RosieBell

Pedal on Parliament - Sunday 19th May 2013 3pm

I took part in the Pedal on Parliament last year. It was a heartening sight, with thousands of cyclist meeting in the Meadows and then cycling down the Royal Mile to a rally in front of Holyrood Parliament.  Just for once, we owned Edinburgh's narrow, dangerous streets.

Pedal on Parliament is happening again, on Sunday 19th May.  Assemble at the Meadows to take part in the ride, which kicks off at 3pm.

What we want

1. Proper funding for cycling.
2. Design cycling into Scotland’s roads.
3. Slower speeds where people live, work and play
4. Integrate cycling into local transport strategies
5. Improved road traffic law and enforcement
6. Reduce the risk of HGVs to cyclists and pedestrians
7. A strategic and joined-up programme of road user training
8. Improved statistics supporting decision-making and policy

Manifesto

Making Scotland a cycle-friendly nation

The great city is not the one that has highways, but one where a child on a tricycle or bicycle can go safely everywhere. – Enrique Peñalosa

Cycling should be the obvious solution to many of Scotland’s ills. It is cheap, healthy, democratic and convivial, benefits local economies and makes the streets a safer place for all. Cyclist benefit themselves – physiologically their bodies are, on average, many years ‘younger’ than non-cyclists’, and they suffer less from the ‘western’ diseases that beset Scotland so – and  they benefit others, cutting congestion and improving air quality. And yet bikes barely seem to be taken seriously as a mode of transport while the majority of Scots don’t cycle, simply because they feel it is too risky. Although statistically the benefits of cycling vastly outweigh the risks, poor design and maintenance of roads and cycle routes, dangerous driving, and lack of enforcement mean those risks remain unacceptably high. Making Scotland safe for cycling and walking, and – more importantly – making it feel safe, could transform our cities and villages and the lives of the people who live in them.

The Scottish government has already made a start. It led the world in signing up to a low-carbon future, part of which will include much higher levels of cycling. The Cycling Action Plan for Scotland (CAPS) set the target of having 10% of all journeys in Scotland made by bike by 2020. Whilst many of the individual points in CAPS are welcome, CAPS does not add up to a coherent, researched and costed path to reach the 2020 target – and nor has it received anything like the necessary funding.  Furthermore, even the existing funding levels are under threat. The history of UK cycling policy is full of strategies which have been quietly shelved when it becomes clear that their targets are not going to be met. We hope the Scottish government will not join Westminster in this hall of shame.

We call on all Scotland’s politicians, of all parties, to sign up to the following eight point manifesto in order to make cycling a realistic choice for everyone, from eight to eighty – and show the rest of the UK that cycling doesn’t just belong on continental Europe, but in the country where it all began:

1. Proper funding for cycling, with a high and rising share of the transport budget committed to cycling nationally, and locally.

If cycling is to reach 10% of all trips then there needs be serious investment. We ask the Scottish government to to commit a minimum of 5% of its transport budget – revenue and capital – to cycling within an overall commitment of 10% of the transport budget to active travel. Further, local authorities should also commit a share of their transport revenue and capital budgets to cycling at least in proportion with the percentage of people cycling to work or school in their area until in total, spending on cycling from all sources reaches a target of £25 per head per year.

To put this into perspective, 5% of the £2bn annual Scottish transport budget equates roughly to £100m, or £20 per head, which is comparable to the £1.32bn over 11 years that the Low Carbon Scotland report proposed spending on active travel (including walking). At the moment in Scotland actual spending is nearer £2-£3 per head. In contrast, in 2010, the Netherlands spent €30 per head (around £25) on installing and upgrading its cycling infrastructure which is already streets ahead of anything found here. Cycling England’s 2005-2011 Cycling City and Towns project invested around £10 per head and achieved significant growth in everyday cycle use, saving around £2.5 for every £1 spent, principally in reduced congestion. Other studies have shown that money invested on cycling and walking networks can pay back up to nineteen times the amount spent, a better rate of return than any other transport investment. If cycling levels rise to 13%, the benefit to Scotland would be between £1-2bn.

2. Design cycling into all of Scotland’s roads and junctions, with improved and strengthened national design guidelines in line with best practice internationally.

Improved provision for cycling must include a commitment to transforming Scotland’s roads and junctions. The existing design guidelines, Cycling by Design, should be revised in line with best practice internationally – particularly drawing on the experience of the Netherlands where 25% of trips are by bike. These standards should be incorporated into the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges and local authority road design guidance and should form minimum national standards for any new road or any road being substantially maintained or upgraded, whether local or trunk road. In addition, the Scottish Government should investigate whether it is possible for these standards to be made binding on roads authorities. Each local authority should commit to creating a dense network of direct and dedicated cycling routes with separation from traffic where needed, particularly on busy roads. Cycling infrastructure should be suitable for cyclists of all kinds, whether fast commuters or children on their way to school. Importantly, it should not bring cyclists into conflict with either pedestrians or heavy traffic. Such designs don’t just benefit cyclists, they benefit everyone who uses the roads.

