A couple of weekends ago I was in
Antwerp and I went for a bike ride along the canal that leads out of the City and into some rural areas to the south west.
I learnt two things. One, that flat countries are deceptive for a cyclist because you get all comfortable about the fact that you're about to cover miles of flat and it won't hurt a bit, but then it goes and slaps you with a headwind that makes you feel as though you're cycling through porridge! Which hurts...
And two, that I managed to cover nearly 40 miles without cycling on a road next to cars. The whole ride was trail, track, cycle path and shared pavement.
My partner lives in the suburbs about ten minutes outside the city centre. Antwerp is one if those cities that has a natural border, the river at one side and a huge ring road making a circle from the south of the river to the north. So, I cycled from the north of Antwerp to the east and then circled the south on my way back.
I didn't venture into the centre of the City. All of my cycling was in the suburbs, along the canal side and across rural parts of the district and all on a specific cycle route, of which there are hundreds of mapped and marked kilometres. There are hundreds of lamp posts labelled with a number, each giving directions to the next number, which you follow depending on which number you need to get you where you want to go. If there are a few different directions and numbers you could follow, then they are all signposted. At each road junction, there is a post with a number reminding you which number you're closest to and which direction to go in. When you buy the cycle maps they give you a plastic-coated paper label on which you write the numbers you want to follow. When you've plotted your route, you write the numbers down on the label and attach it to your handlebars and then you don't have to keep referring to your map. Genius!
As I was following a number, I had to cross a main road and as I was waiting to do so, about 100 yards away from the marked crossing, an HGV and a car both stopped to enable me to do so. I was really just stopped, deciding whether to go to the crossing or chance it. But they stopped to let me cross! If only that would happen in England....
Road users are just more polite, less aggressive and not in the 'me me me' mentality that we have here.
City centre and suburban cycle paths look like this. If the cycle path is shared, the pavement is generally split into two sections, one for pedestrians and one for cyclists. As you approach a junction, the cyclists route is marked in red and the pedestrians follow the grey paving.
These pictures below and right show a cycle path that is just for cyclists. The pedestrian path is to the left, out of this picture, but you can see it on the picture below. The cycle paths in Antwerp are mostly coloured red, some paved, as this one is, and some painted. You can see that neither path is next to traffic.
Antwerp centre is a smaller than London but the region the local authority covers is probably about the size of Greater London and Sussex and the cycling infrastructure is brilliant. The marked paths and trails are all mapped out and they probably mean that you can cycle an area the size of Sussex without cycling on a road next to traffic and that has to be the way to go right? Their budget must be about half of what Transport For London and Sussex County Council have. Why is cycling infrastructure so poor in the UK and why is there no appetite for improvement?
My first long ride of 2011, and preparation for the Diva 100 and my Provencal odyssey in the summer.
