Detail – The Raven and the first men – Bill Reid
British Columbia Museum of Anthropology – great backdrop to kick off Velo-city global in Vancouver.
More shots to come – but this one is enough for tonight.
Background here
There are benefits to time zone changes. Awake at 4, on the bike at first light. Vancouver’s Stanley Park was stunning as the light broke over the mountains.
Sunrise, Stanley Park Vancouver
“Girl in a wet suit” statue
Bixi hire bike Vancouver
Back in 2007 I wrote an article for the CTC web site which arose from a shorter magazine article of the same name. “On holiday without my bike” was an encouragement to CTC members to attempt cycle hire and see where it might lead them. However was initially conceived as a full on rant about the sort of cyclist who is incapable of enjoying cycling without their own bike, moaning and groaning either about the difficulties of transporting their handcrafted steed to the ends of the globe or equally complaining about whatever bike they do end up using. I rather toned it down in the end to avoid offending some friends and family.
Now I am the custodian of a blog can I go there again? It is the cycling that counts. When we experience scenery, the people, the transport of delight, flying without wings. Anything with two wheels please.
I got myself in a right mess over the last few weeks trying to sort out how I would complete a cycle tour from Vancouver via a bus trip to Whistler and a ride from Whistler to Kelowna. All the hassle just dropped away when I decided not to worry.
A Bixi city bike (above and right) for the Velo-city conference.
Conference bikes ready to go
A hired full suspension for the two days in Whistler.And for the tour I have just been to Ride On Again Bikes in West Broadway Vancouver to get a recycled bike that I will happily dispose of at the other end, not having to brave the carriage conditions of a single airline.
Ride On Again, Vancouver
Superb service, relaxed about letting me ride a bike or two and just 20 minutes to change the saddle and stick on a rack and bottle cage. Added bonus of meeting Sue Knaup from One Street in the shop buying her own bargain for the trip. And the really nice people at the hotel have let me bring it up to the bedroom. Somewhat defeats the object of a bike that nobody wants to steal – but Canadians are just so nice, they can’t help it.
Even better I frightened the life out of a couple of drivers who had never seen one man riding two bikes before, let alone down a main steet.
So here’s a photo tribute to some hired and borrowed bike experiences. If one day in Vancouver matches these it will be worth it.
Ben – Oreti Beach – Invercargill – New Zealand
Christiania, Copenhagen, Denmark, early morning ride
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
With just a week to go until I leave with the rest of the ECF team to attend Velo-city Global 2012 in Vancouver it has just hit me what amazing four weeks I have coming up.
This week it is off to Dublin for the Dublin Cycling Campaign conference which is focussing on participation and equality, especially cycling for women. Muireann O’Dea, Dublin Cycling Campaign’s new Chairperson talks about it here.
The day before the conference I am running a workshop in Dublin with the participants in VOCA The “Volunteers of Cycling” Academy (VOCA) Project. The two year project brings together small cycling advocacy groups from 11 European cities. Dublin, Seville (Spain), Nicosia (Cyprus), Vienna (Austria), Copenhagen (Denmark), Maribor (Slovenia), Prague (Czech Republic), Budapest (Hungary), Warsaw (Poland), Lisbon (Portugal) and Bucharest (Romania).
They are the great group I met on tour in Austria and I’ll be working with them to look at how we can improve the up and coming cyclists groups across Europe. Excitingly I’m running the same workshop in Vancouver where I’ll be joined by Jeff Miller from the Alliance for Bicycling and Walking who do amazing stuff with community cycling groups all across the US.
After the conference I’m spending about two weeks in British Columbia. Couple of days around Vancouver and the “lads” of ECF will meet to watch the European Cup Final (soccer to US and Canadian followers). Then off to Whistler – just booked two days guided mountain bke riding on the legendary trails. Three days touring across the mountains, then staying with an old school friend for a week before I have to get back to the UK to see Bruce Springsteen in Hyde Park, London, my wife’s Christmas present.
