I’ve been procrastinating writing this to the point where I discovered that the first draft was dated 17th June 2022.
Whether it was being bogged down in trying to understand and raise funds for insurance or the lure of having a proper income, stopping Spoke Out has crossed my mind on many occasions over the past three years. After much deliberation, I feel it is now time to say goodbye.
From maintenance classes to threats of legal action, it’s been a jam packed first year of Spoke Out!
We’ve done a lot with very little, and plenty of backlash. However, rather than start with the negatives, we’d like to share our highlights of the past 12 months.
There are two sides to this- Good Infrastructure, or, What To Look Out For Then Write To The Highways Department And Say Thank You. And the other side- Bad Infrastructure, or, What To Avoid and No It’s Not Just You Making Excuses Or Being A Wuss.
Helmets are the obvious one here. While you can get great helmets for little kids, helmets are not suitable for small babies- they’re too heavy. It’s worth looking into trailers that have good baby inserts and a good roll cage if you want to cycle with a child too young to hold their own head up and airway open when they fall asleep with a helmet on (and recognise that riding with small babies is generally not recommended).
I have cycled for as long as I can remember. My first bike was a boy’s Raleigh Raptor as I didn’t like that all the bikes for girls were pink, and I liked dinosaurs.
I should have known it would be downhill from there.
On the 4th September Spoke Out organised Derby’s first Kidical Mass event. Kidical Mass is an international movement of cycle rides for families to highlight the fact that cycling in cities needs to be safe enough for children to cycle on the roads.
Last week Hackney Council announced the closure of Stoke Newington Church Street to through traffic during the day time. I spent over two years living in a flat on this busy and polluted road in what is an otherwise lovely area of London. Instead of just closing the street to through traffic, they are also introducing five filters to avoid simply redirecting cars elsewhere.
Last month I was lucky enough to witness the arrival of a new (and very shiny) Tern GSD S10.
Kindly funded by Derby City Council through their amazing Connected grant scheme, it was a much needed replacement for Derby Bike PopUp’s increasingly worn trailer set up.
The experience I have had in local cycling groups and even in a professional capacity have at times felt like what I imagined life used to be like decades ago; mocking, objectifying and shouting at women, people of colour and those from the LGBTQIA+ community is tolerated, and those responsible protected.
Last week, Derby City Council’s cycling branch and the largest provider of cycle training in the city, Cycle Derby, started their Active Travel Tour of primary schools across the city to round off Sustrans’ Big Pedal initiative which took place at the end of last month.
Recent Comments