3. Safer speeds where people live, work and play.
There are significant road safety benefits to a 20 mph speed limit. In residential areas, the presumption should be that roads authorities should apply 20mph speed limits as the norm in these areas. Lower speed limits should also be considered for unclassified rural roads where all road traffic faces a completely unacceptable risk of accident.

4. Build increased cycling into local transport strategies.
Local councils are best placed to know how cycling and active travel can be improved in its own area. Each local authority should be required produce its own local cycling action plan with clear targets to increase cycling levels in line with the national target of 10%, using the existing cycling levels as a guideline. Funding to support this should be ring-fenced and councils required to report against their progress every year. As well as working towards a coherent joined up network (see point 2), plans should include integration with public transport, including buses and trains, making cycling a seamless and practical part of even longer journeys. Local authorities should take cyclists into account when drawing up their maintenance plans, with a duty to give equal consideration to off-road tracks and infrastructure when planning gritting, road cleaning and repairs. Resurfacing roads and fixing potholes should take cyclists’ needs into consideration as well as motorists.

5. Improved road traffic law and enforcement.
While acknowledging that road traffic law is effectively reserved to the UK Government, traffic law must do more to protect the most vulnerable road users such as cyclists, pedestrians, children and older people. The CAPS already includes a commitment to investigate the feasibility of introducing ‘strict liability’ – we would reiterate that this must not be sidelined. Restrictions on parking in bike lanes and on pavements should be strictly enforced and, given a lack of police action on these issues, those local authorities that have not requested decriminalisation of parking enforcement should be encouraged to do so. Where 20mph zones have been brought in they should be properly policed and sentencing must be appropriate when drivers cause harm.

6. A comprehensive package to eliminate the risk of HGVs to cyclists and pedestrians.
This is a pressing problem. Heavy lorries are associated with a disproportionately high risk of death or very serious injury to cyclists and pedestrians. For example, despite being just 6% of road traffic, lorries were involved in around 20% of all cyclists’ fatalities in London. CAPS already has targets for reducing cycling casualties but the onus must not just be on the cyclists to keep themselves safe. The Scottish government should engage with the UK Department of Transport with a view to developing a comprehensive package of measures to reduce the risk to cyclists and pedestrians, based on up to date evidence of what works. These might include better training, mirrors, sensors and warnings, or limitations on movements of large freight vehicles during the morning and evening peaks. Equally they might include complete redesign of junctions to remove conflict between bikes and lorries.

7. A strategic and properly funded programme of road user training.
Much is made of developing training for cyclists in the CAPS yet Bikeability is not fully funded, and Cycling Scotland is dependent on volunteers to carry out vital training in schools. But training should not be confined to children – nor even just to cyclists. All Scottish residents should have access to affordable cycle training, whether children, adult returning cyclists, and those in later life. Further, HGV drivers, bus drivers and other professional drivers should be required to take an on-bike qualification (or a theoretical module if physically unable to cycle) as part of their licensing requirement and be made aware of the needs of both pedestrians and cyclists, and the Scottish government should press the UK government to introduce these measures .

8. Solid research and statistics on cycling.
We can only improve decision-making and policy development with solid research. The information that records how many people are cycling is very poor at the national level and inconsistent at the local level. This makes it difficult to monitor what is happening and which interventions have greatest impact. At a minimum counts should be carried out twice a year using standardised protocols for data collection and handling, taking into account cyclists using off-road facilities as well as those on the public highway. Where possible electronic counters with public displays should be used, as in Copenhagen and other cities, which count the number of cyclists passing through certain areas as these can provide both feedback and encouragement. These would become a talking point and a public reminder to cyclists that they are part of a growing band taking control of their health – and their freedom.

There is all to play for and so little to lose. Proper investment in cycling is not a zero-sum game. It will bring so much more than the expenditure put in, benefits which will gradually be reflected in a changing, healthier population. We all know our natural resources are not infinite and we would irresponsible not to think of ways of making them last, but cycling is hardly a hair-shirt option. Rather it is a joyous way to get about – but one that has become confined to a hardy few because of the conditions on our roads. From Kirkpatrick MacMillan onwards, Scotland has a long history of popular cycling which has been all but forgotten. We believe these times can come again and Scotland can once more be a beacon for the world.

Full article with footnotes here.

Bravecleavage

Today on Woman's Hour (first item) they were discussing Disney making over Merida, the red-haired heroine of Brave, into something sexier and more feminine for merchandising purposes.  Little girls were angry that Disney has spoiled Merida, as Disney does most things it touches. 

"I like Merida because she likes wearing loose-fitting dresses so she can aim properly when she's hunting.   And I also like her because she's not one of those pink girly princesses who is always flapping around looking for boyfriends."

