Pass Wide and Slow – Bikes and Horses

Categories: Diary Riding

Here in the National Park, we've got pretty much every category of road user – bikes, bicycles, cars, walkers, horses and the occasional tap-dancing Pine Marten, all trying to do their own thing at their own speed, and often at the same time. While there's a wider concern about how all of these can share the roads (in like peace, light and harmony, man…) the technique for passing large, hairy quadrupeds does seem to cause some stress amongst all parties. So here, reprinted with the author's permission from our local community rag is a small plea on behalf of horsey folk everywhere:

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Posted by Richard at 07:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Zen of Sports Touring

Categories: Diary Riding

The UK's Bike magazine recently asked for contributions to a story about the why, the how and the myth of "Sports Touring". Which prompted me to put together a few random thoughts, and here they be:

The Why?

There's something very basic here: you don't need some full-blown mile-muncher to tour on: what has been done on a Gold Wing will, I guarantee you, also have been accomplished by some nutter or other on a Honda 90, probably whilst wearing wellies. They may have been a bit slower, carried fewer changes of clothing and been rather more numb of the fundament at journey's end, but they'll have gotten there. The fact that the current round-the-world record holder, Nick Sanders, did it on a Yamaha R1 is indicative both that you can tour on anything and that he really is quite mad. Mind you, if he'd done it on a BMW 1150GS, as per Kevin & Julia Sanders, the previous holders, he probably wouldn't look quite as shagged out as he does in every picture I've seen of him. But he did it. And there's nothing quite like barreling across Europe on a sporting motorcycle, accepting the slight-to-monstrous trade-off in comfort for for the sheer joy to be had from being able to make full and focussed use of the really fun bits: the hairpins of the Alps, the fast sweepers of the Eiffel Mountains or the cliff-hugging nadgery of the Amalfi coast. That's what it's all about.

Now for a little of the how and what…

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Posted by Richard at 01:10 PM | Comments (0)

The Thinking of the Shrew

Categories: Riding

In his famous book, King Solomon's Ring, the great naturalist Konrad Lorenz describes the time he spent observing the behaviour of a family of shrews. Like you do. He observed that the shrews always took the same path around their territory, and after the first few times of cautiously sniffing their way along, they'd follow the path at a flat run, looking neither to left nor to right. At which point he wondered what would happen if there was a sudden change in their environment. So he removed a rock that the shrews had been in the habit of leaping over on their route. And…

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Posted by Richard at 09:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Wind in the Willows

Categories: Riding

This is about wind. A very particular type of wind – the cross-wind. Any other sort of wind is your problem, not mine, OK? Winter is coming, and I've heard and seen a lot of comment to the effect that riding in cross-winds worries people. Not unreasonably, as there's little more unsettling than suddenly and unexpectedly being propelled sideways across a couple of lanes of highway. Or across one lane of highway and into a hedge. But there are things that can be done to make life that little bit easier and more predictable.

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Posted by Richard at 11:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Prisoner (of the White Lines on the Freeway)

Categories: Riding

Of all the vagaries of UK traffic law, the one I've heard most interpretations of has to be the "White Line" rule. That's the one referring to white lines painted on the roads, just in case anyone's getting ideas. Having read the Highway Cod very recently, I'd gotten it into my brain cell that you were allowed to pass agricultural vehicles at less than 20mph when there's an "R" in the month, or something like that. I was tested and almost found wanting last week, when Captain Cardigan and I were hopping along a long queue of traffic that had built up behind a very slow-moving tractor/trailer. Normally, on my blithe 'understanding' of the Highway Code, I'd simply have popped past it without a second thought, if safe to do so, white lines or no. Our minds were however concentrated by the fact of the vehicle behind the tractor being a Police car. At which point, doubts they do surface. So we didn't, and played good little bored road users until the road cleared.

When I got home, I did in fact get out my Highway Codes, all three of 'em, from 1987, 1993 and 1999. And yes, the wording has changed in the period. The trouble is, the wording I was remembering turned out to be entirely fictional. So I now stand sheepishly corrected. But at least not ticketed. So read the rest for the sordid details…

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Posted by Richard at 03:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack