The ride chosen is one of Martin Foley’s permanent audaxes – the 206km Saltire. This looks like rather a pleasant run, starting in Musselburgh just to the east of Edinburgh, before tracing out a big cross over the Scottish Borders with controls at Duns, Innerleithen and North Berwick.

Route image from RideWithGPS. Annoyingly this image doesn’t come with a scale – the bottom leg from Duns to Innerleithen is 58km. Click to go to the route page.

It’s also moderately lumpy, so we’ll be able to give the newly oiled Rohloff internal gear hub a good work out on our way towards a trio of Audax climbing points.

At least it finishes with a nice long descent…

There’s a ford at the 147km mark – place your bets now as to whether we’ll end up considerably damper than we were at 146km…

The day after (Sunday 19th) is Pedal On Parliament day. Edinburgh Meadows, 2pm. I wrote before about why it would be great if you could be there – give us a wave should you see us. The dragon hat is being prepared…

The post Saltire 200km permanent audax appeared first on Darkerside.

I’ve talked previously about the Fuego’s ability to tackle light offroad, so lets’s take a look at the luggage options. If you want to tour with more than just a credit card or be able to carry a change of clothes, lunch and a fresh towel into the office, the ability of your steed to carry bags is important.

The Fuego has three mounting points for conventional luggage (so excluding recumbent-only options like banana bags). You’ve got a rack attached to the back of the seat, plus space for two smallish pannier bags beneath the seat:

One rack bag and two panniers mounted securely on the Fuego. Note that the rack bag is high enough to provide a useful bit of gravity-driven positive pressure to the water supply (blue tube secured beneath the seat)

I’ve always used Carradice stuff, and their Super C gear works as well on recumbents as on uprights. Modelled above is a rackbag, and a pair of their front panniers. The rear are a little too big to be this close to the ground in my opinion – you don’t want to bottom out when you sling the bike into corners.

Seat suspended rack

My general commuting load fits neatly into the rack pack, so it’s this option that I use every day. The big plus point of the seat rack is that it keeps your luggage out of the wind (unless you have no head…). Less drag means faster, easier travel. There is a weight limit for the contents, but so long as you’re sensible you won’t run in to bother.

A hidden bonus is that being attached to the back of the seat means that both the bike suspension and the natural spring to the rack protects your luggage from vibration and bad road surfaces. So long as your fragile stuff is small enough to fit in the rackpack (the Carradice will take a Nexus 10 tablet perfectly), this is a great place to keep them safe.

As the rack is a little on the short side, I’ve modified mine with an extra strip of thick plastic extending rearwards. This supports the bottom of the bag (keeping the rear light pointing straight back) as well as helping to keep the muck off.

Pannier rack

The Fuego’s pannier rack is an optional extra that takes about fifteen minutes to add or remove once you get the hang of it. It secures to two of the apexes of the silver central triangle that defines Nazca’s bikes, and includes two braces across the bike that prevent the panniers trying to fold together at the base.

This is a touch dark, but you can hopefully get the idea. The pannier rack is beneath the seat, with the pannier attaching to the trapezium shaped bit.

The whole thing is as solid as a very solid thing. It would happily take the weight of anything you could fit in the panniers whilst staying nicely rigid. It doesn’t weigh a great deal, but you can always take it off when not in use.

A picture of the rack detached from the bike. The bottom horizontal strut is removable to allow you to actually fit the thing to the bike, and the little pegs sticking inwards at the top engage with the securing mechanisms of the pannier to stop it sliding fore and aft.

As mentioned above, you’ll probably want to stick to the small size of panniers, although if you absolutely had to carry the kitchen sink you could always bump up the height of the seat (about five seconds work with the quick release bolt).

My only gripe with the rack is the removable strut at the bottom. The whole thing is basically one long bolt, so in order to secure a nut against the head of the bolt you’ve got to thread the thing along the entire length. A minor irritation.

Fully loaded handling

Like a freight train, but in a good way.

Most well-designed recumbents ride like they’re on rails, but with the additional low-down weight securely attached to the frame, a touring Fuego will take the line you pick and carve out corners beautifully. This is the main reason why I only use small panniers – the bike invites you to sling it over on the bends, and I haven’t got the willpower to ride slowly and steadily down any long descents I happen to come across…

The racks themselves don’t weigh a great deal, so the main added resistance to your forward progress is from the wind. Although the forward surface area is undeniably increased, the rack does a good job of tucking panniers behind the mass of your body, so it’s not as bad as you might think.