Going by the pictures, they've changed a quirky kid with a bow and arrows to a hot babe, who spends her time in the hair-dresser's rather than on the archery field.

The mothers on Woman's Hour were annoyed as well, as Merida is a gutsy princess they like their daughters to admire, as any decent mother would far rather their daughter had a pin-up of Jessica Ennis (achievement, drive) than of Kate Middleton (expensive teeth).

The little girls favoured Merida's penchant for dress suitable for active pursuits.  One of the worst films I've ever seen in my life was Van Helsing.  Among its general badnesses was Kate Beckinsale playing Anna Valerious who was constantly pursued by evil winged vampires.  If a family curse had me being pursued by evil winged vampires I'd wear a loose top, jogging bottoms and trainers, or the nineteenth century equivalent, not a corset and high-heeled boots up to my thighs.  I'd also tie back or even cut my hair, however tumbling and curly. Throw her to the vampires.

What not to wear when chased by evil vampires

I can understand why the little girls were so furious with the Disney makeover.  If you love a character, you hate them being messed around.  When I was little I adored Emma Peel, as played by Diana Rigg, in The Avengers.  She raced about in a Lotus Elan, wore cat suits and karate kicked the baddies.  I'd have been raging if she had appeared in a frilly dress and stilettos, and had waited to be rescued. 

Emma Peel was replaced by a less fighting woman, and the show fell out of my ratings. 


Diana Rigg as Emma Peel

Speeding Up Jane Austen

I've been unwell so my brain has only been up to mild entertainment on the internet. The paid companion who used to read to rich semi-invalids in Victorian time has been digitised and democratised.  We all have paid companions now.

Philanthropists on the internet upload films and television serials and now I can watch Jane Austen adaptations by the dayful.

I was taught that when you watch a film adaptation of a novel you should judge it by its own merits, not how it relates to the source material. Also, that good films are usually made not out of great novels but okay ones. However, watching differing versions of Jane Austen is like watching different versions of classical plays. Will the Ghost of Hamlet's father be a projection of Hamlet's own mental state or a material ghost? Will they set Julius Caesar in 1930's Italy or modern Africa or among the mafia?  The enjoyment includes assessing the interpretation. What will they do with - well to start - 

Persuasion 2007:-

 

Not bad - rather a nice Anne Elliott with her inward pain and patience, though her sister Mary is shown as neurotically deranged, not just snobbish and fretful.  But that last scene when Anne runs through Bath seeking Captain Wentworth.  Young ladies in Jane Austen's time did run but in the countryside, not through the streets.  Anne was going it like Jessica Ennis.  Jeez - it's the curse of the feisty heroine. To be attractive to modern eyes a film woman has to be physically energetic and outspoken.

So here's Billie Piper playing at shuttlecock, chasing a pug dog and generally tearing about like a mad thing with tumbling hair. Billie Piper is charming and was delightful as a companion to Doctor Who. She would make a delicious Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey. Here she's totally miscast playing Fanny Price - timid, bookish and delicate - in a garish adaptation of Mansfield Park (2007), where Mary Crawford, who is a sophisticate, flashes her ankles at Edmund Bertram and William Price dances the hornpipe. So when the internet didn't let me watch the third chunk of upload I was happy to give up on a vibrant adaptation for the perpetual motionists. 

 


Billie Piper - no Fanny Price did not look as cute as that

I hadn't much liked the film of Mansfield Park (1999) which had shown the influence of Edward Said* by including scenes of the slave trade (mentioned in one sentence in the book) but I did find the 1983 BBC version. The adaptation was faithful to the book and it made 1983 seem as spacious and stately as the days when families listened to Dickens novels being read out loud.  This adaptation got the novel's atmosphere - the formality, the authority of the paterfamilias, the repressed emotion obliquely expressed in walks through a grand garden or private theatricals. .

It did have some odd touches.  Sylvestra Le Touzel who played Fanny looked like an actress from the silent film era, when they widened their eyes emphasising the whites. She moved awkwardly with the same lunging gait as Joyce Grenfell playing a hockey mistress and in outburst was hysterical to the point of needing medication. Henry Crawford was repellent - creepy instead of attractive. And Lady Bertram was catatonic rather than just languid.  Anna Massie was excellent as the meddling Mrs Norris, as was Samantha Bond as Maria Bertram. The final great scene was touching, Edmund and Fanny are sitting by a window one rainy Sunday evening when he tells her of his final disillusionment with Mary Crawford. No running about, only their two faces and the rain outside on the paths and lawns.

