Kidical Mass Reading

The weather in July has been an absolute scorcher, with almost two weeks of consecutive bright sunshine. I say almost, because for the weekend of Kidical Mass (and our school fair) the forecast predicted an absolute downpour. Yes, we did have a word with our resident weather forecasters, and yet they insisted it wasn’t their fault.

However, perhaps they did manage to quietly flip a few switches, because on the day itself the rain mostly held off. The forty plus riders who gathered to enjoy each other’s company and the ride (oh, and to show the demand for better cycling infrastructure) mostly stayed dryish. Hurrah!

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We took the circular route from the Lido that goes up to the Kennet and back through town. It’s a great option that didn’t exist a few years ago – the developments by Blake’s wharf and the station have included off-road options for cycling which is much appreciated.

There is, however, one pinch point at the top of Chestnut Walk where a boom barrier blocks the road. We’re practiced with this now and use my cargo bike to bring ramps to take everyone around it. Kat (our fearless leader) led everyone in a chant of “What do we want?” “Drop kerbs!” “When do we want it?” “Now!” Never let it be said that we aren’t rock and roll.

We have raised the issue of that particular pinch point with the council before and will do so again. It’s not just cyclists that would benefit from that lovely route being made more accessible, it would make a difference to anyone with wheels – families with pushchairs, wheelchair users and roller skaters alike.

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On arriving back at the Lido lots of vegan chocolate chip cookies were pulled out. Since we lost our original baker (she moved to Germany and thought it a bit far to come back for rides) Kat has been stepping womanfully into the breach, however, she’s always been clear that baking is not her forte. After she shared the rather dark brown colour of her cookies Samuel (our lovely treasurer and website manager) also had a go at some – in theory using the same recipe but they did turn out rather more golden coloured. However, my youngest boy, Mr 5, did try both cookies (perhaps he fancies himself a bake off judge?) and declared Kat’s offering the best. I suspect this might be because it was given to him by Kat’s young boy, who he met through Kidical Mass and is now a firm friend.

Kat (who occasionally moonlights as a cycling instructor, which she is rather better at than baking) then led the kids who hung around after the ride in some games on bikes, which gave their adults a chance to chat. I admit I wasn’t paying that much attention to the games (being more interested in the chat) but there were cones for riding a slalom and it looked at one point like they were playing something resembling duck duck goose which she informs me is to help children learn emergency braking.

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Kidical Mass Reading takes a hiatus now for the Summer, but we’ll be back for Reading Cycle Festival on Sunday 13th September and Kidical Mass Wokingham are running a ride in Earley on Saturday 2nd August. If you’re in favour of kids being able to get safely out on bikes then please do join us! And if you’re able to join our team of marshals for some of the rides then please get in touch – without their support we could not run these rides, and we’re grateful for all of them.

Last week’s ride took place at the University of Reading Community Festival. We had around 50 riders joining us, including one special and unexpected guest, Yuan Yang, MP for Woodley and Earley. I had a chance to speak briefly with her about Kidical Mass, and our aims to highlight the need for child friendly cycling infrastructure. Yuan Yang commented, “When it comes to urban planning, children are the canaries in the coal mine.” How wonderful it would be for everyone if all of our cities were designed to meet children’s needs! Clean air to breathe, public spaces to play and socialise, and cars tamed and contained so that people can travel safely on foot, or by bike or public transport.

It’s local government (our councillors) who decide where exactly in the borough to spend any money there is to spend on active travel. However, it’s central government (our MPs) who decide how much money that is and what the parameters are on how it’s spent. We asked Yuan Yang to be a voice asking for enough active travel funding to meet the clear need.

The ride itself was great fun and our marshals were rather more relaxed than usual – the university site has low speed limits on the road, and many car-free bike paths, which is great for small children. But we did venture onto the surrounding roads once or twice to demonstrate that you can cycle to nearby schools by venturing through campus – if, of course, you have a safe path to campus from your house.

Kidical Mass also had a stand at the festival, shared with our friends at Reading Cycle Campaign. We had a bracelet making activity for kids to do and a dot survey for cyclists (young and old) to express how they they feel about cycling in Reading. The results were interesting – the top two questions told a clear story that, although we have some nice cycle paths in Reading, what we don’t have is a safe and connected network of routes. You can find a place to go for a perfectly nice weekend afternoon ride, but if you want to go from home to school or work the infrastructure just isn’t there.

