The promise – promotion for National Bike Week in Dublin

I feel really sorry for my hosts for the last few days.

To be fair they did put on an excellent cycling conference. But to invite an international cycling group to your city and have every possible weather cliché come true is really sad, there is really no reason why a storm should wreck everything in June.

To give it some science.  Those outside northern Europe may not know that the Atlantic Jetstream is bringing storms across the Atlantic hundreds of kilometres further south than is normal at this time of year which brings record rainfall since April.

And global warming means these storms are wetter and windier than we really should expect. When I got back to the UK last night the country was covered in flood warnings and Brussels has been awful for weeks too.

So sadly the Dublin cycling tour to look at what the city has done on cycling just became a mess, unprepared riders in difficult gloomy conditions. By the time we set off to ride to the conference on Friday I had every sympathy with people from Slovenia or Romania who had run out of dry clothes.

So this trip’s photo record reflects the experience. All I can promise is that I will go back.

“Do not despair” message of the day?

Despite the rain being on a bike was just so much better than being in the congested car traffic. And credit to the hardy Dublin cyclists who replicated Copenhagen’s Green Wave – but as a small wave of high viz bowling in to town.

I hope Vancouver gives me some respite next week. And as a Brit I really hope the weather doesn’t do to the Olympics what it just did to Dublin Cycling Campaign. Fingers crossed.

Any port in a storm

Plan B – the only viable alternative