Month: May 2024

Last weekend the University of Reading held its annual community festival, and Kidical Mass Reading (and our own community) had a stall and ran a ride. We were delighted to be back on the university site, which has a great network of quiet roads and off road paths. In terms of planning how to marshal the rides, it’s definitely the easiest location we use and I would thoroughly recommend it for a weekend family bike ride.

We had hoped that our route would be a able to briefly leave the site to take in part of the new bike lane on Shinfield Road, but sadly some road works popped up a few days before the ride rendering it temporarily usable. That was a shame, as it is a nice bike lane. However, it did mean that the whole route was very low traffic and the drivers we encountered were very patient and calm. Generally traffic tends to move slowly around the university site, which I’m sure is good for everyone’s stress levels!

Our stand was shared with Reading Cycle Campaign and Avanti Cycling (who run the Bikeability training in schools). This meant that we had an abundance leafleting material, in addition to the Kidical Mass flyers, stickers and temporary tattoos. We also had two Super Keen preschoolers who were determined to carry on distributing stickers and post ride until they were all gone, despite their parents best attempts to get them to move on towards lunchtime. (Yes, Dear Reader, one of them was Mr 4). The stall was manned throughout the afternoon to continue spreading the word about cycling in Reading.

One of Mr 4’s birthday presents last year was a kickstand for his bike, and whilst we were waiting for the ride to start he decided to use it as a makeshift turbo trainer, balancing the bike on it and pedalling backwards. It isn’t really designed to take that kind of weight so it ended up pointing off at a completely random angle. Dr Bike (aka Santa’s Elf) was positioned next to our festival stand. He is adored by Mr 4, who was delighted to have a repair to request (the kickstand was very quickly and easily realigned). After the ride it looked like there were a fair few people bringing their bikes for tune ups, and it’s great to see that service being used.

With the new location came some new faces on the ride, including a few slightly bigger balance bikers – a great sign that their families had done the research on how to teach a child to ride a bike. The stabilisers I remember from my childhood are not currently the recommended approach. They completely change how a bike behaves (you cannot steer by shifting your weight), and when the stabilisers are removed the child then has to relearn how to control their bike. Rather it’s suggested that everyone starts with a balance bike, which steers in the same way as a pedal bike does. For bigger children a pedal bike can be temporarily transformed into balance bike by removing the pedals and lowering the saddle. It was great to have some kids riding in this manner out with us, and they did brilliantly at covering the distance. Scooting a bike is rather harder work than pedalling!

If you missed out on this wonderful community fuelled ride, then please do join us for one of the ones coming up:

• the next Wokingham ride will be on Sunday 23rd June
• the next Reading one will take place on Sunday 7th July.

With a few weeks to go, April’s Wokingham Kidical Mass looked like it might not happen…

The April ride was planned to coincide with the national Safer Streets Now (SSN) action day on 20th April. This gave us the benefit of cycling in support of two great causes (Kidical Mass and SSN) but meant we couldn’t rely on our Reading KM neighbours for support as they were running their own ride on the same day. 

This combined with the absence of several of our regular marshals, meant we considered cancelling the event, however as is so often the way we were lucky (thanks to Natalie and Danny) to find 4 volunteers who kindly stood in to marshal and allowed the ride to go ahead. 

The weather was better than it had been  over the previous week (no rain), although there was a cold wind and arriving at the traditional starting point in Elms field at around 13.40 and finding no other cyclists in sight, I did wonder if we might not need those marshals after all!

Around 13.50, people started arriving, a recumbent cyclist who had come over from Bracknell was the first to arrive and after that the path along the park started to fill up. 

We cycled the usual circular route with the highlight being the ride down Denmark street through the town centre. Maybe it was just me, but it felt like the reception and waving we had this time around was the best I have ever seen, and the noise from the bells was definitely louder than I remember!

We had about 30 riders on the main ride and about 5 minutes after we arrived back at the finish in Elms field, we saw a family of 4 coming in. They had arrived a few minutes late and missed us at the start but had been picked up by the partner and son of one of our regular marshals, who were also late and had gone round with them! 

As is the tradition now, we had delicious home made cake provided by Lyme and caught up with people who are now familiar faces as the Wokingham rides head towards its second anniversary. 

So the April ride did happen and cycling home I reflected on what makes these things a success. It’s the people – the marshalls who give up their time (at the last minute in our case) and the attendees who prioritise coming even when the weather is bad. It’s all those people who waved and even cheered as we came down Denmark street and its the 99% of car drivers who were lovely (and mostly always are…)

Thank you all for making Kidical Mass what it is.