Last week's focus on Abbeywood and the nearby area should have been enough to show cyclists they were not welcome in this part of the town, the car city. Yet shocking coverage comes to us of a cyclist in this very area, harassing a car driver on the A4174 ring-road for using a mobile phone. We will let the contributor, "A", speak for themselves:
One of the big advantages of driving a car is that it leaves your hands free for other things like reading some papers, or talking on your mobile. Or in this case both (steering can always be conducted using your knees). Never mind that talking on the phone might occasionally distract you from the actual job at hand (driving) causing you to collide with the odd pedestrian, cyclist or anyone else.
That's why we were so upset to see this video of an unknown cyclist accosting this poor employee of the very appropriately named HIT (Hospitality Industry Training) on the A4174 near Coldharbour Lane, Filton.
There he is trying to have a conversation on his phone, whilst looking through what looks like his appointment book when this cyclist has the cheek to ask him what his employer thinks of him driving using a phone. Just for the record again, that's Hospitality Industry Training Limited, www.hittraining.co.uk, tel 0800 093 5892, the vehicle a white Renault van, registration number AY09ZNP.
The driver with the phone doesn't shock us -what else can you do in the awful traffic jams there- but what shocks us is how the cyclist shows no shame at all. Not a bit. In fact, we suspect they are proud of what they did.
We have a lovely video from GentleGreenGiant looking at a rural bike lane, right in the city.
This path is on coldharbour lane, linking down from UWE to Frenchay, where a lot of the UWE students live. On the basis that the students are all impoverished, and that UWE is in the sticks -and nowhere near the rest of Bristol- we can concede that some of these people should be allowed to cycle.
The video starts in South Gloucester, in a stretch of the road that is now 30 mph. There is an on pavement bike lane which we have noticed before, but this video looks at the downhill.
Downhill, the phrase that lights up the eye of a mountain biker. A descent, steepness, rough ground underneath, speed -danger. These are the kind of things that make DH work fun, the kind of thing that makes commuting entertaining. How then, do you give a on-road route the downhill experience?
Simple: leave the path alone so it returns to the wild. Looking at the video, you can see the county boundary. The S. Gloucs road team have tamed it -30 mph roads, lane markings, bicycles, double yellow lines. All the signage of bland suburbia.
Now look at the transition into Bristol -the city itself. At the county line the lane markings go away, the path goes from suburban to rural. Speed limit? gone. Lane markings - a memory. Surface -what was once tarmac, is now a thin layer of vegetation atop the tarmac base.
This is a downhill to cherish, especially for a bit of night work.
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