No idea how all that is going to hang together, not least because the cycle tour in Canada depends on me buying a recycled bike in Vancouver!
But to make it all come to life I have gone over to the dark side, star man Julian at ECF got me fired up to the potential for twitter. So now you can hopefully follow the tour by tweet too, although I feel like a bit of a numpty at the moment. @maynekevin for what its worth.
A couple of enquiries from followers about my trip to the Campagnolo factory last month which I never reported.
It was rather overtaken by the earthquake in Bologna, and also because it was actually somewhat underwhelming.
I don’t know what I expected exactly. In my mind’s eye the same engineers that built gears for Coppi, Bartali and Merckx are handcrafting bike parts like Swiss watches in a factory that has carries the heritage of Italy. I conceived that at least the boardroom would be a shrine to one of the greatest cycling brands. And I might have put a small dab of chewing gum on my shoe in case just a single ball bearing stuck as a souvenir.
The reality was very different, but perhaps in its own way a reflection of 21st century cycle engineering. In a pelting rainstorm we drove out to an industrial area on the edge of Vicenza where an anonymous road was the site of a large unmarked grey factory. I had no idea we had arrived until we passed a relatively discrete sign and passing through security to a modern, minimalist reception area. At least in the reception area there was a picture of Tullio Campagnolo and a group set, but up in the board room ……. Nothing. Niente, Nichts, Rien.
Except outside the door one of the original carts that the family used to deliver parts to local shops in the 1930s. My one souvenir photo of a visit to a legend.
There were some very substantial cabinets closed behind wood panels which could easily have hidden some glories, but overall the impression was discrete, sleek, wood, leather and stone. Actually the boardroom of a company that prides itself on being modern, discrete and efficient. Heritage, what heritage?
And as we drove away I remembered where I had seen that image before. SPECTRE. The boardrooms in which Ernst Stavro Blofeld plotted to rule the world, only to be foiled time and again by James Bond. Perhaps our gears are programmed to rise up against us one day. And now they are electronic. Isn’t that how it starts. Tullio Campagnolo – Blofeld – who knew?
You are visiting possibly the safest and most cycle friendly city in the world. You can hire bikes all over the place. And you tour the city like this.
Words fail me, but perhaps someone else could come up with a caption for one of these photos?
I have now had 24 hours to reflect on yesterday’s trip to Amsterdam.
In particular I have been trying to think about the elements I noticed that made it stand out so much. I cannot help but make comparisons with Copenhagen too, a city where I have spent more time and perhaps been given more formal introductions to Danish cycling culture. It isn’t enough to say “there were just so many”, it is more.
I cannot compete with the Dutch Cycling Embassy for technical knowledge, Fietsersbond for advocacy or Amsterdamize for cool, but for what it’s worth here are five first reactions to Amsterdam cycling that support my own thesis “When I see Amsterdam cyclists I do not despair for the future of the human race”.
1. Bikes belong
It starts immediately at the station with the brilliant multi-deck parking which has been a feature of many city cycling presentations but you really do have to see it to believe it. 
But to my eyes it is the bikes in the streets that blow me away, just extraordinary volumes. There is just not a section of street in Amsterdam that doesn’t have its collection of bikes. In many cities there would be refuse trucks cruising the streets taking them away, but not here. They are not an addition to the fabric of the city, they are part of it. But now I do know why the Dutch are fixated by cycle parking.
2. Backgrounds.
Bikes and canals. Just beautiful settings for cycling, enhanced by the rattle of bikes on the cobbles and not the engines of the cars. Cycling belongs here.
3. Attitude
Even in the most successful cycling cities I think cycling carries a certain tension. Cyclists in Copenhagen always seem to be in a hurry to me and the cycle lanes feel like race tracks at times.
I am sure this is true in the Amsterdam rush hour. But generally cyclists here are so totally relaxed they routinely switch off all the defensive worries, even on the roads. Texting, phoning, headphones, one hand, luggage swinging, riding in pairs, chatting, passengers on racks. Everything your mother told you not to do.
