Well I just got the car out of the drive with snow socks on without having to clear the drive... Not sure it counts as 'essential' but picking up my other half to save her another 5 mile walk home (and to collect a bike frame from East Side Bikes...)
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh
dig out your snow tyres and your wooly vests
(429 posts)-
Posted 13 years ago #
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"to collect a bike frame"
Essential!
Posted 13 years ago # -
"Min's front garden?"
Well it already looks as if someone has been dumping JCBs full of snow in it so why not?
Posted 13 years ago # -
Min (Anth) Decided to avoid the snowdrift that is the Innocent? You know it makes sense.
I hear that the council are planning to dump all the surplus snow there as it's not doing much else at moment!
Posted 13 years ago # -
I was at Waverley Court today. Market Street has been ploughed.
I walked to Craigmillar via the Innocent this morning - it was lovely. I might get up extra early and do it again tomorrow.
Now, can we make it a rule that anyone posting about burly firemen exerting themselves has to provide pictures?
Posted 13 years ago # -
Market Street has been ploughed.
priority route! all the cooncil press officers need make it in to the office to get on twitter and remind the press about how many mini-tractors with "things" to "spit" on the back they have to deal with "the" pavements
around charlotte square.In other news How to drive in snow and icy weather from the BBC. Obvious answer is "don't"!
Anyone noticed the 100% lack of pictures of cyclists stuck in the snow, bikes wrapped around lamp posts, queues of bikes on the road, media advice on cyclists to pack sacks of cat litter, tow ropes, shovels and walking boots in their panniers, headlines along the lines of "yet more misery for cyclists stuck on Middle Meadow Walk for 10 hours" and BBC interviews pulling over cyclists so they can have a rant about the Innocent not being plowed and how it's a bl***y disgrace and someone awrt to do something about the snow, I blame the government"?
Any straight thinking person might come to the radical conclusion that cyclists just get on with it and get where they're going, regardless of the weather.
Posted 13 years ago # -
"cyclists just get on with it and get where they're going, regardless of the weather"
Judging by the posts on this forum over the past few days, they are willing to consider the alternatives - bus, walk, run etc. when conditions become too extreme to ride their normal routes.
Posted 13 years ago # -
yes. they just "get on with it" and "get where they're going". Don't spend hours trying to spin the car out of a snowdrift just to drive round the corner to panic-buy milk :) They're much more practical and say "b*gger that, I'm getting the bus"
Posted 13 years ago # -
"uploading pics of my recent hard work"
You missed a bit.
Posted 13 years ago # -
There was a baby JCB excavator doing sterling work clearing the pavement on Colinton Road at Craiglockhart, when I cycled past this morning. It'll make a change from trying to walk through the quicksand.
Posted 13 years ago # -
News just in -
"
Friday 3 DecemberThe extreme weather has worsened, with plummeting temperatures affecting rail services in most areas of Scotland.
We regret to advise that services north of the central belt and within east central Scotland are currently suspended, as are many services out of Glasgow Queen Street and Edinburgh Waverley.
Services within Strathclyde are running but subject to delays and cancellations. We are advising people NOT to travel but if you must, please check Journeycheck for specific details before setting off.
We apologise for the inconvenience caused by the severe weather.
We have simplified our website homepage to make it quicker and easier to access up to date travel information.
"
Posted 13 years ago # -
"It'll make a change from trying to walk through the quicksand. "
That quicksand stuff is tough work isn't it? My spikes do help but I still have to trudge through quite slowly.
(sorry to keep going on about the spikes-if it helps whenever I have taken them off I have imediately slid as I have become used to them and try to walk normally without, which doesn't work.)Posted 13 years ago # -
Another working from home day (though had an email from my boss that his street is about to go on a snow-clearing spree (this is South-East England) and then relax with a whisky afterwards, so I think the need for 'hard' work has diminished.
Just checked on our elderly next door neighbour, a lovely ex-navy officer as I was going to nip out to the shops, but he was waiting on a taxi for M&S and then the New Club, so he's well sorted.
Posted 13 years ago # -
@cb - no I didn't
Posted 13 years ago # -
ScotRail
Similar looking notes printed out and sellotaped around Haymarket station. The only service on offer was an intermittent one to Queen Street. All others suspended. So I had to get a bus (the horror!) and then walk the last mile and a half. It was quite pleasant, I had my camera, I had my earphones and MP3s and a thermos mug of the black stuff, so was quite content. Around South Gyle, there's so much snow plughed up onto the verges that they've had to hack corridors through it to let people get from the pavements to the road (there's quite large grass verges through the industrial estate)
Posted 13 years ago # -
Continued use of the tricycle here but the hill near our house has now turned into a sheet of traffic generated ice. I couldn't walk on it so a trike was the best way to get down even if I did have to aim it towards a pile of snow to slow it down. Steering was notional as were brakes but a well aimed boot managed to change direction enough.
