I've emailed the good folks at POP to express a willingness to help with this. Anyone else? What do I need to know?
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Events, rides etc.
POP Harrison Park feeder ride
(17 posts)-
Posted 10 years ago #
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Thanks fimm. In about 48 hours three of you lovely forumistas* all volunteered to help on this. And I have not gotten back to any of you.
Your offers are gratefully received. Yes please. In a rash moment in the pub, I told daisydaisy that I would do a fb event.
It might be good to know what people thought about the two routes. The first year we went down Gilmore park via the kings. (Link to Uberuce's blogpost here please) the police met us at Kings. I found it all pretty stressful.
The second year we went up spy law and down leamington walk. Although i was skeptical when it was proposed, I thought this worked much better.
* I put forumites but spellcheck selected forumistas. Nicer, I think.m
What did others think?Posted 10 years ago # -
Last year was much more relaxed, though I was on my own bike so that may have coloured things.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Hi, I'll help with the Harrison Gardens ride too. Here are maps of those route options SRD mentioned:
Kings Theatre
spylaw - leamingtonAnother one: has a big hill, but it's the only route with a crossing (of Bruntsfield Place) for cyclists that stops the traffic for us with traffic lights.
Leamington TerraceI lead the Spylaw-leamington one last year and found getting out onto Bruntsfield Place tricky, but maybe we were unlucky with an aggressive van driver, and I'm glad to hear from the crowd that they found it ok.
Opinions please!
Posted 10 years ago # -
I wasn't at last year's one. Did it have police support? It strikes me that if you have the police with you, the PoP1 route is probably better because there are fewer junctions where the bikes don't have priority: it's just the mini roundabout in Polwarth, the King's Theatre turn and the Melville Drive crossing. Without police support this route is impossible as you can't get past the King's safely.
I think the Leamington Terrace route is a bit steep to be practical.
Have we ruled out the towpath?
Posted 10 years ago # -
I thought both of them were OK. First year with the bike polis was a breeze. Without them, that route would need marshalled with the thinly-veiled threat of violence you see in football crowds. The Leamington route was fine without police and I didn't find it steep at all and I was hauling Ellen on the tandem, having ridden in from Fife. On balance, I'd go with the Leamington one again.
Posted 10 years ago # -
"The Leamington route was fine without police"
Yes.
Worst bit was Bruntsfield Place at ex-Post Office.
There was no attempt to join en masse and things got strung out.
Could be handled differently.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Not sure if I'll be able to make POP (but hopefully will have some time to help flier for it!). My 2 pence: The 2nd year's route seemed very good - I also ended up trailing a long way behind, as a family had a small child who was quite slow... this year we need to swap phone numbers etc! And maybe go slower (I'm sure it was slow, but I guess going at the speed of the slowest means it's really slow :) also maybe send the slowest people first, to give them a head start? :)
Posted 10 years ago # -
"maybe send the slowest people first, to give them a head start?"
That might be difficult to organise.
But might be worth splitting into two groups on Spylaw - both groups would need 'minders'.
Perhaps some could see the the first group onto B Pl and go back for the rest?
Posted 10 years ago # -
@Instography: When I said Leamington Terrace was too steep, I was thinking about daisydaisy's third route option, which isn't the one used last year.
To chdot's point, it depends overall on whether you want a big lump of people to arrive all at once (like for Pop1, where we rather dominated Gilmore Place), or are content for people to trickle in in a single file while obeying all the traffic laws and negotiating their way across junctions when they can.
I'm personally in favour of a 'big lump' approach travelling at the speed of the slowest cyclist, but this is only practical if we have licence to do things that don't comply with the rules of the road (by, for example, getting the Police to stop the traffic as we cross a junction)
Posted 10 years ago # -
An advantage of the "big lump" approach is it provides the less confident cyclists with the protection of safety in numbers. A large group trickling along may or may not be less of an obstacle to other road users, but I think that individual members of such an arrangement are more at risk of experiencing close passes and other impatient behaviour.
Could we not just all put on our hi-vis and block the Kings Theatre juntion? Most people would assume we had the authority to do so, if we did it with enough brass neck...
Posted 10 years ago # -
We want to avoid all parts of this happening. If it does happen, we want it resolved the way it was resolved here.
(NSFW - contains cussing)
http://www.naden.de/blog/bbvideo-bbpress-video-plugin -->[+] Embed the video | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvQLwwtMFRU" target="_blank">Video Download Get the Video Widget Posted 10 years ago # -
Am I right in thinking that a forumite has already setup a facebook page for this year's HP feeder ride?
Posted 10 years ago # -
@biketrain. Have you come across one? I set one up, but haven't publicised it. Was it that one? I think SRD and fimm both said they would too.
I think that the Harrison Park feeder ride organising committee (of which I like to think of myself as a member) are busy disentangling themselves and will shortly have our collective house in order on the subject of Facebook as well as the rest of the event :-)
Posted 10 years ago # -
I have not done anything about a Facebook page. I think what Greenroofer has done is fine and I don't think you need to do anything else. (For some reason I thought you wanted help doing it). I'll have another look when I'm at home.
I think the POP people will add a link to the Facebook page and some other notes to this page.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@greenroofer.
PM sent
Posted 10 years ago # -
Thanks guys - added to the POP site.
Posted 10 years ago #
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