A head on view of the pannier position. My backside is certainly big enough to shelter a good portion of the bags from the wind, so the drag isn’t that noticeable. The slightly disorientating lean is due partly to a slope, and also to the kickstand being in a bit of a hole…

You’ll obviously notice the added weight when climbing, but overall it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. As an example, here’s speed information from a pair of rides completed within a few days of each other last year, the first with panniers on the rack and the second without. Note the horizontal scale is different between the graphs!

Both sets of information from RideWithGPS – first one here and the second here.

So there you have it. A good look at how you could re-use luggage you probably already own on a Nazca Fuego.

For a long term review of the Nazca Fuego, see here.

If this still isn’t enough space for all your crap, how about a trailer?

The post The Fuego and panniers appeared first on Darkerside.

If you can’t be bothered to follow the link, the book attempts to tackle one of the common arguments put forward against providing infrastructure for cyclists:

1. Roads were designed for combustion-powered vehicles, and paid for by their users.
2. Catering properly for those who chose to cycle takes space away from those in big metal boxes.
3. This is unfair.

Unfortunately step one is, in the main, completely untrue. Most of our road network has been hanging around for absolutely ages and was originally designed for cyclists, horses and trams. Carlton researches the role early cycling organisations played in improving the quality of the roads, and concludes that ‘motoring caught on more quickly because of the Good Roads campaigns by cyclists in the 1890s’.

How this affects Glasgow…

Glasgow has a particularly grim problem with traffic, with most of the routes in and out completely snarling up in rush hour despite also being burdened with an unpleasant series of motorways and flyovers. As a result, we are the proud owners of some of the worst air quality measurements in Europe – a delight for anyone with any form of respiratory problem.

Thinking of Calton’s statement, I hunted around for some old maps of Glasgow to see how much the transport network has been adjusted to take account of cars. The answer?

If you ignore the motorways and the new one way systems, there has been hardly any change.

Here’s an excerpt of the city centre from Captain John Bayly’s 1865 OS map of Glasgow, hosted by the University of Glasgow here. Cars first starting arriving around 1900, so this is a good 45 years ahead of that.

Glasgow in 1856 in 1:10560 scale, from the University of Glasgow’s online library. I’ve highlighted George Square in red, just to help you orientate yourself. Click for a bigger version.

Now, compare and contrast, if you will, with the modern version. Here’s Glasgow in 2013:

Glasgow in 2013, using OpenStreetMap data. I’ve tried to keep the scale as close as possible to that above, and have against highlighted George Square in red. Note that the sea of railway heading into Glasgow Central wasn’t there at all in 1856, although you can see the loop of rail heading up from the old ‘Joint Station’ at the bottom left of both maps.

When I first thought up this post idea I was hoping to point out some similarities. It’s much easier to just list the differences though, as so little has changed!

• Top right above Cathedral Street we’ve gained a load of tower blocks.
• Glasgow Central rail station and its accompanying rail bridge has appeared, along with a second road bridge just to the west.
• A good bit of change south of the Clyde in the Gorbals area (around the bendy Laurieston Road and to the west of Gorbals St)

For the centre of Glasgow though, that grid system of roads has remained pretty untouched. For example, here’s a picture of Buchanan Street around 1900 – note the bicycle!

Here’s Buchanan St in about 1900, with John Reid’s mansion taking centre stage. There’s loads more images of Buchanan St through the last few centuries at Glasgow History – click the image for a look.

You can draw your own conclusions. Personally, it tells me that unless flying cars appear in the near future, the centre of Glasgow will remain gridlocked until people give up on modes of personal transport that aren’t roughly person-sized. Glasgow’s streets were designed for pedestrians, horses, trams and cycles, and no changes to those streets have been made apart from drawing a load of one way arrows in.

Don’t expect your five metre long car to do anything apart from hold everyone else up.

The post Glasgow’s roads were not built for cars appeared first on Darkerside.

