Nice things to lock your bike to #9 Northampton

Away fixture

Couldn't resist this one

@officialTfGM wants £20m to deliver cycling revolution in Manchester

TfGM is bidding to trouser £20m of central government money to spend on cycling infrastructure over a two year period. The funding would also help attract other funding from the private and public sector apparently. 

And they need our help to make it happen.

Despite the fact that they have annoyingly attached a meaningless branding – Velocity 2025 which will inevitably increase in irritation when somebody decides V25 is ‘a bit snappier’ – it obviously deserves support.

You can support the bid by clicking here and then clicking the box which says ‘I back the bid’ and then clicking the other box which says ‘Back the bid’.

The bid backing boxes

Happy clicking.

Dawning of a new cycling era?

The newspapers are awash with reports relating to the publication of the APPCG's Get Britain Cycling report - you can read it here if you like.
There are five key recommendations in the report:

• A new priority for investing public funds
• Redesigning our roads, street and communities
• Safe driving and safe speed limits
• Training and education
• Political leadership

All sensible stuff really - with the possible exception of 'redesigning communities' which sounds a bit fascistic to me. 

But, like all of these things, wise words must be met with action. Deeds! Let's hope something does actually happen from the report and we don't find ourselves in the exact same position 20 years down the road when the next 'revolutionary report' is issued.

You can help this come about by signing The Times' petition here.

@bradwiggins bike parking

You'll probably have seen this but it really is extraordinary. I sometimes struggle to stand my bike upright against the side of the house. This is just showing off! From the recent Giro del Trentino.

Click Wiggo's face

The doyenne classic

The spring classics are over for another year and thank goodness for ‘the doyenne’ which replenished my obsession with the events following a Milan-San Remo disrupted by snow and two rather processional cobbled classics. Liege-Bastogne-Liege took place yesterday over a slightly altered route – reassuringly changed due to road works – and the racing was excellent.

Excuse me, coming through

Dan Martin came through in the end with a perfectly executed mugging of Joaquim Rodriguez in the final few hundred metres. The normally sedate Sean Kelly was uncontrollably excitable as Dan crossed the line: he said ‘yes!’ with all of his worldly emotion while commentating for Eurosport. 

What has cycling ever done for @welcome2yorks ?

You'd have to be living in a ditch, or not interested in cycling to not know that Le Tour is coming to Yorkshire - and very briefly Derbyshire - next year for the Grand Depart.
At an event yesterday, the Yorkshire Tourist Board - now called Welcome to Yorkshire for our touchy-feely age - set out the value of the event to the region in a bid to enlist support from business.

The facts are impressive and do demonstrate the value le Tour brings with it: 5000 hotel rooms each night, 2,000 journalists and a TV audience of 3 billion - 3 billion! You can't buy that sort of publicity - well, you can actually but you know what I mean.
So, if anyone ever asks you why we should have le Tour on these shores, apart from it being a brilliant spectacle, there are cold economic reasons behind it too.

Disc brakes? On a road bike?

There is something about disc brakes on a road bike that just doesn't seem right isn't there. The people in the know reckon road discs are going to be the norm on our beloved machines in the not too distant. There are already a number on the market.
I think the argument goes that they have greater stopping power and don't damage rims. But, in the words of the great Mario Cippolini: If you brake you do not win.

@inrng provides great preview of latest spring classic

There's a superb review of today's la Flèche Wallonne over on the consistently brilliant Inner Ring. As well as highlighting the disparity in prize money on offer between the men's and women's races, there's a great little guide to the course and some info on the legendary Mur de Huy - including the factoid that Mur de Huy isn't its real name - who knew? 

Huy you kiddin?

Anyway, for what it's worth, my money is on Alejandro Valverde or Philippe Gilbert. A cyclist is what I'm saying. A cyclist will win!

More people cycle in the UK now, right? @roadcc know, I think.

Are we cycling more or less? This question lies at the heart of many of the current debates affecting cycling. The discourse goes that more people are riding so we need better infrastructure and then even more people will be encouraged to ride which will lead to a healthier society, less congestion and wall to wall happiness and glee.
It's undoubtedly true that if you go to the smoke, more people are riding there than have been in recent years. While not exactly looking like Amsterdam, Euston Road has a good number of riders on it whenever I hop off the train. The bike racks too are testament to the increase in popularity.
All this is simply a bit of context behind an excellent piece over on Road CC relating to Sustrans' interpretation of the self same figures which led British Cycling to wet themselves over last year.
Sustrans' interpretation is rather more downcast as it describes the figures from the ONS as 'bitterly disappointing'. The problem for Sustrans is that they say the figures show no increase in the numbers of cyclists in the year to October 2012 whereas British Cycling reckon the same figures show that every journey in the UK is now completed by bike. Yes, every single journey. Including the one which takes a first class parcel containing a marble bird bath and plinth from its distributor in Watford to the home of Elsie Thristwistle in Baxenden.*
Who's right? Well, Road CC have  good go at explaining the stats but ultimately, nobody really knows.

