Sydney Cyclist
Cycling in Sydney Australia
A tale of two cities
they are used were Cambridge and London.
First up some photos of Cambridge.
And now for London
In Cambridge there is stacks and stacks of bikes everywhere and the students and townspeople are using them to go about daily business, but
not that many of the bikes were in good repair. In fact some looked
like total rattletraps that haven't seen chain lube in forever.
In London it was almost a sea of fluro and surprisingly lots and lots of
helmets! and so many folding bikes! don't think I've ever seen so many
folding bikes before.
Was so interesting to see how the cities were different. Here in Australia people often paint cycling in Europe
as all sit up and beg bikes, all non cycling clothing, no helmets etc
etc. The reality is much different to what they claim but it's always
nice to see people on bikes all around the world.
This blog post has appeared on my own site http://www.rocketfuel.net.au/1/post/2010/05/a-tale-of-two-cities.html and contains more photographs of both Cambridge and London cyclists. I only added some photos here as I didn't want it to be a whole sea of photos that would take forever to load on the site.
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Comment by naomi on May 28, 2010 at 6:15pm -
OMG! Exciting. Cambridge might be home one day - if only I could take my wicker basket Malvern.
Sigh - guess I will have to buy something suitable;)
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Comment by Susan on May 28, 2010 at 6:37pm -
If you move to Cambridge you'll love it no hills for miles and miles and miles. All totally flat, gorgeous area and am sure you'll be able to pick up a great bike in Cambridge.
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Comment by Susan on May 28, 2010 at 10:30pm
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Hi Katherine,
Yes Rocket Fuel is my brand, all made right here in Sydney, thanks for the compliments!
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Comment by DamianM on May 28, 2010 at 11:24pm -
Clearly your lycra detection powers are lacking :)
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Comment by Susan on May 29, 2010 at 7:59am
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Sorry Super Si but there were many cyclists in full cycling kit but the photos if them are often quite blurred or just a rear wheel as my camera wasn't fast enough to capture them.
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Comment by Susan on May 29, 2010 at 8:45am
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In London the sheer volume of folding bikes seen would suggest that people were using a combination of ride, tube/train, ride to get to work. While many of the bikes were spotted on main roads when there was a tube station nearby a number of the folders were ducking off in that direction.
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Comment by sydneyCommuter on May 29, 2010 at 12:32pm -
Nice photos.
London cycling seem to have changed a bit since I was there 3 years ago. Seems like there's more helmets.
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Comment by Susan on May 29, 2010 at 1:20pm
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Equal amont of full cycle kit here as there is in London
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Comment by Si on May 29, 2010 at 1:30pm -
I spent most of my teens living roughly half way between Cambridge and London. When I was 12, 6 of us spontaneously thought it would be fun riding the 25 miles-ish there on our BMXs (without money or spares etc). Sadly the headwind was too strong to make it back. My brother also lived there for a year.
Alas, the reason why there are so many bicycles in Cambridge is due to the fact that there is a city/university by-law that restricts students from having cars not because of bicycle love.
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/University_of_Cambridge#Car_.2...
My brother was living there when they tried the (I believe) first bicycle share scheme which failed dismally after most of the bikes disappeared within a week or two, usually ending up in the bottom of the river Cam. Bike theft is very high thus the cheap virtually unmaintained bicycles. Oh the humanity.
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Comment by Neil Alexander on May 29, 2010 at 2:04pm -
Si, who cares that bikes are only popular because of a by-law. We just need to get such by-laws more widely implemented.
I can dream, can't I?
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