Walking and cycling tourism

Sun 16 Mar 2008, 13:01

Some more thoughts on this subject:

1. I should stress that about 95% of my cycling in and around Charlbury takes place outside the rush hour, i.e. between the hours of 12 pm and 3 pm. I can't really comment on what the situation is like for cyclists outside those hours. I certainly wouldn't want to encourage inexperienced or nervous cyclists to take to the roads when they are very busy.

2. Although I am very experienced on a bike, I do not consider myself to be a great bike-handler. For example, I cannot turn my bike around in the road without putting my foot down like many cycle club members of my acquaintance! However, I don't find that this lack of balance, agility or whatever handicaps me at all on the quiet rural roads I tend to ride on. Great bike-handling skills are not really called for around here, just vigilance and basic commonsense.

3. I would estimate that since I moved here I have probably completed about 600 cycle rides starting and finishing in Charlbury. To re-emphasize, I have had no accidents of any kind. Have I just been exceptionally lucky? I don't think so, and certainly such luck does not extend to other areas of my life! Rather, I am a careful, responsible cyclist who treats other road-users with respect and tends to find in consequence that that respect is reciprocated. Perhaps the situation in Oxford has changed in the last 15-20 years but I was hit twice by cars (neither of which bothered to stop to see if I was OK) while I was living/working there and feel infinitely safer in Charlbury.

4. I walked down Stonesfield Lane about a month ago. There was a guy with a mountain bike travelling along it. He was pushing his bike, presumably because the mud was so thick and sticky that he couldn't safely cycle on it. If this track is impassable for mountain bikers in winter what would it be like for touring cyclists? Like Richard, I see a lot of cyclists in Charlbury, particularly at weekends, but almost all of them are riding either road bikes or tourers. Such cyclists would not be able to use the tracks that Richard talks about unless they were tarmaced.

5. The greatest improvement for cyclists in Charlbury (and one that could be achieved relatively cheaply and simply) would be the institution of contraflow cycle lanes on Market Street and Sheep Street, thus enabling cyclists to circumvent the one-way system. There is a great book for leisure cyclists that I would thoroughly recommend called "24 one-day routes in Berks, Bucks & Oxfordshire" (I'm sure Jon at Evenlode Books could order it for anyone who is interested). Several of the routes described pass close to Charlbury and two of them go right through the middle of the town. About those two latter routes the author of the book says "in order to avoid one-way system, dismount and walk bike for 200 yards" and "to avoid one-way system in Charlbury, push bike through churchyard". My scheme would avoid all this nonsense. All that needs to be done is for on-street parking in the middle of Charlbury to be abolished and then the scheme would be viable. Anyone fancy trying to get that past the appropriate authorities? No, me neither! Happy cycling...