 

Sylvestra Le Touzel as Fanny Price - slightly weird

I am now part way through the 1971 production of Persuasion, again done at an easy pace and staying close to the novel.  The autumnal scenery and the women trailing their dresses and shawls on the Cobb at Lyme are very good, the ladies of the English leisure classes at their pretty play. They have also added some poetry for Anne to quote (that time's equivalent of songs for life's soundtrack).  Anne Elliot has an absurd hair style, a kind of beehive. But she is good, the grown up woman always trying to make the peace among the exuberant giggling girls. All the characters are done well, except for a shrieking Louisa Musgrove who is such a pain you think Captain Wentworth shows bad taste in his flirtations. I was quite pleased when she was knocked unconscious.

 


Anne Firbank with bad hairstyle

I find there was a 1960 version of Persuasion but it was cleaned out by the BBC in the 1970s.

The Disciple: Master - will we have eternal life?
The Master : If we are digitised, my child.

*Culture and Imperialism

Saudis on Cycles

Women are now allowed to ride bicycles in Saudi Arabia - in parks, and if accompanied by a male relation, says The Guardian.

"the "unnamed official" who made the announcement added that women will be allowed to pedal only around parks and other "recreational areas". They will also have to be dressed in full Islamic body coverings, and – in a darkly comic stipulation that evokes images of tandems – they will have to be accompanied by a male relative. So cycling alone, and indeed towards possible gainful employment, will remain illegal, along with voting, many sports, and a host of other basic activities many would consider a human right."

There are comments below to the effect that:-

1. Nobody cycles in Saudi Arabia
2. There's nowhere to cycle in Saudi Arabia - it's too hot and the roads are too busy
3. This token cycling is better than nothing. At least the women are getting some exercise.

"When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race." said H.G. Wells.

If you see a woman on a bicycle she may be going places.  Bicycles got women out of constrictive clothing and to Suffragette meetings, to jobs and on outings with men who weren't their male relatives.

They don't seem to be taking Saudi women very far.

Spokes Public Meeting

Spokes Public Meeting: Future of Local Transport

Cycling as a form of transport needs to be seen in the wider context of local transport as a whole, and at our meeting on Monday 8 April Professor Iain Docherty will set the context by describing current trends and policies in local transport as a whole.   Jim Eadie MSP will outline cycling developments at Scottish level, followed by Cllr Jim Orr describing the Edinburgh situation.   There will then be a panel discussion, with questions from you the audience, chaired by Paul Tetlaw.

Date: Monday 8 April
Venue:  Augustine United Church, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh
Time:  7.30 – open 6.45 for coffee, stall, exhibition and chat

Iain Docherty is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Glasgow, with interests including sustainability and transport.

Jim Eadie MSP  is Co-Convener of the Scottish Parliament Cross-Party cycling group, and Parliamentary Officer to the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure, Nicola Sturgeon MSP.

Cllr Jim Orr is Edinburgh City Council’s Transport Vice-Convener, has responsibility for cycling, and is a Spokes member.

Paul Tetlaw is a long-standing Spokes member, also board member and former chair of Transform Scotland.

Patriarchy to excess

The Michael Philpott case is terrible, of course. I saw a couple of documentaries about it last night and his friends, neighbours and his wife's family were staggered and distraught.

Michael Philpott had the following characteristics:-

If his women folk were disobedient, he beat them.
They had to get his permission to go out.
He controlled all the finances.
The sole object of his womenfolk were to be his slaves and bear his children.
He had a total contempt for women, or "bitches" as he usually called them.
He liked to have sex with very young girls - early teens, preferably.

He should have lived in Saudi Arabia, where he would have been a blameless, in fact, an exemplary citizen.

Also, his womenfolk are described as "damaged" or "vulnerable."  Plenty of cultures, including our own once, would describe them as showing good wifely virtues, like patience, forebearance and obedience.

Easter Monday

On Easter Monday I was cycling through the Dalmeny Estate.  There were still snowdrops out, and daffodils have not really got started. The Pentlands and Ochils were very white.  The paths had been cleared of snow, which was piled in heaps here and there on the verges.  A flock of heavily pregnant ewes. A couple of the ewes had given birth and very young lambs were feeding.  One ewe was licking a pile of snow - perhaps it had been salted.  Several cock pheasants were wandering about and in one field I saw a dozen curlews among the first, faint green - barley, I think. So the late spring has arrived.

Snowdrops in Dalmeny Estate

The Pentlands from Kirkliston

Poisoning possums in the park

When I read Wordsworth I did feel an affinity with his vision of Nature, but thought that if he had been inspired by the Lake District - hills grazed and dry-stone walled and farmed for thousands of years - what number would his awe-counter have hit if he had lived in New Zealand and wandered in mountainous wildernesses and almost virgin bush?

In New Zealand you feel a world has just fallen. With human beings first arriving there in the thirteenth century and then becoming part of industrial revolutionised Britain in the nineteenth, it seems like yesterday it was a peopleless country of flightless birds. One third of New Zealand's birds have become extinct in a few recent generations.

