Wight Weirdos » cycling

Valentines Day

Susan — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 12:10:11 +0000

We don’t really celebrate Valentines day much as a couple or as a family. martin and I usually exchange cards – this year I made a card based on this circle activity. I changed it to heart shapes and mounted them on pink and red cards.

I didn’t manage to get up in time to give the card to Martin before he went to work so had a fairly lazy morning. Monday is my morning for sorting washing so that’s what I did.

Rebekah went out and the rest of us headed for horse riding. I dropped Ruth off in Newport to go to her 4×4 meeting - they were taking a chassis apart and putting back together again.

Jonathan enjoyed horse riding as usual.

After Horse riding we were off to a Valentines HE session.

They played a running matching game, learned some of the origins about Valentines day, cooking, playing team games and making some Valentines themed stained glass windows.

Stained glass windows:

Playing Games:

We got back quite late so Rebekah and I made a hasty sausage casserole and mash, Jonathan made a Hama bead dragon and Martin taught Ruth how to change an inner tube – mostly she learned not to leave a tyre leaver inside the tyre when you reattach it to the wheel!

Then, because it was Monday, we finished off Valentines day by updating paperwork together - what romance!

Worse than locusts….

Martin — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 21:03:00 +0000

….is the plague of signs on our esplanades. I think they should all be removed, there are now so many that no-one pays them any attention and they are just a blot on the landscape. If we have to have signs lets have happy friendly ones that welcome people and invite them to have fun, rather than a myriad of metal monsters telling us we can’t do anything at all.

Frankfurt – a few ramblings

Martin — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 20:14:00 +0000

We got back a couple of days ago from a lightening trip to Frankfurt. It was borne out of Ryanair’s 1p flight deal, discovered thanks to the most excellent Martin Lewis and his splendid Moneysavingexpert.com website. When I say 1p, that was it. One solitary penny per person each way (inc. taxes). So 7 of us travelled from London Stansted to Frankfurt Hahn for 14p. Unfortunately it cost us £55 to get across the Solent….

This was my first visit to Germany, and comments on line had left me uninspired about the idea of visiting Frankfurt. Overall I was pleasantly surprised. We found a clean city, a very friendly welcome, and a huge Christmas market (which was the main reason for our visit).

So, some vague ramblings about some of my observations. I’ll talk about the airport in a separate post, including our top transport tips!

The transfer from the airport left us at an S-Bahn station, where we needed a little help with the ticket machine to get the best tickets, but we ended up with an all day ticket for 5 people for just €8.40 and a single trip ticket for just €2. The trains were fast, clean, on time and the information provision was pretty good.

We stayed in the Hotel Europa (booked via Hostelworld.com), which was carefully selected as it appeared to be the cheapest habitable hotel with the right configuration of rooms. For a triple and a twin room we paid around £80 for the night including breakfast. £16 per person is pretty good in my book. The rooms were small but clean and comfortable, the hotel was a bit noisy but we were prepared for that based on online reviews (like this and this), but the staff were fantastic; helpful, laid back and friendly. Breakfast was simple but good and plentiful. Really can’t quibble for the money. Oh, and it’s 3 minutes walk from the Hauptbahnhof (main station).

I won’t bore you with all the details of the trip, but a few things stood out:

This beautiful (cough!) sculpture really is as dominant as it looks in the picture. I guess the people of Frankfurt are proud of their place at the centre of the European banking system. Unfortunately this appears to be what happens when you let bankers commission art. The towers in the background are interesting too. I had presumed that Frankfurt’s “skyscrapers” would all be in a group together in the city centre, but they are actually quite spread out. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing…

Now this was a better attempt IMHO. This guy is pretty big, and he moves. I think the scale is just right for the space, and I actually got left behind because I kept wandering round this sculpture looking at it from different angles, where the size seems to magically change. The picture below shows how small it appears when viewed with the tower behind (sorry, didn’t notice what the building was, but it was tall!).

When taking these we were on our way to Senckenberg, the natural history museum in Frankfurt. As with most museums it had its good and bad points, but what really stood out was the Cafe. In the UK we pay high prices for awful canteen food in many museums. The Bistro in here was not particularly cheap, but the food was good (mmmmm cakes) and you could even get a beer….I wonder if the Natural History Museum in London serves alcohol…. It also looked very attractive. So all you OK museum curators – it can be done!