It is another world where cyclists really don’t have to worry about the environment around them. (And almost helmet free!!!!!!)
4. Practicality
I know carrying loads on bikes is easier than most people think. I know there are loads of brands of cargo bikes and luggage carriers. But I would have to bore you with dozens of photos to show all the ways I saw things being carried, and how. The plastic crate seems almost ubiquitous as a carrying tool so that a wooden box stood out. And day clothes.
5. Diversity
As you can see from the photos above even a randon selection shows a higher proportion of the riders were women than men. And if the Dutch have got a general problem encouraging their new immigrant communities to ride I didn’t see it here, they must have done a great job with their promotional campaigns, or the message is really spreading. A Muslim woman in a headscarf with her bike is still pretty much a rarity in most cultures, but I saw several here.
That is really encouraging, it shows that this is not DNA, it is cultural and can be learned.
27th June inserted comment: Thanks to a number of twitter followers and bloggers who have linked to this page since it was published. Please note that this was a short introductory post – my main post on Amsterdam is tagged “Amsterdam” and was posted on 6th June. I’d welcome your comments!
I have just got back from Amsterdam and I am struggling with dozens of photos and lots of words.
A small confession is in order. During the last 15 years working in cycling I have actually not been to the city that claims to lead the world in cycling numbers. Four times to Copenhagen which challenges for that lead, the up and coming German cities, London, York and lots of other cycling towns and cities.
I thought I would be hard to impress, but as a cyclist how could I not be blown away? I have put up a couple of photos tonight and I’ll add a bit of a gallery tomorrow. And as I do I’ll struggle to add anything to the insights of many other bloggers and advocates, but for now:
“When I see cyclists in Amsterdam I do not despair for the future of the human race” – Kevin Mayne
4 am this morning I woke up to a weird experience.
It appeared that somehow in the night I had managed to turn on a vibro-massage feature in my hotel bed that I didn’t know I had. Given the running feature on this blog about dodgy hotels I was really willing to blame the fact I was in an overly pretentious design hotel that I got cheap for the weekend.
And it wasn’t the vino, I had a relatively early night in watching the football and sorting out photos for the blog.
It dawned on me somewhat slowly that this was possibly an earthquake, or just possibly something to follow the bomb in Brindisi yesterday.
I heard a bit of shouting in the corridor, and then I went back to sleep because it didn’t seem to come to much.
Bit of a shock to turn on the news and discover that the news is saying earthquake in Bologna, I was 20km from the epicentre of a 5.9 quake, 4 dead up in Ferrara where a factory collapsed and lots of old buildings damaged.
All seems extraordinarily matter of fact here in Bologna, I have wandered the streets of Bologna for a couple of hours, sipped an espresso in the square and the town is coming to life and filling the streets. No damage at all.
Very odd, it seems normal doesn’t come with this job.
Trust you are all well and having a boring Sunday!
Just another Sunday in an earthquake zone?
This gallery contains 15 photos.
Bologna. Wander out of the hotel this morning, nursing a hangover and wincing in the sunlight, heading towards the station. Heart suddenly lifted by the sight of bikes. Bikes everywhere. The official bike park is full to overflowing and in … Continue reading
9.am.
The cool people are gathered for an expresso. From old to young kisses and handshakes are exchanged. Anywhere else in the world this would be just a local, but here it has that extra touch of elegance, even down to the tablecloths.
And the expresso is outstanding.
Welcome to Milan.
What is it with me and mad hotels this year?
Back in March In blogged about the wierd converted car park in Taipei – Madness Motel. Now thanks to Colm Ryder from Dublin Cycling Campaign sending me this photo I was reminded of the motel our Austria tour stayed at in Krems.
The idea must have seemed sensible to someone. The walkways outside the rooms look a bit unsafe, so we just add some industrial fencing.
I mean who says modern design is dead.
Strong suspicion that this might be related to the recent EU egg crisis – the banning of battery chicken farming may be the cause. Or is it to reassure cycle tourists about their bikes?