The huia, last confirmed sighting in 1907

Many nations are haunted by loss - Ireland, by the potato famine and Scotland by the highland clearances. With New Zealand, the arrival of humanity itself was a disaster. Green politics find a natural home here. You see a steep hill, half of it bush clad, the other grassed, eroded and slipping, and it's a kind of heaven and hell. Good news, heart-lifting news the Second Coming is when something is saved from extinction, like the Chatham Black Robin, rescued after having dwindled to five.  

The campaigning organisation, Forest and Bird has seventy thousand members, and the Department of Conservation has plenty of clout. Island sanctuaries have been cleared of predators and endangered species are making a come back. "Sanctuary" - the sacred as well as the safe place - is an apt description.

In Wellington there is a a sanctuary in the city, Zealandia. Zealandia developed from an area round a reservoir in the suburb of Karori. I remember climbing the fence to walk there in my student days. It is a short shuttle ride from the cable car and popular with tourists.  It has regenerated some rare birds, and the kakas, the native parrot which was ere extinct in Wellington, are now seen in Wellington's gardens. A friend I visited had been delighted to have one land in their trees.

Predator proof fence

Zealandia is surrounded by a predator-proof fence, with very fine mesh to keep out mice, a top hat to keep out possums, a deep buried bottom to keep out burrowing rats and of a height to keep out cats. Human beings have their bags searched. At the entrance is a ruler which shows you the jumping heights of predators, the cat scoring highest at 1.8 meters. Once through that barrier you then walk among something like Adam's paradise, a paradise regained. 

The reservoir, Zealandia

I saw some small black and white birds, the North Island robin, which I'd never seen before. The tuatara were lying behind a low fence and you could get your camera right up at them.  They don't move, or even twitch.  Not moving is what they do. They sat there on a cloudy day conserving their energy. The knowledge that creatures like them have been not moving for 200 million years or so strikes you with awe.

Male Tuatara with spikes on back and identifying necklace

We went to see the kaka who came out to feed and then we sat among other feeding boxes and listened to the bellbirds and cursed the various joggers that went past because they made noise and disturbance, keeping other birds away.


Kaka

Grandest were the takahe. Thought to be extinct at the end of the nineteenth century, they had been discovered in 1948. They have been heavily protected since and there are now about 200 in existence. Seeing them - not just seeing them but sitting there while one walked up to me - was like seeing the Black Stone at Mecca or the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, depending on your religion. The takahe have glowing  royal blue feathers and they are so fat and slow moving no wonder Maori and settlers picked them up for dinner. Being so close to them gave me a joyful jolt  as in the finding of something you thought irretrievably lost or hearing that a vile tyrant has been toppled.

The takahe - banded, monitored, tracked

After this I went to the museum part of the visitors' centre.  There were the  usual displays of the old continent Gondwana and how it broke to isolate these islands and produce its unique ecosystem.  Also a  life-sized figure of a moa, which stood among tussock, then raised its head and roared. A film showed and I sat to watch it among a group of primary school children aged about eight or nine. 

In the film the moa roamed the bush, roaring. A quick cut to the first Maori to arrive.  Brandishing spears, they surround and kill a moa with a long lingering shot of  its eye glazing and closing in death. Then the British turn up. Rats escape their high-rigged ships. The British introduce rabbits and stoats. A shot of some nestlings, naked and helpless, and then a possum, full of greed and menace approaches them along a branch. The little girl in front of me put her hands over  her eyes. Human beings - lumberjacks, naturalists, farmers - all arrived, like the Mongols or the Hun. At the end of the film I felt that Goebbels must have put out similar films about the Jews.

At this time a business man and philanthropist, Gareth Morgan, was campaigning against pet cats, calling for them, not to be destroyed but not replaced.  "Imagine a New Zealand teeming with native wildlife; penguins on the beach, kiwis roaming about in your garden," Morgan says on his website. "Imagine hearing birdsong in our cities."  I was on his side. I'm soppy about cats but won't keep one myself because of the birds that come to my bird feeder. Morgan caused outrage and the controversy made it to the UK. 

However  according to later surveys, there has been widespread support for limited controls of the cats though people baulked at getting rid of them altogether.  I could see how keeping cats may come to seem as odd as smoking in cinemas and offices and on buses seems now. That sort of cultural change happens often enough. The insouciance which felled ancient forests is looked on with the same horror as the slave trade or sending children up chimneys.  Foreigners think possums are cute and furry while we NZers denounce them and happily wear them as socks. My father, a kind man who liked animals, would deliberately run one down if he saw one in the headlights. We pretty much regarded them as rats. In the bush I walked through the Department of Conservation was usually carrying out poisoning possum programmes. Perhaps we will get that kind of mind-set towards cats. 

One sign of pest hatred in the culture is a new annual "Pestival" that has been set up to celebrate pest eradiation and Gareth Morgan is going to be a judge of the best pest killed.