• 1451 kilometres cycled
• 11,940 metres climbed (and descended, thankfully!)
• 73 hours on the bike
• 38 hours not on the bike
• Currently aiming to finish with just over ten hours in hand, at 20:42 on Thursday 1st August

I’m hoping we can push the Morpheus to an average above 20kph, but that allows time for any mechanicals or p*nct*res we’re unfortunate enough to pick up.

The multicoloured Sheet Of Dreams in all its glory! The eagle-eyed will spot that I’ve averaged the climb between Edinburgh and Brampton as I haven’t got route to splitting up the route on RideWithGPS yet. Click for a bigger image!

The campaign starts in earnest!

The post London-Edinburgh-London: route metrics appeared first on Darkerside.

The Circe Morpheus, lounging in front of some boats in the sunshine.

At first glance it’s a fairly chunky looking utility bike, dominated by that bizarre recumbent front half. Something to potter around on, or maybe haul around the weekly shop having swapped the ‘bent seat for a front luggage rack. However, glide around on it for even a few hours, and the potential for a true mile muncher for two becomes clear.

To be clear, I don’t think this current version is that perfect mile muncher. It’s damn close though, and probably as close as we’ll ever get given the small size of the potential market.

Anyway, before I go all misty eyed, let me run through exactly what the Morpheus is.

PS: I’ve cut and chopped this several times and still can’t get it scan properly. I mean, how do you sensibly review something that’s effectively two completely different bikes stuck together? I’ve eventually decided to go with function rather than by rider, but apologies in advance if it skips about a bit…

Overview and purpose

The Circe Morpheus is an aluminium framed tandem, with an upright (or ‘conventional’) rear position and a recumbent front, which can be swapped out for a luggage bay if desired. The steering and gear changing is all done by the back end, so unusually for a tandem the captain is behind the stoker. This particular model from Laid Back has a Rohloff internal gear hub and disc brakes as well. Shiny.

I’m not going to weigh it for you, because that seems unjust on a bike that isn’t designed to be particularly light. I’ll just say that it’s lighter than my (one-man) steel tourer/end-of-the-world bike, and heavy enough so that it won’t fold up like a paper bag if you drop it. It looks heavier than it is.

I don’t think Circe would mind too much if I said the Morpheus is aimed at the utility end of the market. Use it as a tandem during the day, using the pannier rack to carry odds and ends. Then swap out the front seat, stick on the luggage rack, and nip own to the garden centre later on to bring bag a few sacks of compost for the home-grown tomatoes. Circe also say that the rack has been designed to fit a child car seat securely, so you’d be able to keep an eye on your little darlings as you trundle round.

The Morpheus with it’s front luggage bay and massive support stand thing. Photo borrowed from the Circe website – click for more info!

However, there are two additional features that I think would lend this setup to the long distance market. We’re already on to a winner due to the tandem-ness, giving us more power with the same cross-sectional area exposed to the wind compared to a singleton. Considering the Morpheus against a ‘normal’ tandem then:

• Having the riders in two different positions not only gives you chance to swap around and utilise different sets of muscles, it also means the guy at the back doesn’t spend the entire time staring at the person in front’s backside. 
• As your heads are closer together, you can actually speak to one another without the wind being a constant bother. Whether this is to discuss the route or just to stave of the gremlins of tiredness, don’t underestimate how beneficial this could be over truly long distances

So the Morpheus is a tandem, which can double as a cargo bike, and also has this possible third life as a long distance device.

Transmission

There’s an awful lot of chain in use, so there’s inevitably a slightly draggy feel to the transmission. That being said, it’s not any worse than a rear wheel drive recumbent if you forget to clean the chain on a regular basis, and a good portion of it might be down to the goopy oil in the Rohloff. We’re going to get that changed and see how much of a difference it makes (note from a week later: lots!)

The stoker’s pedals on the end of an adjustable length boom. The plastic shrink wrap is left over from shipping – we’ve just kept it on to try and keep it clean as long as possible!

