One of the hazards of taking an interest in active travel is that novel or innovative infrastructure projects become niche tourist attractions and bike-lane geekery informs how you perceive the places you visit. Just as my first visit to Copenhagen was...
[This is an extended version of an article commissioned by The Meteor in their series on Manchester City Council’s calls for greater community engagement: that piece can be viewed here] In June 2019, Manchester City Council (“MCC”) announced that it was...
Blog chums, forgive me for the long silence. Since getting back from the Hebrides a lot has happened, and I’ve chronicled very little of it. It’s been something of a period of introspection, with the rigours of life sapping any spare...
Over recent weeks there’s been a lot of activity around Manchester City Council’s plans for a “green transformation” of Great Ancoats Street, which propose to change it from a dual carriageway into a dual carriageway with exactly the same amount of...
Although many of the posts in this blog see me banging on about the manifold woes of cycling around a big, dirty, car-clogged city, by far my favourite flavour of bicycling is cycle touring – lobbing a load of stuff on...
Background In early February 2019 I received a phone call from a BBC producer explaining that she was looking to do an item for the BBC’s Crossing Divides season, which seeks to get people on opposite sides of an argument to...
Welcome to yet another foray into video blogging, and this time I talk about cycle commuting, which should in theory be the easiest and most accessible form of cycling. By cycle commuting I mean not only riding to work, but using...
In the run-up to Xmas 2018 I found myself faced with a tiny dilemma of the kind that occasionally arises in a car-free lifestyle. I had ordered a present (a snazzy new printer) for my then other half to be delivered...
When we talk about improving cycling infrastructure, what do actually mean? What’s the difference between a painted bike lane and one protected with armadillos, orcas, wands or a full kerb? What does any of that even look like? And most importantly:...
Regular readers of this blog will know that I very occasionally stray away from the cycling/active travel focus, and so it is with this posting. Sadly, yesterday (Tuesday 22 January 2019), it was time to bid farewell to George the Cat,...