My friend R and I visited another friend, B, who has a couple of acres in Coromandel with his own bush nursery.  He spies native plants growing - "volunteers" he calls them - and digs them out and transplants them into pots for watering and tending until they are big enough to join a chunk of natives at one side of his property. He spoke of someone he knows who has a cat-killing policy on his own land. R., a cat lover, didn't like this.  She said, "There are traps you can get which catch possums, but not cats." "You can catch cats if you bait them with mussels," said B.

While in Coromandel R. and I went to Barry Brickell's wonderful railway at Driving Creek, which everyone told us was a must-see. Barry Brickell is a potter and part of that cultural movement of the 60s in New Zealand which saw the rise of (non Maori) crafts. Craftsmen would buy a piece of land somewhere remote for a song and make pots or turn wood   Brickell acquired steep acres near the town of Coromandel and built his first narrow-gauge railway to carry clay to his workshop.  The railway expanded and now covers 2.6 kilometres zig-zagging and hair-pinning through regenerating bush.  The railway track is about as wide as a walking path, and it's a terrific way for the unfit to be in the bush, as well as a thrilling trip for children. You get superb views down the precipitous slopes of the crowns of fern trees, as well as of terracotta walls and other decorations along the tracks. There are several trains that run and they were all full. The motel had booked for us, saying  booking was essential.

View from train

At the top of the track is a visitor's centre, a wooden tower with grand prespectives of the Hauraki Gulf across to Auckland.  The train driver spoke to us about the history of the place. How the stupendous 1000 year old kauri were taken for masts for the Royal Navy. How Barry Brickell had acquired the land and they were now poisoning possums, getting rid of the Monterey pines brought by the gold miners from California and have planted thousands of kauri. Then, went on the driver, in a 1000 years the bush will look like it used to, with the great kauri growing tall again. I was moved by this, as I think were a lot of the visitors. 

Barry Brickell's railway

Decorated wall

The largest kauri stand remaining is in Waipoua Forest in Northland which I later visited with my sister C.  Both of us had been there before, but not for a long while. The road had been tarmacked since my time. We did the walk to Tane Mahuta, Lord of the Forest and I was as usual overwhelmed by its stateliness.  To see an old kauri is like entering Durham Cathedral and being ravished by size and grandeur and age accumulated over hundreds of years. At our next stop we remembered it was a short walk to see Te Matua Ngahere, Father of the Forest, but they had moved the path around so you took a circuitous route and saw mighty trunk after trunk.  "Each one of these should have a separate name but they're just another kauri," said my sister. "Runners up in X factor," I said, but I was overwhelmed again and of course full of sorrow of how many of them had gone.  There were beautiful miniature forests of mosses at their feet.

Tane Mahuta

Te Matua Ngahere

This stand of forest was going to be milled as recently as 1952, but public outcry stopped it.  I've just been watching the series Heritage: the Battle for Britain's Past about the rise of the heritage movement in Britain and the parallels are obvious.  These trees are our Stonehenge and our York Minster. 

We later stopped at Trounson Kauri Park. The display there informed us that "In 1890, when the timber industry threatened to virtually wipe out Northland kauri forests 3.34 hectares was initially set aside here by the government of the day. An early settler and saw miller James Trounson added a further 22 hectares to this initial gesture.

Following the establishment of a Scenic Preservation Club, Mr Trounson offered to sell another 364 hectares of forest land to the Government for the value of the trees alone. It was officially opened as Trounson Kauri Park in 1921."

1921! That seemed early though Yosemite National Park in the USA was well established by then. The Sierra Club was established in 1892.

"Trounson Kauri Park has been now managed as a 'mainland island 'since 1995. This is essentially an intensive ecosystem restoration project with a focus on learning. This work also seeks to provide opportunity for the public to enjoy a glimpse of Northland kauri forest like it once was.

A key element in the Department of Conservation's success to date has been the intensive work undertaken to control predators and browsers such as possums, rodents, mustelids and feral cats. The results of the work have been very positive and often quite dramatic as shown by ecosystem monitoring."

Only the "feral" cats though rather than the pets.  Their day will come. First they came for the wild ones, then the tame ones, then the belled and speyed ones.

I share Gareth Morgan's ideal of the restoration of the loud birdsong that deafened Captain Cook and his crew when they first arrived. That birdsong is our folksong. I would like flesh and feathers being re-instated, and fur being dismissed.

Late Spring

Spring is about 4 weeks behind. It looks like the beginning of March out there.  Yesterday I saw snow-drops by the Water of Leith, some in full bloom, others a little past it.  Crocuses are just coming out in my garden.  I compared the rhubarb to a picture of some I took on 27 March 2007, and it's about half the size and only two leaves. The cold, the flurries of snow, the almost bare trees - it looks wintry but the light is spring bright, so I feel slightly disorientated, like a New Zealand friend who tells me he feels can't find his bearings in the northern hemisphere as the sun is in the southern sky. 

