Appalling Club Run

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mjr

Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
One of the local clubs here is like the Keystone Cops on bikes. I remember getting stuck behind them one Sat morning on my bike, along with some very irate drivers. Three or four abreast and all over the width of the road.

Then they got to a crossroads, one rider had a clipless moment and they fell like dominoes :laugh:
Are you sure you weren't watching a cheesy Bond film while driving?

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YS9tCEBFDfs
 

mjr

Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
I have never ridden a sportive so perhaps I am doing some of the partisipents an injustice.
Most of them seem OK, but it does seem like you can almost guarantee there will be a few nobbers in a field of a couple of hundred... it's almost like a certain fraction of people are nobbers whether motoring or cycling. Who'd've thunk it? ;)
 
What club ?
We have had complaints about bad group riding in my club (I wasn't there but it's believable) this resulted in a Facebook message to all members reminding them of their responsibilities while riding and how a good group operates.
I don't think you're in the same as me anymore?, but one further 'to the east'? (with mutual friends in it?)

I would like to echo what others have said about this.
Cycling to work in the 80's (when I first started commuting) and into the 90's, you really were putting your life in vehicle drivers hands. It really wasn't pleasant at all. There was very little cycle awareness amongst drivers and there was even less cycling infrastructure then there is now. There was no sanctuary of bus lanes, ASL's or cycle lanes. Cycling these days is 1000% better.
I recall those days too
Part of my commute to/from work (when I worked in Leeds, near Tetleys) was around a very busy junction of the M1 (now renamed M621
@DCLane , @Afnug, @colly and a few others may know it)

'Bell Hill', where the A61 (Leeds-Wakefield road) descends towards Stourton, & has that 'off-slip running alongside it, for a few hundred yards, then becomes next 'on slip' is also to your left

Then even worse was the homeward journey; 3 lanes
Right as the 'on-slip' to the M1
Centre, for A61
Left for Pontefract/Castleford

And I wanted the centre lane
National speed limt, seemingly every other driver in the wrong lane

Nowadays the Hill itself is 40MPH, & a bus-lane, not a dual-carriageway
Then, there used to be the (not traffic-lighted) turn onto Wood Lane, by the JawBones!!:cursing:
 
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Venod

Eh up
Location
Yorkshire
I don't think you're in the same as me anymore?, but one further 'to the east'? (with mutual friends in it?)

Yes I am still a member of KV its a long time ago since I was a member of FRC.

Bell Hill, terrible junction for cyclists I have negotiated it a few times, but certainly couldn't have copped with it every day, same with your return, I didn't like going that way in the car never mind the bike.
 

ianrauk

Tattooed Beat Messiah
Location
Rides Ti2
Maybe my memory is at fault but I'm sure there were bus lanes, and bikes allowed in them, when I used to ride up and down the Wandsworth Rd in the 80s. I seem to remember having a shouted argument with a bus conductor in Camberwell on this matter in about 1983. I could be wrong though.

But in general, yes. It was horrible back then.


There were a few, not many though. Certainly not as many as there are now.
 
Yes I am still a member of KV its a long time ago since I was a member of FRC.

Bell Hill, terrible junction for cyclists I have negotiated it a few times, but certainly couldn't have copped with it every day, same with your return, I didn't like going that way in the car never mind the bike.
I worked in Leeds, for 10 years, so used it a lot
Sometimes I'd go up Sharp Lane (at Robin Hood), & down through Belle Isle, but the natives weren't that friendly!!!
 

DCLane

Found in the Yorkshire hills ...
I worked in Leeds, for 10 years, so used it a lot
Sometimes I'd go up Sharp Lane (at Robin Hood), & down through Belle Isle, but the natives weren't that friendly!!!

That's my route into Leeds, joining the road up/down at Middleton. Most of the time it's OK, I've got a late evening at the moment and last night was a bit challenging.
 
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