Another Busy Week

First off, the Green Drinks visit to the Ecclesall Woods sawmill on tuesday. Sheffield Cycle Campaign has linked up with Green Drinks to provide sustainable transport for their series of visits to green initiatives around the city - followed by a social in a nearby pub of course...
























This house, made from local materials as far as possible, will be used as a showroom for products made of wood from Ecclesall.
















A useful piece of equipment parked outside Cole Bros Sheffield, last Tuesday.

Went to the YHTAR AGM on Saturday - http://www.yhtar.org.uk

Used the 09:29 Northern service to York via Pontefract. This used to be a regular service linking
South, North and West Yorkshire communities together (at one time the lunchtime train extended to Chesterfield, giving the opportunity for a quick lunchtime trip to Dronfield - handy for visiting GB cycles, now sadly closed) but is now pretty much much a rump service, with only two trains a day in each direction. However, if you want to get to York with your bike, it's a good service to choose, with no reservations required and generally light loadings. More on Pontefract later.















Cycle Rescue stall in York - more sustainable than Northern Rock?

We continue to plug away for better public transport, walking and cycling across Yorkshire (with some success). Our co-chairs, Anthony Rae and John Hoare go to YH Assembly meetings and try to bang some sense into them. The latest round of approved schemes aren't too bad - here's a quick list:-

• Yorcard, £28m
• Leeds Station Southern Access, £10.798m
• White Rose Way, Doncaster, £15m
• A61 Penistone Road Quality Bus Corridor, Sheffield, £9.959m
• East Leeds Parkway, Micklefield, Leeds, £19.4m
• York Park and Ride - Askham Bar, £5.241m
• York Park and Ride - A59, £10.401m
• York Park and Ride - Clifton Moor, £5.212m
• Rotherham to Sheffield Bus Rapid Transit Northern Route, £36.059m
• A684 Bedale, Aiskew, Leeming Bar Bypass, North Yorkshire £ 31.388m

As you can see only two of the ten schemes are new roads. However, there is concern that the Assembly is not fully taking into account Climate Change in its approval process, and we are going to press for this to be fully integrated in future.















Ray Wilkes holds forth at the YHTAR meeting


Last time I went to meeting in York, I took the train to Garforth, and cycled down the greenway to Castleford, which made me realise that the West Yorkshire rustbelt was really not that far from the capital of Elmet. This time, I started off thinking I'd try to follow the Pedal Pushers Recommended Route from Sheffield to York in reverse, then I just decided to throw away the guide book and make up my own route. Things started well as I powered away out of York through Copmanthorpe, then as I threaded the lanes I realised that there were really not that many crossings of the Ouse and the Aire, and if I was going to make progress I was going to have to either go to Tadcaster or head back to the York to Selby cycle route. This is an area with many railway lines (but not many stations) and I followed some yellow jackets in front of me
along a bridleway that cut many miles of the detour. I had the advantage of a North-Easterly wind that was certainly pushing me along.

Tadcaster offered water in the form of a bottle of Vittel and a bridge over the Wharfe, not far from Wharfe's mouth where this river that has taken its course from the high areas of the Dales, through Kettlewell where my family have had many enjoyable times, to Bolton Abbey where the tourist likes to wade in the brown waters, avoiding Leeds to retain the water's purity until it can be delivered to the Ouse and subsequently the Humber.

From here the logical thing was to take the A162 straight down to Castleford and Pontefract. This being around 5, I wanted to be back in Sheffield for 8 so my only hope was the 18:09 from Pontefract (told you I'd get back to that place) The signs said Pf was 15 miles so I figured I'd have to make an average of 15pmh (duh) . This being a pretty flat part of the world that seemed feasible. Things went well with a good stretch of A road with not too much traffic.

At Sherburn-in Elmet the A621 takes a bypass so the obvious thing was to go through the village. Elmet is a concept that interests me, the ancient Celtic kingdom of Yorkshire. Previously I was aware of Ted Hughes 'Remains of Elmet' photo-poem - researching for the blog leads me to some interesting web sites which I will have to explore. Certainly the idea of Yorkshire as a Celtic kingdom is intriguing.

The road I was following was clearly part of the old A1, or Ermine St; something that fascinated my father, and he passed on his enthusiasm for the old roads of England, although I prefer to cycle them whilst he was enamoured by the newly ubiquitous internal combustion engine, in the days when it was still a means of freedom rather than an entrapment.

At South Milford there were vestiges of a cycle route, although as is so often the case it was on the wrong side of the road, so any safety advantages it many have given me were negated by the potential hazards of crossing a major road twice. After rejoining the A621 another off-road route was available to me, but with the same problem. this one had clearly been constructed to enable cycles to access some local lanes -all well and good, but longer-distance cyclists then had to rejoin the main road for another mile, where there was a roundabout for the A1 - could the off-road cycle route not have been extended for that paltry distance?

After that obstacle had been negotiated, one got the ominous feeling that something nasty was approaching - this would be Ferrybridge, where an enormous power station once fed with British coal, but now I suspect from Eastern Europe, just to add to the carbon footprint, lurks by the river. The A-road turned into a dual carriageway with nowhere for cyclists to go other than a stone-covered hard shoulder - the potential for punctures was high. I took the first available exit which took me through Ferrybridge village - not someone you would want to linger despite the riverside vista - and the road took me under where the A1 meets the M62, a modern river of steel and plastic quite different from Wharfe's Mouth.

Here I was was struck between the difference between this country and our European partners - a civilised country would ensure that our vulnerable road users were protected as they passed beneath busy motorway intersections, but somehow the Brits can't quite bring themselves to do that. Somehow I survived that experience, and soon found a road that would take me to Pontefract Monkhill with every chance that I would catch that vital 18:09 train. Sure enough I made it to that station, waiting in company with the original Fat Slags who were off for an evening of debauchery in Wakefield. I was able to drown out their raucous howling by turning up my ipod touch to the max, At Kirkgate things looked up as the Leeds-Sheffield 'Fast' Service turned up and got me back to Sheffield an hour earlier than expected. That's how public transport is supposed to work!

So was in good time for 'Happy-go-lucky', the new Mike Leigh film at the Showroom which I really enjoyed.