David Domestique's blog

Like the Queen, the Aire Valley Bike Bus has an official and an unofficial birthday.

Manjit and David, set off on the 6th August 2008, with the daft idea of cajoling other cyclists to ride together and share their commute. 3 years on from the start of the bike bus, more than 60 cyclists have covered over 8000 miles and had over 1700 rider journeys between them.

We celebrated with our official birthday commute on Wednesday 7th September, 2011 where 16 or so riders met up, and had a pic-nic breakfast in Centenary Square, Bradford. See the birthday photos.

Later that day, following the evening ride, (a mostly different) 10 of us met up in the The Boathouse Inn, Saltaire, meaning that about 25 different people came out to celebrate in all.

Bicycle stands at Bingley station

Up early today to do an interview with people from Northern Rail.

They are making a short film to show other train operating companies about their work to improve cycling facilities.

They are improving cycle parking on 100 stations that feed into Leeds with £1million grant from the government.

One of Northern Rail's parent companies is Abellio who are bringing some of their know how of cycling in Holland to the UK,  the flagish project being  the Leeds Cycle Point.

Worth checking out what Northern Rail have to say about cycling.

I've also been in contact with their cycling forum about looking at improvements to the facilities in Bingley. Great though some of the facilities are, some of the 'Sheffield Stands' are under the bridge and do suffer from bird droppings - and that's enough to put me off using them.

A new blog has been set up to tell the story of Bradford's cyclists.

Called Seat Posts - Stories from the saddle, it gives the opportunity for cyclists to blog about their everyday experiences.

Kicking it all off is Badger Bonce, with stories directly from his/her saddle in the run up to this year's Sky Rides. There's some sage advice on looking after yourself, your bike, and inparticular your saddle (area!).

Check it out at: http://seatposts.wordpress.com

Had a lovely evening last Wednesday, when a bunch of bike busers (and friends) got together to mark Steve's final ride, as he retires today!

Also there was Chris who, due to a change of job, will also soon be leaving us. Between them they've covered about 1000 commuter miles with the bike bus over the last two and a half years. 

Every now and again we get together off the bikes and try to work out who is who (amazing how different people look without helmets and flourescent jackets). We probably don't do it often enough. Maybe we could do with a social secretary. If only we could find someone with some spare time on their hands....

Cycle Bradford launched a draft proposal for an over arching cycling strategy for the district this week.

The strategy itself is broken into 5 areas:

• AP1 Support for existing local cycling and associated activity strategies and partner-led development plans
• AP2 Communication and Promotion of Cycling in Bradford
• AP3 Bradford’s Cycling Infrastructure
• AP4 Cycling Economics and Funding
• AP5 Cycle Training, Education, Enterprise and Community Support

What I think is great about this is that it's pretty comprehensive, and covers most aspects of life, not just cycling, in the district.

There was some press coverage in Telegraph and Argus; the comments were interesting. Most strikingly for me was the way it was assumed that this was a council initiative, which it clearly is not! And although there is much negativity in the comments, it's quite easy to pick out the themes and issues that each of the comments address, and that should give us something to work on in achieving the aims of the strategy - better cycling for all!

Seems a number of bike busers have been getting creative with their helmet cams recently.

The latest (complete with whistling!) can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKxq3cSAvJw

There are some related videos that I never knew existed along side it on YouTube of the Aire Valley Bike Bus over the years. 

I love 'em - but I'm not sure how much they are a real reflection of what it is actually like to ride the bus. I always feel as though the videos make it seem as though the cars are noisier and closer than they really are. Still we enjoy ourselves!

This is a little off Bike Bus topic but...

Last week, by accident, I ended up hosting a touring cyclist who just happened to be in Bradford for the night, and needed a place to stay. 

Turns out she was a user of http://www.warmshowers.com - a community of bike tourists sharing hospitality. Although we're not registered on the site as a hospitality place, we were happy to step in to help.

A look at the site shows that there lots of people world wide happy to take in touring cyclists, just for the experience really. It was fun hosting a tourist in Bingley - she was quite impressed with the 5 rise locks!

The next day she headed off to Sheffield, setting of just a little too late to get on the Bike Bus, but we did meet up in Centenary Square, where the other busers were having a chat.

So worth a look!
http://www.warmshowers.com

So 14 of us rode the bike bus to the Bradford Skyride, and 5 rode back together (into a massive headwind!). See previous post Riding to the SkyRide for details.

The day was pretty good - great to see so many people out on their bikes - young and old, in trailers, with stabilisers, on racers, bmx, etc.

The entertainment village was pretty good, with static sprint challenges, assault courses, whacky bikes, live music and food stalls.

Apparently 5,000 people did tuen up, but it never felt that crowded with us all spread over a 7km course and with a big park mostly to ourselves.

Really good. Just can't help thinking we didn't really all need to wear high-viz jackets on closed roads!

Lots of pictures on Sky and British cycling's sites -  many of them containing bike busers. Spot yourselves if you can.

Links:
Sky's report
Sky's Pictures
British Cycling's report

Bike busers will be going to the SkyRide (Bradford) on Sunday 29th August 2010, where it is expected that 5000+ cyclists will turn out to enjoy traffic free roads for the day.

But how to get there?

The event kicks off at around 11.30am, so the we've put together a timetable (below) for those wanting to ride with others to the event along the Aire Valley route.

All times are approximate as we've no idea of how fast or slow we'll actually be on the day. What we can promise is that we will not pass the points given before the time stated.

We'll join the SkyRide route in Little Germany. For more details of the SkyRide and the route see: http://www.goskyride.com/location/bradford/