The Chipping Sodbury Job

Regular site visitor Westfield Wanders points us to some of his winter pics, namely a car hitting some ice in Chipping Sodbury, and coming off the road

This must have been pretty scary

What is even scarier than hitting the wall is what is on the other side

A 6 foot drop.

Fortunately, driver and passenger were able to walk away. A few more mph of speed on the approach to the bend and it might have been a different story.

ice work

This looking down Cotham Hill from the St Michael's Hill roundabout, a couple of days after the snow had turned to ice.

bikes and pedestrians get the same experience: danger. Except that as bikes lose balance in such a spectacular manner, its pretty hazardous.

Getting off and walking is good here; the alternative is to into the oncoming traffic lane.

Further down, the ice has a couple of melted patches: the drain and the manhole cover. Those are actually the two thinks to look out for here: you need to go between them, curve round to the left of the traffic island and plan for the not-that-unlikely event that any car approaching from Woodland Road to the left in a search for parking spaces will actually stop before the bike lane, and/or look in your direction before turning.



This is actually, believe it or not, an invaluable road traffic facility. Not just for bikes; it is the bikes going down here that creates the opportunities for cars heading the other way to pull out at the roundabout. The only other way to get out is to deliberately pull out in front of another car.

Mud: enjoy it or leave

Here are some other people out enjoying the excellent mud-with-snow conditions on Ashton Court this sunday morning

Expressions of glee on their faces, "chaos! everything!" they say, as they sprint past, faster than I could cycle for the last five years.

Leaving nothing but a trail of mud up the back of their clothes as they vanish into the next mudfield.

Elsewhere, over in 50 acre wood, some people didn't seem so happy. One of them pushing their bike up, the others pining for Spain and looking doubtful about claims that these mud conditions are excellent.

While Spain is good, the pound euro rate renders it a premium destination. Even wales is an expensive trip abroad, or a long pedal. Get used to Bristol, get used to mud. Or leave. now. Your weaknesses have been noted. Especially you at the back, pushing. But, you were wearing shorts, which makes up for things. This time.

Ashton Court: Best Mud for a decade!

While Friday's snowfall gets rained away, it is giving way to some of the best mud conditions Ashton Court has had since the mid 1990s. Snow, ice, slush, mud, muddy water -all of it, all at the same time!

Route planning is difficult. Do you commit for the straight through the puddle option, which will have traction problems, swerve left over what looks like snow, but could be a snowbridge, a thin layer of snow over mud, or go for that shallow mud that could be workable, but it could turn out to be a mudbridge, mud on ice on a deeper pool of mud?

There's no way of knowing until you commit: what wonderful uncertainty.

What would you do?

This is why Bristol is a cycling city. Not for the slightly widened St-W to Muller-Road path, but for the excellent mud at weekends and evenings. So we are grateful that on the night of the launching of the Cycling City route, that they managed to organise such excellent mud.

St Michael's Hill on skis

St Michael's Hill, as noted, was closed to cars except those that felt they were exempt from the road closed sign. It means that pedestrians had somewhere to walk -the middle of the road

Chris Hutt posts a link to an E.P. article, showing that earlier on that day, someone skied down the hill.

This skier is showing some good avalanche/mountain safety by descending early in the morning, when the avalanche risk is lowest and snowbridges hold up. However, the photographs do show that he had no lights on, and therefore was a threat to traffic. Furthermore he was not wearing a helmet. This was a dangerous example to other skiers, and we are surprised and disappointed that the local press is praising this person, rather than condemning him.

St Michael's Hill: road closed

The police are advising only people with urgent needs to go out in their cars. St Michael's Hill is closed at Tyndall's Avenue, and again at the bottom and on Horfield Road; the through routes are all blocked off. Technically, the city is now partitioned.

Only people with urgent needs are driving, and, given the adverse weather conditions, these priority drivers are taking the police signs into account

To ignore the road closed sign and head down a 1 in 6 hill without a "winterized" vehicle would be reckless, and the kind of thing that your car insurance company would take into account as and when you have any accident.

It is times like this when our drivers show their years of winter experience, their knowledge of which roads are too dangerous to use in fresh snow, rather than blindly drive round town on the same routes they normally use.

To even imply anything else would be to impune the competence and behaviour of the drivers of cars like HT08BZS, BN04HLV, and WN57ZXP.

