A rural path -right in the city

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.

Winter Urban Commuting

A lot of people have been coming off their bikes on the railway path or other parts of the town this week. Special mention to Fraser, Sarah, Jenny and Caroline for all coming off on the RP. Remember: tarmac gets slippery when covered in ice. But mud, mud gets crisp and crunchy and barely sticks to you or your clothes.

Here is the view from the Narroways. The railway line goes over the M32, and is what could gain from having the North Fringe Expressway on it. The appeal of this route is it would be free of traffic, traffic lights, and hill climbs.

Sadly, that will mean no downhills either, which would be boring. We suspect Josh's lack of decent brakes on his runaround is affecting his judgement.

Being bitterly cold, most of the dog walkers are having a lie in. This leaves it nice and quiet: a little bit of up and down track in the heart of the city. That's St Andrews in the distance. In the foreground, a flight of steps with a steep dirt option to the side.

Down the steps, theres a frosty bowl of frozen grass, followed by a fun downhill to St Werburgh's. This is the kind of commuting to enjoy on a winter morning. An empty trail on a crisp day.

Once down in St Werburgh's, there's a path on to Muller Road. This is going to be part of the cycling city North Fringe route. Josh thinks that the railway bridge should be used to avoid this road, on account of it being the busiest road in the area, but the council does not yet have a plan to deal with how the crossing at the existing endpoint of the path.

Of course, that is not an issue right now, as the Muller road roadworks have taken this path offline. It is not clear what paperwork is required to formally close a route, and whether any such paperwork has been filled in. What is clear is that if you go to the end of the St werburgh's-Muller Road path, you have a bit of a climb back up again, at least for the next week or so.

Commuting to the North Fringe

And now, some coverage of the downhills between the centre of town and the North Fringe, as filmed from a bike.



The road at the beginning is Cotham Brow; the stretch from there to St Werburgh's has been cut, and the climb through Lockleaze. Cotham Brow is much quieter than normal because it is closed at the bottom; normally morning and evening you'd expect to see a traffic jam in one direction all the way between St Michael's hill and Gloucester Road.