Heading back for the Christmas market we forced certain members of our party to walk rather than catching the underground. I’m glad we did, because we meandered along some interesting residential streets. They aren’t going to get in the guide books, but I think this is an important part of visiting a new city. I also saw lots of evidence of simple cycle provision, like residential streets which were one way for cars and two way for bikes. This was the norm it appeared, as it is in the Netherlands. Take note UK traffic planners!!!

Give way to those travelling uphill…

Martin — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 19:15:00 +0000

I was going to rant about car drivers not giving way to cyclist travelling uphill, but see the Weekly Gripe has beaten me to it. (Great title by the way!). I share their grievance. Travelling along National Cycle Network 23 I had the same problem the other day. In a car, stopping to give way to a bike takes mere seconds and no effort (unless you count depressing the brake pedal). By following the correct procedure you will, however, save the cyclist from losing momentum, and expelling lots of effort restarting on a hill. Get a grip guys, it costs you mere seconds.

All roads lead to Breda?

Martin — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 06:07:00 +0000

The Dutch let us down today. Junction with signs to Breda in three directions for cyclists – not too helpful… Oh well, that’s not bad, that’s the first gripe to date. We followed a 25km ish route today joined by Aunty Jane on a hired (child’s) bike. They have a system of numbered junctions marked on a map, with traffic free and low traffic routes in between. You pick your next destination junction, and follow signs to that, then look for the next numbered junction and so on. Generally works quite well. I’m still admiring the fantastic infrastructure for cyclists. If we had something more like this at home I’m convinced we could increase cycle trips and decrease car use.

Anti-bike culture

Martin — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 23:15:00 +0000

Just posted on the family blog about how good cycle infrastructure is in the Netherlands (after a slightly petty gripe about signage at one junction) and that improving ours in the UK would almost certainly see a modal shift from car to bike. What I’m not sure about is how you change an anti-bike culture. The Dutch drive sensibly around cyclists, are tolerant of them making mistakes (and misdemeanours), I would wager there are few calls for compulsory tests, insurance or tax on bikes as are often heard in the UK. Cycling is deeply embedded in Dutch culture though, and we have lost that now. I’d like to hope that would start to change if we got to the stage where we had decent facilities for cyclists and hence more people using bikes. But I’m not sure. Oh, and before anyone suggests no-one will cycle in the UK because its hilly, and the Netherlands is Pancake-flat, I don’t expect us to reach NL numbers of cyclists or distances, but for many trips a bike makes sense, and for many more it would make sense with some major or even minor improvements to our infrastructure.

Oh, and by the way, Dutch roads are excellent by and large. Driving here is not unpleasant at all. Just often unnecessary.

Cycling in the Netherlands

Martin — Wed, 30 May 2007 18:24:00 +0000

Cycled the 7.5km (5 miles or thereabouts for the terminally British) into Breda.

Along the main road there was mostly a cycle lane on each side of the road, separate from the road and footpath. It was wide, well surfaced and had right of way over minor roads and entrances to premises. It’s illegal to cycle on road if there is an adjacent cycle path. Some people think this should be the same in the UK. I could go for that, but only when all our cycle tracks are up to Netherlands standards.

Breda has a population of over 150,000, yet we managed to cycle right into the heart of the town with young children without ever feeling unsafe on the bikes. Can we inject some of this into UK transport planning, please?

The sun shines on the righteous… and the Gibsonclan

Martin — Wed, 30 May 2007 01:00:00 +0000

The following few posts were written down while on holiday, so posted on block. Post dates correspond to time of original pen ‘n’ ink writing.

After hours in the pouring rain on Sunday affixing bikes to the car, we actually got to cycle in the sun today! We’re on holiday in Oosterhout, just outside Breda in the Netherlands. We rode the 15km return journey to Breda, visiting the excellent tourist information centre (VVV) where the kids got free drinks and biscuits(!) and we picked up soem cycling maps. Fantastic cycle paths and much better driver attitudes than in the UK.

In the afternoon we headed for the pancake house (discovered on our last visit 6 years before) along a nice tarmac track through the woods. The pancakes were great as was the beer – so much better than the tasteless fizz the Dutch export to the UK.

Rebekah showed her true colours eating like an animal, some people will do anything for chocolate sauce…

Great play area for the kids too – if you’re ever in the area, we highly recommend Het Pannekoeckershuys, just to the South of Den Hout.