The stoker’s pedals are out front with a single chainring on the end of a sliding boom, with a sensibly placed piece of chain tube keeping the oil off one’s legs. Chain slack is taken up by a manually adjustable idler-on-a-stick thing which pivots to extend the chain line. The angle of the stick is held by a fairly weedy 3mm Allen bolt which slipped a few times when we put power through it. This then causes the chain to derail and get stuck within the guts of the captain’s cranks, which is a pain. If you’re always using the same stoker you could take this out of the equation completely and just run a shorter chain over the top of the idlers. Failing that, I’d be looking to either fit s bigger bolt, or craft some kind of chock to prevent the slip.

This isn’t sprung like a derailleur; instead that little bolt at the top prevents the lower cog swinging back under power and losing chain tension. It’s a neat way of taking up slack if you regularly have to adjust the boom length, it’s just not quite burly enough. This is on the return side, so the chain at the front runs from right to left.

The captain has a conventional arrangement which we had no problems with. Freewheeling can be done either be both riders, or by the stoker alone. Happily for me in the stoker position, the captain can’t sneak a cheeky rest whilst I cough up a lung-bursting uphill. This does mean that changing gear requires a quick ‘ease off’ command from the captain, as otherwise the stoker manfully hauls onwards and very little else happens.

Braking

The ever-popular Avid BB7s. Cable actuated disc braking at it’s very best, these bring you rapidly to a stop. In fact, it would probably be possible for the captain to fire a sleeping stoker out of the front of the bike, given a good run up.

Avid BB7 cable actuated brakes acting on a potentially slightly small disc.

The front disc appears slightly on the small side compared to the dinner plater-sized offerings on some disc equipped tandems. We’ll see how it gets on with some of the long downhills on the London-Edinburgh-London route, but it had no problems with heat build up on any of the hills we could find in Edinburgh.

Contact points and steering

The stoker’s seat is upright, which puts you in a decent position for all round visibility as well as powering up hills. Given the person sat upright behind you, there would be no aerodynamic benefit to being more laid back anyway. Stubby little hand holds are provided to the sides of the seat, but I only really used them when going uphill – the Morpheus is stable enough for you to do pretty much anything with your arms in the front seat. The seat was a bit too padded for me, but that’s easily swapped out (and indeed, a week later we did just that)

The captain has a similarly upright position, with slightly unusual vertical handlebars that reminded me of tank controls. The bars connect to a push rod which runs under the stoker’s seat to connect to the front fork. There’s a smidge of slop in the setup, but I suspect that’s more down to having a lot of weight directly over the wheel. They worked well enough, so someone at Circe has clearly done their homework, but like any unusual bike give yourself ten minutes to get used to what’s going on. Conveniently your stoker can do any indicating that’s required, leaving you able to keep both hands on the bars.

The steering push-rod, seen from the rear. Ignore the loose cables – we’re still playing with the position of the controls!

After a bit of practice the Morpheus is oddly nimble and can negotiate remarkably tight turns. It’s a weird feeling as a stoker, as your feet sweep a wider diameter arc than the front wheel itself. Trust your captain not to smack you into a lamp post or railings… 

Conclusion

I’m going to stop there for now. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, this is the bike we’ll be tackling the London-Edinburgh-London route with in late July, so we’ll be putting a lot more miles in over the next few months.

Expect a more detailed review in due course!

Lifted from Uberuce’s flickr stream. Photo shows John concentrating, and me being a berk. Does show how stable the thing is though.

Thanks to Uberuce for the photos.

The post Circe Morpheus – first impressions appeared first on Darkerside.

I’m going to go over the report in a moment, but to understand where all this came from we need to go back a bit. The APPCG (that All Party Cycling thing mentioned above) spun out of The Times’ ‘Cities Fit for Cycling’ campaign, with the aim of ‘promot[ing] all forms of cycling inside and outside the Houses of Parliament’. These all party groups are relatively common and enable politicians from different political backgrounds to get together and work on a common cause, rather than being tied up with the party line on a given subject. On the down side, they don’t have any direct policy-making ability, so the extent of their powers is to inform and influence decisions made in the normal run of political business. The group is funded by the UK Cycling Alliance (UKCA), who are an umbrella organisation made up of all the usual cycling suspects.

Dave Brailsford, Ian Austin and Steve Brine with Victoria Pendleton and Sir Chris Hoy at the 2011 APPCG Reception. Photo from the APPCG site, click for details.

