7.1.2007
Critical Mass returned to York on Friday with about two dozen riders braving the cold to take another random ride around the city to celebrate cycling. The route took them to York’s newest road, round a roundabout the highest legal number of times, and into a short interruption from York’s boys in blue.
Despite the lower numbers, we had no trouble taking even multiple lanes of traffic, even with aggressive drivers accelerating into the ‘Mass. The cops who witnessed this, instead of booking the driver, decided to stop the cyclists to have a nice chat with us about the highway code, staying safe on the roads and not playing our music too loud. Tsk, tsk! After this brief interlude we cycled on to the sound of toots of support (believe it or not) from motorists and even cheers from pedestrians and passers-by.
At one point the ride headed out on Lawrence Street, and into James Street. Someone shouted ‘its a deadend’. Well, it used to be: now it continues through to Layerthorpe, courtesy of the new ‘link road’. Despite claims that the new road is desperately needed to relieve traffic congestion it was absolutely deserted apart from us and a few kids practising bike stunts who joined us for a while. The new road cuts across the old cycle route that went straight across the city, now without even a tunnel or bridge to join up the two sections of the cycle path.
After riding past Sainsbury’s and out along Monkgate, we encountered an old favourite of Critical Mass, the roundabout. It is legal to go 2 1/2 times around such a feature; poor motorists, wondering what we were doing. We then rode through the Groves (quietly!) and into town along Gillygate (this leaves only Lord Mayor’s Walk before we’ve been everywhere on the inner ring road).
There’s been a request for extra riders to go to Leeds on January 26th (from 5:30 in Millenium Square), as they were less lucky with the police last time. And with February often a bad month for other Critical Mass rides, please make an extra effort to bring your bike down to the Minster at 5:30pm on 2nd February for the next instalment of York Critical Mass.