Viking Coastal Trail Guided bike ride this Saturday, 31 May, at 10.30am from Reculver Visitor Centre.
The ride will be about 10 miles and will include the new link between Reculver and St Nicholas at Wade.

Adults are asked for a donation of £2 which will go to the Canterbury Oast Trust.

Riders will also be able to pick up copies of the new Viking Coastal Trail map.

The latest edition of our quarterly newsletter is dropping onto members’ doormats this week. You can read it online by clicking here: The Mudguard 73

In this edition you’ll find news from the heart of government and local activities; an assessment of how we welcome cyclists to Britain; we launch our Connecting Kent Campaign; chat to Cycle Recycle Kent in Herne Bay and to Mark Bickerton, President of the Bicycle Association of Great Britain; there’s pictures of Bike Polo in Canterbury; question whether a volcano triggered the birth of the bicycle; and take a trip to the two tunnels.

Happy Reading!

Waiting to disembark in Calais

Click Here for more photos of our day trip to Ardres last Saturday

This weekend Andrew Fenyo, Isabelle Cornet and I attended the ECLF  Conference in Nijmegen, a 2,000 year old City of 160,000 in the South East of the Netherlands. 250 people from 25 different countries attended the Conference . The key note speaker was (an amusingly hungover) Mikael Colville-Andersen.

The conference took place at Cultuurspinnerij de Vasim

Here is key note speaker Mikael Colville Andersen in full flow talking about Bicycle Urbanism

Dr Steven Fleming from the University of Tasmania flew in to show how if we idolise bicycles in the same way we have previously done with cars we can bring the bike inside and how we can imagine new bicycling cities.

There were presentations throughout the day by cycle logistic companies from the enormous DHL to new businesses from Sweden down to San Sebastian and numerous places in-between. All talking about the transformation their bike businesses are having on their cities. Inspiring stuff!

It was a full day of brilliant stories. Over the next few weeks I’ll try and add more from the conference.

In the meantime, big thank you must go to Gary Armstrong of Outspoken Delivery in Cambridge for organising the Conference.

Adrian.

Our very own Dr Gill has reviewed the Chief Medical Officer’s Annual Report. Well the bit that’s relevant to Spokes, that’s the section on diet, obesity and physical activity.
Here’s her comment:
“It’s all very obvious stuff, nothing new – although I hadn’t realised that the proportion of the population that is now overweight or obese has risen to 62%! Horrifying.”
Here’s the full thing if you’d like to read it yourself:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/298297/cmo-report-2012.pdf

May we politely suggest that cycling could help here?

Perhaps if “Health” and “Transport” departments were not quite so silo based, cocooned in their own narrow worlds, they might make better decisions?

After all, if  more people cycled there would be:

• LESS traffic
• LESS air pollution
• LESS stress
• LESS noise
• LESS injuries
• LESS obesity
• LESS diabetes
• LESS asthma
• MORE economic prosperity

So cycling is the panacea we need!

Here’s a link to the latest email Update from Spokes: April Update 

The British Medical Journal has published a study of the health impact of the bike hire scheme in London. (BMJ 2014;348:g425 Woodcock et al.)

Our very own Doctor in the House, Dr Gill Corble, has written this Precis.

Introduction.  Physical inactivity is a major cause of morbidity and mortality and the creation of opportunities for safe, active mobility has been identified as one central feature of a “healthy city.”  Promoting a shift away from motorised vehicle travel towards walking and cycling would also be expected to yield additional health, economic, and environmental benefits, including reducing traffic congestion, noise, and the emission of greenhouse gases. One way in which cities can seek to realise these benefits is by implementing bicycle sharing systems to facilitate short term bicycle rental in urban areas. London is just one of those cities, with the so-called “Boris” Bike Scheme.

Study and Results.  In this study in London, over the year examined, users made 7.4 million cycle hire trips (estimated 71% of cycling time by men). These trips would mostly otherwise have been made on foot (31%) or by public transport. Using observed injury rates and a computer-modelling system for health benefits, it was found that the population benefits from the cycle hire scheme substantially outweighed harms among men using cycle hire. There was no evidence of a benefit among women, this sex difference largely reflecting higher road collision fatality rates for female cyclists. At older ages the modelled benefits of cycling were much larger than the harms.

Conclusion.  London’s bicycle sharing system has positive health impacts overall, but these benefits are clearer for men than for women and for older users than for younger users.

See the original article for all details and references.

Wave 1: We’ve finally waved bye bye to the two sets of hoop-shaped inhibitors have finally been removed on the Great Stour Way. However, if there is any resulting problem with unwanted motorbikes on the path, replacement inhibitors will be installed.

Wave 2: The flooding is very bad on the Great Stour Way.
Mother Nature has reclaimed the Hambrook Marshes.

And finally, Wave 3: Farewell to two further surplus cattle grids that have been ‘re-moo-ved’ between Tonford and Chartham.

Happy pedalling and paddling!

Sheila Webb