We could also see that poor driving is perceived as a problem, and the provision of bike parking is an issue for some. And (perhaps unsurprisingly given the people who will have stopped by our stall) almost everyone wanted to be able to ride their bikes more. Perhaps if we can build safe connections between the existing cycle paths we can make that dream a reality.

Especially for children, an entire route can be made unusable by a bad junction. Imagine as an adult going for a 50 mile bike ride on entirely segregated and beautiful bike paths, apart from one point where you have to cross a motorway on the carriageway. Which bit would you consider when deciding whether or not you could use that route?

Yuan Yang is one person who does insist on riding her bike around (you could tell that this was not just something she said because she thought we’d want to hear it – her team were joking with her about how this makes their lives rather more interesting!). I think it’s really great when people with decision making power are on the ground to see the infrastructure issues and pinch points for themselves. I hope in time we can have more focus on what tweaks and connections are needed to build a proper cycle network, as well as building standalone paths. To get there we will need more elected representatives who understand and care about the issues.

If you’d like to join your voice with ours to campaign for this future then please come and join us at our next rides:

• in Wokingham on Sunday 22nd June for the Wokingham Bikeathon
• or in Reading on Sunday 6th July

When we originally planned March’s Reading Kidical Mass ride we thought, somewhat nostalgically, that we’d return to the route of our first ever ride (from Palmer Park to Forbury Gardens). However, we set the date a little while ago, and we hadn’t realised it coincided with Reading half marathon. This was an interesting situation for two reasons:

1. The route we’d originally planned to use was closed for the runners…
2. … many of who were people who are part of our marshalling team. Apparently there’s a big overlap between overly keen cyclists and overly keen runners (though the Venn diagram is not a circle, I have personally never found the idea of a 13 mile run at all tempting).

No matter! The ride date and start time was published and so a ride we would run on that date from that place.

There was a flurry of activity of scribbled on maps exchanged in the KM WhatsApp group (all the cool kids are in it), proposing possible alternatives, and cross referencing the marathon route road closures. As ever, the constraints were tight: we want to offer an opportunity for a large group of children to ride safely on the roads – safely being the operative word – so some routes are just not possible.

The other side of the Kidical Mass operation is, of course, to engage with the council on all the places we feel we cannot take rides, explaining what makes those routes unsafe and pushing for better infrastructure.

We eventually settled on a circular route, which went from Palmer Park and down to the Kennet, over the zigzag bridge, along the Kennet in the direction of town, and then back over the Kennet to cut through the side streets back to Palmer Park. We were pleased it was a circular route as we know this allows families to bring their small children and bikes by car if riding independently to the start point isn’t yet possible.

The downside of this circular route is that we would have to cross London Road, in both directions, so we would need enough marshals to make that safe. We reached out to the wider community, and badgered friends and relations, and managed to find enough people willing to help that we were confident we could run the ride safely. As always, we are so grateful to the people who give up their time to get kids out of their bikes – especially as we never know in advance whether the ride will be well attended or not.

This time, however, despite the marathon 🏃, and despite the rain 🌧️, we had a great turnout, with over 50 riders joining us, including many new families who hadn’t ridden with us before. Welcome!

On the ride we saw some signs of progress in the infrastructure we used. Though the crossing back on London road was tricky, it was helped by the new bus and bike lane that runs alongside Palmer Park. The route we would have run (if not for the road closures) would have taken us through Blake’s Wharf, a safe route into town that didn’t previously exist. But we also saw evidence of where things can still get better – Gas Works Road is currently blocked to cars, but clearly bikes and people are still meant to have access – but only on one side is there a way for bikes to get safely round without going up a high curb (we brought our own ramps).

On the zigzag bridge we station marshals to make sure no child falls down the steps, and this time we were very glad we had. Campaigning for better infrastructure is a marathon, not a sprint, and I’m grateful to everyone who came along to add their voices to ours and say that it matters.

If you’d like to come along and join in, our next ride will be at 12pm at Reading University’s community festival on 17th May. Come along and make a day of the free event – our kids enjoyed seeing everything there was to do last year!