In May Kidical Mass ran a ride at the University of Reading’s community festival. Over 50 people joined us for a ride through the university site. The campus is a great place to go riding with young children — there is very little traffic on the road, what traffic there is moves relatively slowly and many of the cycle routes are off road. It’s a very safe place to learn to ride and indeed our youngest regular attendee, Blake (aged 3) has learned to ride there this Summer. It was a very easy route to marshal and made for a relaxed and enjoyable ride.
Kidical Mass Reading have other reasons to be grateful to the university too — earlier this year they awarded us a grant which has enabled us to continue running the rides with related activities alongside (including offering bike maintenance to ride attendees).
So at July’s ride we were very pleased to welcome university researchers from the CALM (Clean Air Living Matters). The route went from Palmer Park to Forbury Gardens — back on our very first route — well, almost. There was a small change as the direction of traffic on Abbey Square, the one way road past the library, has reversed. This definitely made the route less stressful with small people (on this route the marshals always do most work on the stretch between coming off the Kennet and turning off Kings Road).
As part of their work, Dr Marta O’Brien and her team offer free assemblies and other resources to schools in Reading to help inform and empower students on these matters. If you have children and you think they would benefit from this please encourage their school to reach out – many schools in the Reading area have already taken advantage of the offer.
The researchers rode with us and sought views on cycling in Reading from the grown ups after the ride. I particularly enjoyed appropriating some of the pavement chalk that the children were using post ride to sketch out the new layout of Lower Henley Road and explain why it has made such a difference to our school run! I was also also able to explain why I am so glad that the tunnel under the station is opening to cyclists soon — the rivers and the train line are some of the biggest challenges for route planning in Reading and having a centrally located child friendly crossing of the latter is a welcome development. We hope to take a ride through the tunnel in celebration once it is finally open!
Going back to the university, and cycling, I made one too many puns about unicycles and the official Kidical Mass Reading route planner/leader (and my husband) has acquired one and is determined to learn to ride it with the idea of eventually being able to lead a ride on one. For now he looks quite funny wobbling about with one hand on the wall. With two small children finding the time to become proficient may take a while, but he’s a determined (stubborn?) man so watch this space for a future ride report featuring him.
This blog and the rides are on hiatus over the Summer so all that is left to say is that the next ride for Kidical Mass will be at 12pm from Reading Cycle Festival on Sunday 8th September – we hope to see many of you there!