This ‘Get Britain Cycling’ report was a key deliverable (and if we’re honest, they haven’t achieved much else). Funded primarily by News International (parent company of The Times), but with contributions from the UKCA, the reports was created from a whole bunch of research, inquiries and perhaps even a dash of common sense. You can read the nine-page summary here, but for those short on time:

Foreword

I’m going to quote three paragraphs directly from Ian Austin and Julian Huppert’s preamble:

Too many people in the UK feel they have no choice but to travel in ways that are dangerous, unhealthy, polluting and costly, not just to their own wallets but also to the public purse. Urgent action is required to address Britain’s chronic levels of obesity, heart disease, air pollution and congestion if we are to catch up with other countries in the developed world.

There is an alternative. When more people cycle or walk, public health improves, obesity reduces and roads become safer. By changing how people travel, we can create places where people want to live, work, shop and do business. We can make people healthier, happier and wealthier. We can reduce costs to our NHS.

…

This generation of politicians has the chance to be long remembered for having a vision for cycling that includes us all. Put simply, Britain needs to re-learn how to cycle. This report sets out how this can be done.

The key point, and the one The Times are trying to drive home with that petition, is that this report is not just for those who ride bikes now. It’s also for those who want to, but feel unable. Or those who are stuck in cars in endless traffic jams. Or those who run small businesses that would kill for people travelling by to be able to smell the freshly baked bread in the window and pop in. Or for those who have asthma and just want less exhaust in the air. Or those who watch the NHS budget drain away into treating ‘lifestyle disorders’ like obesity and (some types of) diabetes.

Or those who just want their children to be able to cycle safely to the park.

The rest of the report introduction covers of the potential for growth and the APPCG’s vision for the future, before splitting into five sections:

• A new priority for investing public funds
• Redesigning our roads, streets and communities
• Safe driving and safe speed limits
• Training and education
• Political leadership

Each section has a chunk of explanatory text, along with some recommendations. There are a few key ones in my mind (which I’ve paraphrased and grouped below)

Key recommendations

Funding for cycling should be at least proportional to the percentage of journeys made by bike, and funds should be drawn from various relevant departments. The initial budget is sugested at a mere £10 per person, per year; a vast improvement on the current £2 in England and a heady £4 in Scotland. If improvements benefit other departments such as Health, they should also pony up some of the cash.

A new requirement that those on foot and on bikes must be considered in the early stages of all new developments, and an update in guidance and legislation to increase the options available. The Highways Agency comes in for particular criticism, given the manner in which we currently carve up the country with A roads and motorways which actively block other forms of transport. Think of the villages that are only connected to the outside world by a passing dual carriageway, or the towns and cities fragmented by ringroads, flyovers and roundabouts (Motherwell, I’m looking at you). Slopping a bit of paint on the edges of a wide bit of road is not ‘providing for cyclists’.

The law should protect vulnerable road users, and those who behave in a manner that needlessly endangers other should be punished appropriately. 20mph should be the default for urban roads (way above the average speed anyway), and many rural lanes should be 40. HGVs should be safer, and have no place around squishy things in rush hours. Finally, if you decide to take to 2+ tonnes of heavy machinery and endanger, maim or kill someone, the police, prosecutors and judges should treat this sufficiently seriously (if you think this is happening at the moment, spent five minutes reading some of the Cycling Lawyer’s stuff.)

All young people should receive cycle training as part of their normal education, and it should be promoted as a normal activity rather than a specialist pursuit. No lycra. No neon trousers. No warning flags. Just sensible, safe, utility cycling (yes, including understanding red lights). With the additional bonus that drivers of the future would actually understand where to expect cyclists on the road.

Politician’s should have the spine to implement changes and make explicit, genuine commitments. OK, I’ve paraphrased quite strongly there… The problem is that most adults currently drive. For the first few years of any mass change, people get grumpy. Even if the change is eventually for the benefit of everyone – after all, if I have to drive somewhere, I’ll get there quicker if I’m not stuck behind a whole load of people driving two miles to the local shops. Whether our current political leaders have the backbone to implement changes for the long-term good against short-term popularity losses is questionable.

Conclusion

That’s my take on the report summary. It’s pretty readable in itself though, so if you want more information on any of what I’ve said, dig in.