Rhubarb 27 March 2007

Rhubarb, 30 March 2013

The hyacinths, which have been raised inside, have come into flower at the usual time.

My family and other cyclists

I wouldn't have thought of us as a cycling family.  I'm the only one who commutes by cycle.  I'm what New Zealanders call  'a cycling advocate" and it's been hinted to me that I am an obsessive bore on the subject. However, various members of my family cycle in their different ways.

We - my siblings and I - cycled when we were children.  We lived near the end of what we called a "metal"(i.e. dirt) road and to get to school we had to cycle about a mile and a half to the bus-stop. We would leave our bicycles leaning against a fence unlocked, as you did those days, and play games - walking along the parapet of the bridge over the big drain was one - until the crowded, superannuated bus picked us up to go about four miles to our country school.  

 

Our house and farm

My first year at primary school I was carried on the back of my sister Claudia's bicycle. Then the next year she went to the High School in town, and caught an earlier bus. The middle sister, L. said she wasn't going to carry a lump like me, so at the age of six I was taught to ride a bicycle, Dad holding the carrier and jogging behind me on our lawn for a week while I learned to balance. The children on our road cycled on a surface which would be an easy mountain bike trail these days, except when the Council came with its loads of crushed rock and graders, when it became hard work for our basic bikes.  "The grader's been here," we would howl as we tried to make our way through what seemed like small yellow boulders for the first few days, then the cars and tractors gradually formed two strips, the rocks heaped in the middle and down the sides and we had smooth dirt paths again. 

A notable time on this route was when a dead cow lay waiting on the verge for what we called the dead cow lorry. Oh, the stench of that cow - we'd hold our breaths as we went by  - and if we met the lorry, My God! Sometimes the dredger came to clear the big drain that  made the swampy land farmable. The verges were piled with mud, and weed and on the road would be eels,  some as big as your arm, struggling through the dust  back towards the water.  I was terrified of them and sickened by them, L. was fearless and would make to chase me with one.  She rescued a small black one once and kept it in a bucket of water, but it didn't survive, like the baby rabbits, pukeko chicks and other "found" small creatures.  Then cars would run over the eels or they would just die and you would dodge and avert your eyes from their smashed and maggoty bodies.

The others left school and went out to jobs, marriages and different countries, and L. said she hadn't been on a bicycle since those early days.  Then a few years ago friends suggested she do the Otago Rail Trail in a group.  She got a cycle and a pair of cycling shorts and enjoyed the trip hugely.  She has done other trails and she lives in the Hutt Valley in Wellington where there are 27 km of trails by the Hutt River where she exercises regularly and looks very fit on it. 

 

Bridge on the Rimutaka trail

She and I did a piece of the Rimutaka Trail.  This is an old railway track, so with easy gradients and tunnels.  It goes through regenerating bush and with stops at the information boards we headed uphill.  It took us about an hour and a half to get to Summit, 10km away.  There are a few rusty bits of engine and other signs of its train origins as well as a shelter and the usual Department of Conservation toilets (DoC really is great, setting up long drop toilets and information on trails all over the country). 

The Summit, Rimutaka trail

On Wellington Province Day, a public holiday, under a perfect blue sky it was a very popular route, and family groups were out, which are something of a hazard, as small children waivered from one side of a trail to another. As we sat at Summit eating a snack a gang of guys cycled past, including one on a unicycle. 

You could continue down to Featherstone in the Wairarapa and catch a train back to Wellington, as you would in the manner of my UK cycling.  We, however, cycled back the way we came, getting to the car park at about 12:30 and by then it was hitting 30 degree afternoon heat, which I would certainly have found hard to cope with.

Cycling in a New Zealand summer

Other than the river path in the Hutt Valley I didn't do any more cycling in Wellington. However I saw that cycling had picked up since my day.  I was four years in Wellington at Victoria University and I would never have dreamed of cycling.  Wellington is a walkable city, its public transport is quite good, and I would have dismissed the idea - the hills are precipice steep and it's famous for its southerly gales.

A view of Wellington from a friend's house in Kelburn

I love Wellington which reminds me of Edinburgh in being beautiful, hilly and windy, so not the most obvious city for cycling.  However the cycleways were marked for urban routes and I saw people on mountain bikes on squally days- and yes, you would need something with very low gears with hills like these.  L., whose office is out in Pauatahanui over a steep hill (Wellington is a system of steep hills and valleys) said that some of her colleagues commute by cycle. Evidently it's catching on. 

Postie in Devonport. Posties have always gone by bike.

