would be. Cyclists, for the first time in my 26 years of riding in London, are now prepared to stand up (or sit in the saddle) and be counted, and are not prepared to let the status quo continue. I arrived at the top of Duke of York steps to see a picturesque sea of winking red lights from the throng of riders gathered below on The Mall. There were clearly hundreds here, though all of them were not in view.

Looking down on the start of the ride from Duke of York Steps

The ride took off, and wound its way very slowly down The Mall and into Horse Guards Road, then headed for Parliament Square, turning right at the Palace of Westminster, down Millbank, across Lambeth Bridge, then back along the south side of the river to Westminster Bridge, across the bridge, past St Stephen's Tower (Big Ben) and up Whitehall, to Trafalgar Square, and back to The Mall. Police on bikes did an excellent job of keeping impatient motorists, taxi drivers and motorcyclists at bay, and of minimising conflict, and the LCC marshals also did a sterling job in keeping the ride together.

The police estimate was that 2000 cyclists took part. This is a similar number to that on the last Blackfriars flashride, but this ride felt symbolically and emotionally far better, and just more like an important historic moment. It was a protest ride in the right place, winding round the centres of power, Westminster and Whitehall. It was enthusiastic and noisy (previous flashrides had been quite quiet). It included MPs, London Assembly members and councillors. It was a ride riding a national wave of publicity and concern over the issue. Everybody on it, from "almost never cycle" people on bikes in their ordinary clothes, to long-distance touring cyclists and road racers in their usual get-up, knew why they were there and what they wanted, united in pushing the messages that cycling needs to be made safe, and that the way to make it safe is to build "cities fit for cycling". No more victim-blaming, no more persecution, no more putting the burden of taking all the protective measures on to the cyclists, no more letting motorists get away, literally, with murder, no more road designs that ignore cyclists – the slogan Cities fit for cycling encapsulates the point: it is the environment and the law which need changing, not the people on the bikes. The point was made, and made to people who matter, as subsequent events proved. It felt like a turning-point.

The ride was noticed, and had its effect on the debate next day. Several of the MPs taking part in the debate had been on the ride. The debate, attended by 75 MPs, has already been widely reported and commented-upon. Of course, those MPs attending were largely those converted to the cause already. But it proved that a surprising number have been converted to the cause, and a surprising number either are cyclists already, or know that they want to be, and would be, if the necessary measures to increase safety on the roads were taken. The Prime Minister's disarmingly honest statement on the afternoon of the flashride that

Anyone who has got on a bicycle – particularly in one of our busier cities – knows you are taking your life into your hands every time you do so...

had already galvanised the debate. There was mercifully little of the traditional UK pantomime of "cyclists should do more to protect themselves" and none of the equally-traditional comedy number "cyclists must get their own house in order and obey the law before we spend money on them" (when was that argument ever used against any other social group?). The MPs here basically understood the agenda that The Times has been driving home: our streets on which cyclists have to ride are not fit for purpose. And they, broadly, recognised that fixing the situation was going to cost a good deal of money, and take much time and political determination. There was also a recognition we has been here before – the National Cycling Strategy of of 1996 had aimed for 10% of trips to be done by bike by this year, 2012 – and a feeling that the same failure must be avoided, at all costs, this time around.

I can pick out a few problems with the debate. There was quite a lot of harping on the "safety in numbers" fallacy, which just confuses the debate on cycle safety. I've written about this in detail before. Basically, my position is that "safety in numbers" is a kind of illusion resulting from the fact that the places that have both large numbers of cyclists, and good safety for cyclists, also have much better physical conditions, either through separated infrastructure, or motor traffic removal. As the Director of SWOV, the Dutch institute for road safety research, says:

I do not expect that a greater number of cyclists will on its own result in a risk reduction for the cyclist....Policy that only focuses on an increase in cycling and at the same time ignores the construction of more cycling facilities will not have a positive effect on road safety.

The trouble with the "safety in numbers" concept is that, though it contains a grain of truth, there is certainly a correlation there, it is basically unhelpful for forming policy, as it encourages a view, that UK cycling organisations have often come dangerously close to suggesting, that all you have to do is to encourage and train as many people as possible to cycle on the roads, and the roads will then automatically become safe for cycling, and we will have solved the problem of how to create a mass cycling culture without all of that annoying, expensive, dedicated cycle engineering clutter that those silly continentals put in. As David Hembrow puts it (in his now miraculously resuscitated blog)

Cycle training can help a few nervous but keen individuals to cycle in a hostile environment. However, it's not something which scales to support the entire population in cycling for a significant proportion of all journeys. 

Talk of "safety in numbers" just distracts attention from the real, hard-engineering measures that are needed to create mass cycling in an advanced industrialised nation. As I say, it just confuses the debate, and it did indeed confuse some MPs' advocacy of the cycling cause in the debate. It is an idea we need to move beyond.

Then there was the "strict liability for drivers" issue, another thing where there is a bit of a correlation with high cycling levels in various countries, but we get the causation, again, the wrong way round in this country. Driver liability is an insurance technicality, legal small-print, if you will, which really cannot affect people's real-world, moment-to-moment decision making on the roads. It can have little effect on safety. It was introduced in the Netherlands after they already had mass cycling based on good infrastructure. It came as a consequence of that. It doesn't itself create, or significantly contribute to, mass cycling, anywhere. It's another distraction.