The section that causes me genuine concern is that last one – political leadership. I can currently only see one person both talking the talk and forcing through the changes, and that is Boris Johnson. Will anyone else follow?

We look at the Netherlands as the pinnacle of cycling culture and forget that until 1975 the bicycle had no place whatsoever in their transport strategy. It took the general public to suddenly realise that children being killed by cars was not an acceptable part of modern life, before the government of the day was forced into changing their plans (more here). It’s taken them a long time to reach the stage they’re at now.

The longer we wait, the more it will cost to make the changes. The more people will die in crashes and from asthma, diabetes and obesity. The more small businesses will crumble, as huge department stores with multi-storey car parks take over. And the more of your life you’ll spend watching the lit brake lights of the car in front, as you sit in a queue of people burning away their income in petrol fumes.

That petition is here.

The post Get Britain Cycling. The report we’ve been waiting for appeared first on Darkerside.

It’s a moderately confusing subject which Cycle Law Scotland don’t explain particularly well in my mind, so I did some digging to try and get my head around what they’re proposing. For the benefit of any others similarly confused, I hereby present the Idiot’s Guide To Strict Liability. Most of it is summarised from a useful article by the Cambridge Cycling Campaign, but the tiger example is all me.

PS: if the phrase ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is lurking in your mind at the moment, banish it. This Cycle Law Scotland proposal would only affect civil law rather than criminal, so the concept doesn’t really hold. We’re interested in two people putting forward conflicting views, rather than the state attempting to prove that someone has crossed a certain boundary.

Let’s start afresh and talk about something slightly different, but which is crucial to the whole thing – operating risk.

An example

I need to do the weekly shop. The local Morrisons (other options are available) is four miles away, so I contemplate two possible modes of transportation:

1. I could walk
2. I could ride Tiddles the Tiger

Tiddles the Tiger is an unusual option I’ll admit, but he’s well trained and can carry both me and a sizeable amount of groceries. Ever mindful of the safety of others, he also wears a sign around his neck saying ‘Do not touch the tiger’. Being slightly rushed, I go for Tiddles.

Here’s what Tiddles might look like. He’s clearly not got his riding harness on here.

I’m proceeding down the street on the tiger at a sensible pace, keeping to the highway code and all that. Whilst stopped at the lights, a small child approaches, who we’ll call Jimmy. Now Jimmy is a fan of Winnie-the-Pooh, and sees in front of him a life size Tigger! What fun!

Wee Jimmy breaks free of his mother’s grasp, sprints towards Tiddles and, despite my desparate shouts, pats the tiger. When the dust clears, Jimmy finds himself only able to count to five, and Tiddles is merrily chomping down his arm.

Jimmy’s mum is somewhat miffed with this outcome, and we eventually find ourselves in a civil case where she’s attempting to claim some money for the trauma caused. It’s already been decided that I don’t have a criminal case to answer – my tiger handling skills were never in question.

This case could go two ways.

Without operating risk

I put forward the view that I have done nothing wrong. I was stationary at some traffic lights, and couldn’t have done any more to highlight to others the risks involved in touching the tiger. Therefore I should pay no compensation. Conveniently, the entire jury is drawn from a local circus, and to a man are well aware of the care needed around tigers. They side with me, and I leave with my insurer’s collective wallets intact.

With operating risk

I argue the same as above, and the jury nod in agreement. However, the legal chap working for Jimmy’s mum drops the Big Book of Risk on the table. Hang on, he says. You chose to ride a tiger! It doesn’t matter that you didn’t technically make a mistake, in selecting Tiddles as your mode of transportation for that journey, you placed on the public streets half a tonne of carnivore that wouldn’t otherwise have been there. Your personal choice for convenience upped the stakes for every other player in the great game of life, certainly way beyond the level Jimmy and his mum would be comfortable with.

In effect, your liability in this situation is determined not just by whether you made a mistake, but also by how much you choose to penalise others for their mistakes. And it was a choice – after all, if I had chosen to walk instead (possibly wearing a stripy tiger outfit), Jimmy may still have run at me, but no injury would have occured.

The jury side with Jimmy’s mum, and I am ordered to pay 90% of the total costs claimed. My insurers cough up, and Jimmy get a new prosthetic arm. In black and orange stripes.