I eventually got to Auckland and caught a ferry to my brother's place in Devonport on the North Shore.  A few commuters had their cycles on the ferry and there was a cycleway marked from the ferry stop to Takapuna. Auckland, with its warmer climate and lower hills you would think was an ideal city for cycling. I stayed at my sister's in Mount Eden, near a cycleway through the suburban streets.  I did a little of that and also an off road path through Walmsley Park. It was supposed to be a cycle path but it was not sign-posted, and when I got to the end of it, I had no idea where to go, so it receives low marks.  I didn't really sample enough of Auckland to give it a fair assessment but I did seem to end up on  busy roads a lot of the time, which were not well signed.  I would say that a start had been made for making the city more cycle-friendly, but my verdict now would be "fragmented".

Cycleway signs, Mount Eden, Auckland

I also went with my brother-in-law for a cycle along the waterfront.  This is marked as a cycle way, and  pavement has been divided by a white line, with the half near the kerb being painted with outlines of cyclists.  Cycling along Auckland's waterfront is very agreeable in many ways, as you are by the grand Waitemata Harbour among the Aucklanders on a Saturday morning jogging, boating, swimming, taking the kids out in buggies and on scooters and small bikes. A bloke on a wheelchair went by at high speed, doing training for what was probably the paraOlympics.  But it is cycling with all your attention on hazards. I was reminded of the Union Canal at its city end in Edinburgh.  It's picturesque but the towpath is too narrow and it's too busy with pedestrian traffic to be able to get up speed, and I usually miss out that bit and go along the streets.  Auckland's waterfront has all the hazards of a canal towpath in the city, with the addition of cars parked along the kerb and car doors opening out on you while people extract themselves and their children.  One door was open while three teenage girls sat in the car or stood on the pavement and hung out.

"I would have sworn at them but I'm a foreigner," I said. later to my brother-in-law later, who was also cycling the path.

"I swore at them," he said.


Reminder to car drivers on Waiheke Island

We were in a cafe at the end of the waterfront run comparing notes, and agreeing that it was more of an obstacle course than a cycle route. I cycled back along it, and another lot had their van doors open and were cleaning out their van, with a vacuum cleaner on the pavement.  The bloke training on the wheelchair went past with strong, fast moving arms and I mentally cheered him. I did enjoy my urban cycle, which was really a tourist's potter but this cycleway is not a serious cycle route for commuting.

Cyclists wanting to get somewhere at speed use the road instead and Auckland drivers think that they are being cheeky sods for cycling there because look, don't they have their own cycleway now?  rather in the spirit of white South Africans pointing to bantustans.  Look!  You've got your own state.  Why do you want a share of ours?

After this I noticed other pavements that were halved as cycle routes, and on the cyclist side the path would have a pole for a traffic light or something else stuck in the middle of it, and wondered what car drivers would think of a road where suddenly a concrete bollard appeared in their way.

My nephew J. showed me his Norco mountain bike. J. is big, blonde and macho and used to play rugby.  Now he has taken up competitive mountain biking and his bike has a special seat where you press a button to change its height. He was due to do some time trials in Rotorua and had been getting fit cycling up Auckland's volcanoes.  I had seen groups of mountain bikers on Mount Eden doing this on a Sunday morning.  He said though that Auckland drivers are awful - selfish and inconsiderate, which I well believed.  (I've heard stories of New Zealander drivers' resentment of cyclists).

As we walked back to the car from J's house, his children followed us, the little girl in a pedal car and the sturdy blonde boy toddler pistoning energetically on his tricycle as he headed along the pavement, obviously dying to be moving fast over uninterrupted tarmac. When he's old enough to cycle alone, perhaps Auckland will have safe spaces for him to do so.

My brother-in-law rides a recumbent tricycle.  He had a stroke seven years back, which has left him unable to drive and he can't walk far, but he can use a recumbent tricycle which has been adapted for his disability.  He now does regular exercise rides, and goes off to cafes so as well as gaining independent mobility, he has made some new friends. He has found the exercise, upping his oxygen levels, has been good for his mental health as well, with his speech improving (it sounds totally normal to me).  He and my sister are now evangelicals for the disabled being self-propelled, if possible.

 
My brother-in-law John on his recumbent tricycle

He also wears very snazzy colours on his bike and has become a feature of the neighbour hood.  People recognise him and his bike, and call out greetings.

The only other cycling I did was at Ruakaka in Northland, where the family has a beach house.  Ruakaka is a couple of hours north of Auckland, a town that was built for the workers at the oil refinery at Marsden Point. It is very flat, and also has 23km of perfect white sand beach.  However far the tide is out, you can swim in the surf, and it is safe.  Small children can play in the waves.  I went for a ride at low tide along the hard sand, with the waves of the Pacific curling over the bike tyres.  This being New Zealand, a beach like this has a handful of people on it.  My sister says the biggest number they have seen is seventeen.

On Ruakaka Beach

I only sampled cycling in New Zealand and now when I see new routes being advertised, would like to go back and do some of them. Any organisation who would give me a year's grant to do a survey of New Zealand's cycling infrastructure is welcome to apply