Hiver sur l'Alpe de Saint Michel

This is the top of St Michael's Hill at 09:18. There is no traffic, as the only way to get here is uphill, and uphill isn't working.

On Hampton Road, someone has abandoned their car where it chose to slide.

Looking towards the Highbury Vaults pub, there is no traffic at all. It is silent. Usually of a morning there is a jam of cars heading in from the M32-way towards somewhere, and cars waiting to turn right into Tyndall's Park Avenue, and hence Clifton, cars often full of schoolkids. Not today. Today, nobody but a pedestrian. Today, the pedestrians are in charge.

The cars on Hampton Hill are parked; they decided (wisely) not risk the downhill. They must have successfully made it up, then realised the price of success is the descent. Which is often the most dangerous part of mountaineering, as it harder to control your speed. Which is why mountaineering normally views a "successful" summit attempt as one where at least one member of the party makes it back. Any expedition where you top out but don't reach the mountain hut for beers afterwards counts as a failure.


That doesn't mean that the summiting process is is easy; here's someone showing how much effort it takes to get a rear wheel drive to get up to this roundabout. And, since they are not one of the parked cars, they must have made it to wherever they were in a hurry to get to this morning.

It's the only vehicle breaking the silence.

Defeat for Herbert's Bakery

Most people have recognised that trying to drive round Bristol today makes no sense whatsoever

But there are some organisations that have to get out, mission critical organisations, of which Herbert's Bakery is one. They are the official provider of baguettes to most of the cafes in the city, without which our latte lunches will be panini and baguette less.

Sadly, today, the Clifton delivery didn't make it through Cotham. To get this far they must have done Cotham Brow -nice- but the final uphill on Cotham Road defeated them. It is now reversing, presumably to return to base, that being the pavement off Picton Street.

Accidental Double parking on Cotham Road

Half an hour after TG was encountering grief on Horfield Road, Cotham Road was downgrading from a wide street with room to pass to a narrow one-lane only road, a Montpelier-class street. Why? Cars not making it up the hill.

This audi got towed out by a Landrover, so I didn't get to rent out my beloved Z-Chain snow chains -"best snowchains of the Pacific Northwest". More to the point, I didn't have to get on my hands and knees and fit them, which is always the miserable part of the process, especially if passing cars are chucking up slush in your face.

You get a good view of the cars here. I've just helped get another car out of the road and parked when the Herbert's Bakery Delivery van "getting you your baguettes" got stuck and then three of us were pushing it away from parked cars. It gave up trying to get up and opted to reversing down safely, which created more problems for the cars behind, especially those in it blind spot. Once you stop, you stay stopped.

The Z-chains site has some good winter advice, which is worth reading. In the PNW states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho they don't grit, they plough the top layer and put signs up saying "cars with chains or 4WD with winter tyres only". The hills of Bristol should have had them today.
Other tips they don't mention

• Walking is a practical and convenient travel option
• Use 2nd gear, not first for pulling out.
• When any "traction control" light starts flashing, pull over and put chains on or start your walk
• Don't stop on an uphill. Keep your speed up
• On a downhill, keep those wheels rolling.
• 4WD does nothing for your stopping distance if you lock the wheels.
• If you have a front wheel drive with chains on, the back of your car still fishtails badly if you turn fast. You need good tyres on the back.

Have fun out there. Send the photos to bristol.traffic at gmail dot com

Winter Commuting

Tuesday morning's ride; Nugent Hill was, well, hairy.

Some cycling campaigners demand gritting and other facilities for bikes, and while it may make sense for the railway path, one big problem is that all the back roads of the city form the safe and quiet bike routes of the city.

Yet it is impossible to expect the council to grit every single back road of the city. Either different equipment is needed: studded tyres, or a bit of route replanning is in order.

And here's the route. Getting to here was a bit tricky -St Andrews was skittery, but up on the Purdown Camp escarpment, there's the tracks of 3 or 4 other bikes that chose the off-road option.

Looking forward to thursday's conditions - the snow is falling already

Sledge Work

Disappointing to see that the Evening Post was actually celebrating kids out enjoying themselves, when we know that's the first step to criminality. Here in Cotham Park most the of sledgers were out turning the paved path into an icy slope, forcing the pedestrians into the deeper snow on the grass.

Road traffic was quiet to nonexistent.

There were some bicycles, here seen only by the blur of their lights.