Came home via Tesco with juice, potatoes, tins and chocolate on the back.
Posted 13 years ago # -
I haven't been out by car or bike now since last Saturday. Had laryngitis admittedly but could have worked from home anyway (enlightened employers). The girls had a couple of friends over for lunch yesterday who were amazed that everything on the table, soup, bread, scones, jam and jelly was home made. Kind of sad to see people interviewed on TV taking longer to wait in a queue for bread than it takes to make it - learned helplessness.
Posted 13 years ago # -
I like the sandy snow you get when it stays as cold as this - makes the walk to work more of a work out, which is handy seeing as I can't see me getting on a bike again this year if the forecasters have got it right (big "if" admittedly).
Think I'll climb Arthur's Seat tomorrow...
Posted 13 years ago # -
So Fife and all points north have been cut off by rail.
As I said in another thread this was inevitable as Scotrail leave rolling stock out in open. Frozen points too - plus Victorian signal wires in the Highlands added to three of Scotland's five cities having no rail services today.
All this just re-enforces the view from some quarters that for longer journeys you can't beat a car with the right tyres.Or a bicycle.
Posted 13 years ago # -
"Or a bicycle"
Some people on here seem to think the way ahead (and sideways) is tricycles...
Posted 13 years ago # -
Yes... they can do sideways and backwards when their tyres don't grip! Just like a car but easier to stop.
Posted 13 years ago # -
Tricycles have their uses but I don't spend all year on it anymore. They are heavier, harder to ride and don't scoot through traffic as easily.
Strangely it doesn't carry as much stuff as a Brompton M type with the bag old style bag on the front. My Longstaff has a Caradice Camper Longflap on the back.
OTOH you don't need to worry about someone riding off on them.
Posted 13 years ago # -
I saw someone on a tricycle last week up near Ormiston. It looked narrower than the ones I've seen before, upright, not recimbent and with a basket/carrier at the back. Any ideas what it was?
Posted 13 years ago # -
Was up at the Gutted Haddy on Arthur's Seat last night for a spot of survival bag sledging when someone appeared on an MTB. Switched on some helmet and bar-mounted spotlamps and launched himself down into the frozen, snow-covered wastes of Hunter's Bog. Was amazing to watch and I was kicking myself for not being able to get to my rucsack and get my camera out in time.
I walked / bussed in to work today. Someone came down a very frozen and slushy Argyle Place on an MTB hauling a trailer and headed up MMW. Most impressed. Wasn't sure if he had the trailer to haul things around in or to turn himself into a tricycle!
Posted 13 years ago # -
Wasn't me, but every day this week I've towed a trailer with two kids down from Davidsons Mains, along the Roseburn Path and through Roseburn Park to the grandparents while schools and nurseries have been closed.
It's slow, and hard going, but there's definitely *something* about the trailer that makes it feel more stable than the bike alone. I'm not enough of a physicist to figure it out though.
The laughter from behind also defuses what might otherwise be frustrating moments when the back wheel slides out, or I get bogged down and fall off...
Posted 13 years ago # -
Depending on how you have the trailer nose weight set you might be getting more weight on the back wheel of your bike which is good.
My trike has a 28" track (71 cm in new money). That's standard on Longstaff solos, tandems are wider to make up for the longer triangle of stability.
Posted 13 years ago # -
Just spotted a chdot being chased by two mini snow ploughs on MMW.
Saw my first motorbike for quite a few days.
TBC have just fitted new wheels and 2.1" nobblies on a bike for me. Expect a thaw.
(PS - ICE trike has width of 31")
Posted 13 years ago # -
"Just spotted" wrong thread...
"chased by two mini snow ploughs on MMW"
Yes, thought they would be going straight up the MMW hill
to finish the job
But they turned right (not ploughing)
They could have turned left to do some useful ploughing
But this is Edinburgh, not Copenhagen or anywhere else that fancies being a cycling/walking city!
Posted 13 years ago # -
BBC has news of avalanches warnings for Arthur's Seat. I may have to reconsider my exercise plans...
Posted 13 years ago #
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