*not really

In my humble view, I think there are a few more wheels on the road but not that many. and fewer when it rains. Devastating insight there I know, but accurate I reckon.

A classic year?

Spring is definitely in the air at the moment after what seems like months of winter, it's finally feeling a bit warmer.
And, of course, the spring classics are in full flow. I was pleased to see somebody other than the nailed on favourite win the Amstel Gold yesterday. The racing was much more enjoyable than the fayre we were served up at the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix.

Amazing performance from Cancellara but surely the other riders have got to take the race to him and disrupt his plan?
Still, there's the Fleche Wallonne on Wednesday and Liege-Bastogne-Liege on Sunday to look forward to before the big tour stuff starts.
Not a classic year for the classics yet!

Just what is the Cheadle Package?

In follow up to the recent post about extra cycling facilities in Manchester, I have now got some information on the mysteriously named 'Cheadle Package'.
According to local Lib Dems, the package will '... greatly improve the links from Gatley, Cheadle, Cheadle Hulme and Heald Green towards Manchester.' 
Billed as a 'Million pound boost to cycling in the Cheadle area', the Cheadle Package actually consists of just over half a million quids work of bike lanes.
The deets are as follows:

• New off-carriageway route along Kingsway from the Gatley lights to the Manchester border.
• New on-carriageway route along Manchester Road from Cheadle towards Parrs Wood
• New safe cycling route (mostly on-road but small section of off road) from Broadway along High Grove Road, Milton Crescent, Wensley Road and Marchbank Drive to join up with Kingsway (and so give a safe route for cyclists wanting to avoid the Kingsway/Gatley Road junction).
• New safe cycling route from Wilmslow Road, Cheadle along Warren Avenue, The Crescent, Hall Street, Brook Road and Mill Lane to join up with Manchester Road.
• New section connecting Grange Avenue, Cheadle Hulme to existing signed route along Queen’s Road.

So, there you have it - the Cheadle Package mystery resolved - thanks to Jon Grieve.

Cheadle, yesterday

Nice things to lock your bike to #8 - Chorlton

Looking pretty robust down at The tram station

It's a sign

This looks transparent in the photo - it's not. Didn't realise it at the time...

Manchester gets 100 new advance stop junctions and 50 trixie mirrors

According to this list of national cycling safety improvements being paid for by the Department for Transport you and me, Manchester is getting 100 new advanced stop lines at traffic lights and 50 new trxie mirrors.
I know what you're thinking. What the f**k is a trxie mirror? Right?
Well maybe not but for the uninitiated [of which I was one 3 minutes ago] a trixie mirror is a circular mirror bolted to a set of traffic lights.
It's used by drivers of HGVs to spy shy cyclists who are obscured by the doors of their behemoth vehicles - presuming they stop in the right place that is.
Best described as 'a good start.'

Freedom for Trixies

There is also something planned in Stockport called 'The Cheadle Package' which could be almost anything - the mind boggles. 

Lovely stuff from @homemadecyclist

You'll have sussed by now that I'm a sucker for anything which is artistically designed, beautiful and isn't the vehicle for corporate fig leafery.
Scoring very highly in all categories are the designs from the Homemade Cyclist. In homage to this weekend's Paris-Roubaix, I offer you the below - it's the way I cut & paste em!

Avec chein

Beautiful online Campag museum

Tons of beautiful images of Campagnolo components and stuff on this new Virtual Museum website created to mark the company's 80th anniversary. 
Unusually for Italian engineering, the site works as well as it looks.

It's not a geranium 

Pendle Witches Velo 2013

Have my first event of the year under my belt with the completion of the Pendle Witches Velo on Sunday.
The 53 mile loop around Lancashire and the Forest of Bowland took place on a beautiful day this year - a bit chilly at the start but the hills mean you soon warm up!
It was a bit blowy too for the final ten miles as we turned east and into a bitter headwind. But, beautiful scenery, well organised, friendly and for charity - a proper grass-roots cycling event.
Lots of interesting vintage bikes on show at this event - check out the photo gallery on the site in the coming days - you might even spot me pushing 53-12 up the nick of Pendle*.
The field of 220 could have been many more but it is capped. remember to get you entry in early doors for next year.

*not really