Here we go again… The announcement of another pot of cash which will fund a handful of schemes across the country and have minimal impact on the lives of the majority of people in the country. Good for those who receive it but for those that don’t, simply gaslights us into thinking that the government are committed to transforming our country into one where active travel is the norm. (Remember Boris Johnson’s “golden age of cycling”?) There is a scheme near where I live in West Yorkshire – a disused railway that runs along the Ryburn Valley from Sowerby Bridge to Ripponden and Rishworth (see below) – that would be a great candidate for a slice of this cash but it’s unlikely to happen. Expect the money to be allocated predominantly in Tory ‘red wall’ constituencies. And when the beauty contest decisions are made later in the year, expect the same announcement to be made again. Meanwhile in The Netherlands they are putting their money where their mouth is (as they have being doing for decades) and have just opened an underwater bike parking facility in Amsterdam…
Today was the equivalent of a cycle touring spinning class. Well, mostly. Almost the entire route from Nogent-le-Rotrou to Alençon was off road and along a very long disused railway line. I almost felt guilty for having made all of those men work so hard 100? 200? years ago in building the railway line in the first. Now it’s ‘just’ being used by cyclists and walkers. But hey! At least it’s still in use…
There’s been much about the Far East in recent weeks, but let’s come back to Yorkshire and more specifically the Ryburn Valley. Some of you may remember me mentioning the Ryburn Valley Greenway project on CyclingEurope.org in the past – follow this link to read the previous posts. […]
As I have been doing ever since the lockdown started, today I went out for my daily exercise. It’s no longer my ‘permitted’ exercise as it seems that things are back to normal in terms of getting out and about, as long as we keep our 2 metres of distance. In the main, people seem to be sticking to that. This morning I set off on what would become a 20km walk to the Ryburn and Baitings reservoirs making the most of the warm day. There were a good number of people out and about despite it being Monday; I was certainly not alone. Then I looked online…
Trump, Brexit, May (although see below)… I’ve had my fill. In other news: I joined BBC Radio Leeds presenter Andrew Edwards last Thursday morning for a walk along part of the route of the disused Sowerby Bridge to Rishworth railway line and one day, hopefully, the walking- and […]
Where Cycling Europe goes, the BBC follows… Well, kind of. I first met Andrew Edwards of BBC Radio Leeds way back in 2014 when he interviewed me and another long-distance cyclist Tom Bruce at an event organised by Leeds’ cycling impresario Ian Street (he of Leeds Bicycle Film […]
‘Greenways’, ‘Vias Verdes‘, ‘Voies Vertes‘… they are all the same thing – in English, Spanish and French respectively – and they have cropped up from time to time in this parish, most recently a couple of months ago when I had the opportunity of cycling along the Waterford […]
A few weeks ago at the start of September, I posted an article to CyclingEurope.org about something called the Ryburn Valley Greenway. You may want to read what I wrote at the time (and watch the videos that I made) before you continue to read this but basically… […]
