Neither flood nor frost was going to stop Santa from keeping the most important event in his calendar (apart from Christmas Eve, of course) – the annual Kidical Mass Reading Christmas ride.
Our boys were super excited getting ready for the ride – this year I left plenty of time to duct tape the all important elf hat onto Mr 5’s helmet. These days Mr 5 prefers to ride his own bike on our rides – his grandfather usually comes along to ride next to him since his Dad leads the ride and I (his mother) am our back marker. However, this year as in previous years the boys’ grandfather was nowhere to be seen during the ride. He showed up too late, unfortunately just missing Father Christmas. So Mr 5 got to help lead the ride on the triplet with Dad and Father Christmas. And a very happy elf he made, with lots of waves and smiles for the people we passed.
And there were a lot of people that we passed. Though flood wasn’t going to stop Santa, it had a pretty good go. After days of heavy rain much of King’s Meadow was more than a foot underwater, and the river was fast and high and cold. Even more than usual we didn’t want to run the risk of a kid falling in so we changed our plan and routed the ride pretty much immediately away from the river and through the tunnel under the station, through town, along the Kennet by the Oracle (which has substantial fences and a much higher bank) before ending at Forbury Gardens. Going through the centre of town we got lots of smiles and waves from people out doing their Christmas shopping in the very festive town centre (made all the more festive, of course, by the presence of Santa on a bike and the jingling of bike bells).
It doesn’t escape my attention that watching for flooding on the route has become something of a feature of planning Kidical Mass rides – much of our child-friendly cycling infrastructure in Reading is river-adjacent, which can present a problem if you don’t have alternative routes for getting around. I felt for the family who showed up with wet socks because they came on bikes and had to cross through some rather deep puddles to get to the start of the ride! We will keep pushing for the day when the cycling network in Reading is more resilient to heavy rain and ice. We need to get there if we want cycling to be a viable primary transport option for meaningful numbers of people.
At Forbury Gardens the kids had a chance to mingle with Santa, who handed out presents to help make the kids more visible in poor lighting – many thanks to Reading Borough Council for their financial support of that project, which has also enabled us to provide lights to some secondary school children who were in need of them. Santa enjoyed congratulating the kids on their riding skills as he handed out the presents, and then slipped away just before the kid’s grandfather showed up to hear all about it.
We are all looking forward to the ride on Sunday 19th January, which will be on the university site and then followed by our Annual General Meeting, where we will reflect on what has been achieved last year and plan for what can be done next year. Until then, we hope you all stay safe and enjoy riding your bikes. From your Kidical Mass Reading team:
🎅🏻🎄🎁🌟
We wish you a Merry Christmas!
Nous vous souhaitons de joyeuses fêtes!
We wensen jullie een vrolijk kerstfeest!
Поздравляем с Рождеством!
Віншуем з Калядамі!
Feliz Navidad
Feliz Natal