Strict liability

That is what strict liability is about. Not an erosion of some fundamental principle of guilty or not guilty, not an automatic cash cow for every cyclist on the road; simply a statement that if your search for convenience ups the stakes for everyone around you when you travel, you should expect your insurers to have to pay proportionately more for the priviledge. Your premiums will go up as a result.

In our modern society, we’ve lost sight of exactly how dangerous the roads are. An average hatchback at 30mph exceeds the momentum of a charging black rhino and huge lorries crush pedestrians and cyclists beneath their wheels on a weekly basis, and yet we accept this every day as completely normal. Rubbing salt into the wound, we then insist that the person inside the big metal box has the same civil vulnerability as the person walking across the road.

Bizarre.

As an additional note, I suspect you’d also see more cyclists choosing to take out 3rd party insurance as a result of operational risk being incorporated into civil law. £41 per year with CTC (£16 if you’re under 18) gets you £10m in third party liability cover should a pedestrian run out in front of you – worth having, in my opinion.

Bonus facts

Fact number one. The countries in red below are those in Europe who do not have some kind of reduced liability for vulnerable road users. Notice the elite legal company we’re in?

Borrowed from Scottish Cycle Law. Countries in red are those without reduced liability for vulnerable road users. Click for more details.

Fact two. We already have a couple of examples of strict liability in law across the UK, including:

• All speeding offences (if you speed, you’re guilty, even if you didn’t realise you were speeding)
• Sexual offences with a minor (believing that a 15 year old was 16 doesn’t reduce the guilt)
• Vast swathes of tort law related to safety in the workplace
• Possession of weapons and drugs

Strict liability isn’t some hippy ideal – it’s an established element of UK law already, and we’re just a bit behind the rest of the Western World when it comes to applying it to protect vulnerable road users.

Tiger pictures from wikipedia. Tiger head by B_cool and Tiddles by Brocken Inaglory. Same copyright as the rest of this site!

The post Strict Liability – an idiot’s guide appeared first on Darkerside.

One of the Magnificent Octopus’ rather nice posters. Click to see more!

Pedal on Parliament (or PoP) was one of the greatest public cycling events of 2012, although as it occurred before all the Olympic excitement you might have forgotten it. Several thousand people gently meandered through Edinburgh from the Meadows to Holyrood, the same day ten thousand others in the London Big Ride cycled on Westminster. The message from both rides was the same: it’s time to stop treating cycling as something to tack on to the end of a PR message, and embrace it as a central part of transport policy.

This still doesn’t quite convey there were as the trees get in the way. Photo by People’s Republic of Leith – click for details.

It almost worked. We had a honeymoon period of strong words and the odd action, driven in part by the Times’ Cities Fit for Cycling campaign and the Wiggins/Hoy effect. London seemed to get the message, with big changes promised by Boris. North of the border, however, not so much. Edinburgh, perhaps, gained a bit of investment (in particular the arterial off-road cycle paths being gritted over the cold period suggested someone was getting the message that cycling isn’t just a sunny leisure activity)). Glasgow was left behind, clutching a ten year Strategic Plan for Cycling that aimed at lofty goals without really understanding how to get there. People are losing limbs and lives whilst politicians drag their heels.

Therefore, in order to boost the issue back to the top of the pile PoP is returning, under the bright new name of PoP2! Sunday 19th May, starting from the meadows in Edinburgh at 3pm. There’s a number of feeder rides, and a whole host of different ways to get there.

All you need is yourself and some form of cycle (number of wheels entirely up to you). Or you could walk – cities that encourage cycling tend to be much nicer for pedestrians as well. The route is short, the weather will be glorious, and birds will sing. Come along and lend your support to a bunch of normal folk simply reminding the world that everyone should have the right to get about safely in our cities, even if they don’t travel in two tonnes of big metal box. Persuade your councillors to pop along too.

Last year I recumbered, but in preparation for London-Edinburgh-London in July I’ll be taking to the Morpheus again with John. If you see us, please wave! I’ll be the one in the dragon hat.

For more about the Morpheus and how we’ll be riding it from London to Edinburgh to London, click the picture!