Then there was the minor distraction raised of "the need for showers and workplace lockers" – whereas a characteristic of mass cycling based on good infrastructure is that it is relaxed, not fast and furious, and people dress for their destination, not for their mode of transportation. These things again should be seen as largely irrelevant to what we are trying to achieve.

Then again, there was a lot of mixing up of cycle sport with "cycling as transport" in the debate. Unfortunately, because the one word "cycling" in English covers both of these quite different and largely unrelated areas, this usually happens. (The Dutch have two different words.) This was all the more understandable in view of the impending Olympic Games, and I do not entirely discount the possibility that some people may be inspired to start cycling, either for leisure or utility, as a result of media focus on the sport, and I recognise this to be a good thing. But unless we follow up this burst of enthusiasm with real change on our roads, to make people continue to cycle, by making it a pleasurable experience for them to do so, we will be back to how we were within a year or two. So: cycle sport, nothing wrong with it, but not really the issue here.

So there were these bits of foolishness and confusion in the debate. But overwhelmingly it was on the right lines. There was a huge amount of concern by MPs at avoidable deaths and injuries of their constituents while cycling, and a recognition we have both to physically put our roads right, and get prosecution and sentencing of road traffic offenders right. Ian Austin talked memorably about "the derisory sentences drivers [who kill] receive". Julian Huppert came down to the hard facts of the case when he said that "£10 per person per year is needed to turn Britain into a prime cycling nation".

Ben Bradshaw, a Labour ex-minister who has been involved with cycling at the parliamentary level for many years, noted, from his experience of government, how getting action on cycling tended to be dogged by two things: firstly, a failure of the different government departments that need to be involved – treasury, transport, environment and local government, and health – to collaborate, with what he described as conflicting cultures between the departments, and, secondly, the presence of so many disparate voices from the cycling lobby. This last certainly has been a problem in the past, but my sense now is that cyclists are far more united now in calling for the measures that really increase safety and cycling numbers. I think the flashrides have been evidence of this.

MPs merely having this debate doesn't actually get anything done. Cyclists, and The Times, still do not have any of what they are asking for. Delivering those is down to the Prime Minister, who knows that cycling in the UK involves "taking your life into your hands', and his senior ministers, particularly the Chancellor, and the Secretary of State for Transport. There was nobody at the debate who could deliver for the government. Under Secretary of State for Transport Norman Baker was really the fall-guy for this debate: he was in clear, and embarrassing, difficulty, trying to justify the record of the coalition so far – that of his government, that had abolished the already meanly-funded Cycling England quango and not replaced it with anything coherent, and which had nothing to offer but £11 million per year for training cyclists in techniques to avoid getting squashed on the roads by negligent drivers and lorries that shouldn't be there in the first place, and a Local Sustainable Transport Fund that mixes £15 million for a paltry few cycling schemes of questionable quality with far too much other stuff. Everybody, including him, seemed to know that this is just not action on a scale that is going to work. He candidly revealed his "envy" for the "fantastic" cycling environments in Amsterdam and elsewhere in the Netherlands. He knows that they achieved it by spending about 80 times his total expenditure, per person per year, for forty years. He knows what is needed, but can't yet deliver it.

So the onus remains on cyclists, and their supporters in the media and politics, to keep pushing to put cycling's supporters in the government, like Norman Baker, (and maybe David Cameron himself?) in a position where they can deliver what is needed. In the London Cycling Campaign, our next step, apart from the Go Dutch petition, will be a protest ride on 28 April, which should be the biggest ever. If you can possibly get to central London to take part in this, wherever you live, start planning to attend now, please. If you don't live within cycling range, there are always trains, coaches (and, dare I say, cars), and Boris bikes at the London end!

There remains much to do, and we are not close yet to getting the demands of even The Times's too-modest manifesto. Nevertheless I think the national debate has decisively changed. If this were a war, this would not be the Beginning of the End, but I think it could be the End of the Beginning.

I'll finish by going back to the start of the Westminster flashride. I arrived at the top of Duke of York Steps. As I took photos from the top of the steps, many pedestrian passers-by, all types of people, asked me what was going on. It was difficult to explain quickly, but I told them it was a peaceful protest to highlight to MPs the need for better safety for cyclists. Everybody I spoke to was 100% in favour of the protest when I told them this. All agreed that this protest was a great thing to happen, even if it did get in their way temporarily.

These people were not cyclists. These reactions, more than anything else, lead me to think that a rubicon was passed on the night of 22 February 2012. The vast ship of public indifference to cycling safety and cycling conditions in the UK, that campaigners have been pushing and shoving at for decades, getting nowhere, had started moving. Almost imperceptibly, over the winter of 2011–12, it had started to slide down the slipway into the river. The Times campaign had given it a welcome shove, but their effort was dependent on those of many others who had toiled away long before.

The ship may yet stick temporarily, and may require many more a hard shove, but I have no doubt it will enter the water, now that it has started moving. In the bar afterwards we toasted the moment. The Vole celebrated with tea.

The riders grouped at Duke of York Steps after the ride