Mild for October...

The Numbers

The weather was kind to us yet again during October. The traffic was calm during the school half-term holidays, and we saw 4 new riders in the month. Overall, figures are pretty stable with usually around 10 riders on a Wednesday morning, and 4 or so on an evening.

What's really great to see is that one of our regular riders over the last few months has started to 'buddy' a friend to work. While they may not be on the bike bus, there is one more rider on the road, and I often see them looking nice and visible riding along together.

A new short cut?

One of the bike busers (ages ago) alerted us to the little known short cut between Utley and Riddlesden. This route cuts out the 3 major roundabouts from the old road between Croshills and Keighley and the old Keighley to Bingley route via Riddlesden, which many of us will use, not only on the bike bus, but at weekends as well.

Currently, the route is just an unofficial path, with access granted by the council, but no public right of way. It's muddy, and there's evidence that mountain bikes use it, but it wouldn't be much use for my skinny tyres. We've asked Robert Brough to take a look at it. He's the man behind the Airedale Greenway, that was launched in September. (press coverage of the launch here:http://ur1.ca/f0u3)

Early one morning Andy and I took some photos, you can see them here:  http://www.airevalleybikebus.org.uk/image/tid/148

To see where this is on a Google Map, see: http://ur1.ca/f0uo (the area is to the west of Royd Ings Ave, beneath the bypass)

New Sites well recieved

Last month we told you about www.bikebradford.org.uk, a site to bring together everything to do with cycling around Bradford together on the web. Well, it now indexes 67 websites and has an additional page covering PDF leaflets. 

http://hammsters.wordpress.com/ - the home of the Hammsters on the web, has now been updated with all the ride reports that covered the training and for, and the ride to Germany last year.

I give up - we're on Twitter

After trying to avoid Twitter I've finally succumbed and you can now follow the every bike based thought of David Domestique until it drives you mad. The airevalleybikebus web site displays a feed of this drivel, or you can find me at http://twitter.com/DavidDomestique (Twitter), and http://identi.ca/daviddomestique (Identi.ca)