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Towards the end of July, John and I will be attempting LEL2013, or the London-Edinburgh-London audax. This is about as straightforward as it sounds. Early on the 28th July, we’ll set off from Buckingham Palace with a couple of hundred other cyclists and head north. Hopefully sometime later we’ll reach Edinburgh. Then we turn around and head back, arriving back in London before the end of the event on the 2nd of August.

That’s rather a long way in six days.

The big picture routemap from the LEL website. There’s no scale, but the bottom bit of the map is England and the top is Scotland. Wales is on the left. Any cycle route map that requires a scale including three countries is Long.

Not wishing to stick to convention, we’ll also be riding a somewhat peculiar bike. Enter, The Morpheus.

The Circe Morpheus, lounging in front of some boats in the sunshine.

Yup. That’s a tandem, with a recumbent front half and an upright back half, designed by the fine people at Circe Cycles and generously loaned to us by David at Laid Back Bikes. More on that soon.

Not being complete fools, we thought a quick trial ride to ensure that the match was vaguely compatible would be a good idea. With Uberuce leading the way (and initial encouragement provided by the exploits of SRD and co on their Circe Helios three-person device), we spent a few hours this afternoon gently pottering around Edinburgh and Cramond.

It really is a superb machine.

Lifted from Uberuce’s flickr stream. Photo shows John concentrating, and me being a berk. Does show how stable the thing is though.

I’ll add our initial impressions in a separate post, but it’s definitely up there with the most fun I’ve had on a bike. We’re massively more confident now than this morning that we might actually achieve our goal!

As a closing statement, we’re not doing this for charity. We’re doing it because we’ll have a great time. However, given the amount of people whose first question is ‘who are you raising money for?’, it would be a shame to waste all that goodwill!

Therefore we will be collecting whatever people feel like giving, and we’ll pass it directly on to the Yorkhill Children’s Foundation in Glasgow. Expect a just giving page or similar at some point.

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I’d formed a cunning plan earlier in the week to head across to Edinburgh after work today to catch a Fringe performance (Impact Arts/Gallery 37, if you’re wondering) at 6pm on the Royal Mile.  I finish at 1 on a Friday, so I drew up a route that would get me there on time at a 24kph average speed.  Falkirk was the ‘cheat and catch the train’ bail out point.

With the glorious weather today, everything looked promising.  Sun cream was applied, the summer jersey was dug out, the GPS was loaded.  Everything was set.

It turns out I’d been somewhat naive with what Google thinks a road is…

Climbing out of Alexandria to the east the roads got steadily narrower and more gravelly until, after a steep descent, it disappeared altogether.  Into a ravine.

A certain lack of bridge marked the start of the rally stage

It turns out that the bridge had collapsed some time previously, leaving two steep banks either side of a fairly sizable stream.  Not being the kind of chap that’s easily disheartened (and not really having the time to go back up the hill and find an alternative bridge) the Fuego and I slid and waded and climbed and got stung and eventually emerged relatively unscathed on the far side.  Result!  Try and do that in a car..

Climbing away from this triumph, gravelly tarmac became gravel became grass and loose rocks.  Now, the Fuego may be more at the touring end of the lowracer spectrum, but it still doesn’t really like not having traction at both ends.  This isn’t helped by the rider obviously being somewhat restricted in their ability to move their weight around to balance on an uneven surface.  However, on and on we went, seeing absolutely nobody; no any signs of human habitation except this track and the odd gate, long since seized shut.

The views weren’t bad though.

The view back across Loch Lomond. I didn’t take the bike off the ‘road’ for this shot, by the way…

I was inordinately grateful for the suspension under the seat.  It might add a bit of weight and noise, but something like a Raptobike just wouldn’t have managed up here.  I also found that unclipping one foot and running it just above the surface on some of the really sketchy sections worked well.  Just be careful not to run over your own leg…

One of the better bits of surface, also showing my utterly inadequate skinny racing tyres

Finally the road surface began to recover, and after half an hour of solitary bliss and hilarity, I rejoined the B834 and the world of cars.

Sadly the inevitable delay from my recumbent cyclocross adventure, coupled with a pothole-induced snakebite puncture a bit further on, meant that riding the full distance wasn’t an option any more.  Instead I jumped on the train at Falkirk and arrived with 45 minutes to spare in Edinburgh.

A grand day out indeed!

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