There was no way you could have missed the chaos that gripped us in the recent snow. For me it was fun; then it was inconvenient.
I briefly considered asking for this column to be re-named On Your Sledge.
I managed for the first couple of days by concentrating on my igloo-building technique (I’m still an amateur), and then, when I did need transport, I became the husky, pulling my two smallest on the sledge – my daughter clearly enjoyed it, as she fell asleep.
In fact, all was fine until the wooden slats on the sledge broke after a rather strenuous bit of racing.
I guess this is what happens when you rarely get a chance to use a sledge and leave it unused in a garage for years – the woodworm had had a field day.
I then moved on to slip-sliding down the icy pavements with a three-wheeled buggy, but quickly found the going easier on the gritted roads – that was, until the front wheel got a bad puncture.
I tried a baby backpack, which was alright until I came across icy pavements, and then it became scary.
It wasn’t too long before I was – gingerly at first, and then more confidently – back on to my bike.
What I found interesting was the different responses to the snow. Obviously the kids loved the chance for snowball fights, but there were many people who really couldn’t cope with things being a little different.
And then there were those who rose to the challenge and found the whole debacle a bit of fun.
I would like to think I was in the latter camp. Certainly on the days I had to race around, I would drop my daughter off by cycling with her on the gritted main roads, before cycle-skidding down side-roads to my destination.
Like my fellow columnist James Styring, I actually found snow cycling great fun – rather like skateboarding on two wheels, and the exhilaration it gave was amazing.
Of course, such weather is a rare event for us, so it’s interesting to look at how cyclists in those parts of Northern Europe that are more likely to get these conditions cope on a regular basis.
A few years ago I spent the New Year in Denmark’s capital Copenhagen, where they had four feet of snow.
People were still cycling when daytime temperatures fell as low as -15C. But they were helped by the cycle lanes being kept clear with special bike lane snow ploughs.
Apparently, 80 per cent of Copenhageners keep cycling throughout the winter – that’s about 400,000 people – and if they didn’t clear the cycle lanes, the city would be faced with trying to provide extra buses or trains to move all these people around.
I was reminded of this when going into town on a couple of days last week. The buses seemed to be heaving, with people stuck at bus stops unable to get on. The situation was not helped by the weather playing havoc with the timetable.
However, it was frustrating to see snow piled up at the edge of the roads in the cycle lanes in some places.
Is it too much to ask that clearing the little bit of road space that is set aside for cyclists could be seen as a priority, in the same way that it is for cars?
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