This is Monday evening, before everything froze, but those side roads are starting to freeze up, while fresh snow falls.

Bristol snow chaos #3

Looking down nine-tree hill, we can see that the number of trees on it is still below nine, and that some people have been forced to abandon their cars and trudge up hill.

Over on Nugent hill, it was steep and hard work to get up

It had actually been gritted at the bottom, which is something to praise.

This has been quite an icy route some mornings this winter, the big problem being the cyclist is lined up to hit the contraflow gate at speed and a car will pull out on the left, not expecting any straight-on traffic. Although technically the cars pullinout may be at fault, given the visibility from parked cars and the fact that this is a residential back road, keeping the speed down may make sense.

Snow brings chaos to Bristol #2

It's a bad evening out there too. A lot of people are travelling round the city the way they normally do, without taking into account the effect that ice has on steering, staying upright or even stopping.

Here we see Cheltenham Road at 16:08:03. The light went red two seconds ago, and this van has just gone across the lights.

Its brake lights appear on, so the road must be sheet ice on which vehicles are struggling to slow down on.

At 16:08:06, a bike goes through the same red light. Given how icy the road must be, the fact that they could make it over without crashing is a pretty good skill.

And now, 16:08:19, a good 15 seconds since the lights changed, another bike careers across the junction

This cyclist really needs to get their brakes looked at. Anything that can't bring you to a halt with 15s warning, at urban speeds, it pretty awful. It's obvious from the wheels that he's not using disc brakes -from the way he was pedalling desperately the bike must have one of those pedal-to-stop brakes, though for some reason he's pedalling forwards.

Having made it safely across the junction myself, I can see another bike just managing to come to a halt before running into a van. That's the second of the two side roads to get green -again about 20 seconds after the Cheltenham Road northbound lights would have gone red. At least this bike's brakes did finally work, but it must have given the rider a bit of a fright.

Snow brings chaos to Bristol #1

It's been a bad day out there.

Here we can see a car that must have spun out of control on a blind corner and ended half-way up on the pavement. Lucky nobody got hit on this path between St Andrew's Park and Sefton Primary School.

In London, TfL cancelled all their bus services. In Bristol something worse happened: FirstBus offered a normal weekly service. This is worse, because at least when TfL cancels every bus you know you need to come up with an alternative plan. Whereas when FirstBus are running their normal service, you get to stand out in the freezing cold for an hour or so before concluding the bus is just "missing"

While the snow kept the local bus service on its knees, it did at least provide an opportunity for Lockleaze residents to use alternate transports to escape from the suburb.

They have apparently been waiting for eight years for this snow, as finally they could make their attempt to get over the hill and in to that place their grandparents had told of -now they too will be able to tell their own grandchildren in years to come about the day they visited Stapleton.

Given the choice between waiting for FirstBus or rolling in the snow and pushing your friend over the fields, it's pretty clear which option makes sense.

Not just cold: it's F-cold

Don't see many people out enjoying a morning dip in St Andrews paddling pool this week

The fact it is covered in frozen ice may be a factor.

From our A&E correspondent: "I have seen an extraordinarily high number of cyclist injuries at
Frenchay ED this winter, many due to ice but overall no particular cause predominates and no pattern discernible."

Winter arrives with a bump

We get a photo and a message "I had just dropped my child off from school and was on the way to work when I came off on this corner on ice. No warning, and now I am bruised down one side."

Well, at least your child had been delivered to school, so can still retain youthfull illusions about the infallability of parents, for a bit longer. And without injuries that would bring you to the attention of social services. It is worth remembering that the roads in the city that get gritted on icy mornings are the main roads, the ones with heavy motor traffic, not the quiet back roads used by bikes. The offroad paths are usually ok, but where cars go they can make things slippery. Station Road from Ashley Hill road down to the footpath under the railway line is particular entertaining in winter -you can get very hurt here without even trying.

This raises a question about safety wear. Not the "helmet question", that being the religous war that tears bicycle mailing lists apart. Something better: the Body Armour question. Knee and elbow pads have trickled over from Downhill MTB to cross country. Because it is quite pleasant to not be bruised and scarred after a day in the woods. The Body Armour question extends this to commuting in winter. Given that when you come off a bike, its your elbows, hands and knees that usually hit the ground first, should you wear body armour on the cmmute -if you already own some? Or should people find routes to school and work that aren't so icy?