Sitting on a sun soaked terrace overlooking the Danube Valley. Careful not to drink too much wine before a flying descent! The high spot of a two day, 18 person, multinational cycle tour to follow the ECF AGM . What a great mix – Bulgaria, Poland, Russia, Ireland, Spain, Cyprus, Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, USA, UK and Germany, all brought together by cycle advocacy.
Also see my gallery of houses and gardens from the ride here
Day 1. Vienna to Tulln an der Donau on the Danube Cycleway. 45km.
Leaving Vienna on the city cycle network and then joining the side of the Danube Canal until it joins the main river about 7km out of the city.
Klosterneuberg
Then a mixture of paths by the river and minor roads until suddenly we turn a nondescript corner and the striking Klosterneuburg appears in front of us. A leisurely lunch in the café and a wander through the artworks in the gallery.
Back onto the minor roads and a wind through the summer houses which appear all the way along the river. These range from wooden shacks to large houses but almost all are in great condition and show a real affection by the owners for these properties.
Danube Radweg
Then emerging onto the banks of the river again for a push on to Tulln. This was actually quite hard for the members of our group who are not regular tourists. A bit tired and we had moved to the north bank which exposes us to the full breeze from the east.It just proved the point that wind is a far greater enemy of the cyclist than hills.This stretch of the river was actually a bit of a disappointment, it really does look like an enormous canal but it is a really easy ride. It is also clearly popular with local riders who seem to really enjoy heading out down one side of the river and returning on the other.
It was also good social cycling territory for us because we could ride socially after being hassled by drivers a number of times.
However the light was stunning and it brought out smiles on all the faces, especially as we swung over the last bridge to Tulln.
Tulln an der Donau Marcus Aurelius
Boldly looking out over the river is Marcus Aurelius – provincial governor who protected the Danube frontier against the Barbarians before later becoming Roman Emperor.
Day 2. Tulln to Krems. Mostly the Franz Schubert cycleway – 55km
Named after the area where trendy citizens of Vienna would come for summer break in the early 19th century including the fashionable young Schubert.
Particularly famous for its wines, the Lower Austrian wine route celebrates hundreds of years of winemaking on the fertile flood plains that border the Danube.
Celebrating 700 years of winemaking
This route started pancake flat, sticking to the floodplane of the Danube despite swinging south of the river for a more scenic route. It was lovely. Spring was everywhere and the stunning light brought out the colours in the architecture, the gardens and the villages.Blot on the landscape was the big ugly scar of the new high speed rail line connecting Vienna to Germany. Time for a few photos to send off to the anti-HST campaigners in the Chilterns.
But the stars of the first part of the ride were the little wine shops set into the bluffs at the edge of the floodplain. These have existed for hundreds of years, behind each house is a deep cellar running into the hillside. For two hundred years they have had a unique licence granted by the Hapsburg dukes. This allows each vintner to open for just six weeks a year and sell an agreed amount of wine. By arrangement the farmers have set up a roster which means that they don’t all take the same weeks.
Schubert Radweg gets hilly
After we end the wine route we cross a tributary of the Danube at Traismaur and set ourselves up for the final 20km which are very different – two substantial climbs, the only ones of the ride. But it’s well worth it for me because we get up to some stunning views over the Danube. Our group of commuter cyclists and campaigners did rather find it hard going, lots of walking for this last leg. But hats off to Yurgos from Cyprus – rode everything on his Brompton with great style.
We have to climg that?!
We are headed for Göttweig Abbey (Stift Göttweig) which is a Benedictine monastery set in a most amazing position on a hill above the town of Krems. The monastery was the dominant economic force in the region for hundreds of years owning the land, the farms and of course all the rights to the surrounding vineyards.
Now that produce can be celebrated in the restaurant which must have one of the best views in Austria, especially on a spring day. Having a hard hot ride to the top justified a couple of courses and a half bottle of the fruity white from the surrounding hills.
Gottweig Abbey descent
White knuckle descent but well worth it. Thanks to Wilhelm of Elite Tours for the entertaining leadership and efficient organisation.
I Do Not Despair 