Author: Carlton Reid

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GivingTuesday 1st December 2020

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 262: Baron Bird: “Bikes are the future”

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Big Issue publisher Baron Bird of Notting Hill in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

TOPICS:
The Big Issue publisher Baron Bird of Notting Hill loves bicycling. He lives 7 miles from Cambridge and when visiting he cycles there. His latest Big Issue project is a dockless bike share scheme for smaller cities using electric bikes fettled and hired out by unemployed people and others who may be vulnerable and in need of a way of improving their lives.

Lord Bird has had a fascinating life so far — a life enriched by art and what he calls social kindness — and he’s clearly not ready to put his feet up under his ermine robes just yet.

The Big Issue is still sold by those living in poverty but, because of Covid, no longer from the street. Lord Bird discusses the various other ways you can now help out Big Issue vendors but first we talk about Giving Tuesday and Taking It Away Wednesday, with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea set to dismantle the well-used cycleway on Kensington High Street. Lord Bird slammed that decision saying “bikes are the future.”

Pic by Louise Haywood-Schiefer.

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 262 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was recorded on Giving Tuesday, 1st December 2020.

David Bernstein 0:24
The spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson USA, where you’ll always find a great selection of products at amazing prices with unparalleled customer service. For more information, just go to Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast cycling podcast at www.Fredcast.com. I’m one of the hosts and producers of the spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast. For show notes, links and all sorts of other information please visit our website at www.the-spokesmen.com. And now here are the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:09
The Big Issue publisher Baron Bird of Notting Hill loves bicycling. I know this because we chatted earlier today about his latest project, a docked bike share scheme for smaller cities using electric bikes fettled and hired out by unemployed people and others who may be vulnerable and in need of a way of improving their lives. I’m Carlton Reid and today’s hour-long episode is a corker even though my guest admits that, in a former life, he was a bike thief. Lord Bird disputes this, however, preferring to say he rode bicycles stolen by others. He’s had a fascinating life so far — a life enriched by art and what he calls social kindness — and he’s clearly not ready to put his feet up under his ermine robes just yet.

Carlton Reid 2:11
In the second half of today’s show we talk about Big Issue EBikes, due to be rolled out in the first quarter of next year, but much of the first half is Lord Bird telling me about his tough start in life, and how he managed to turn his angry brick-throwing nihilism into a force for good. He co-founded The Big Issue in 1991 thanks to some investment from big-nosed Scot — his words not mine — Gordon Roddick of Body Shop fame. The Big Issue is still sold by those living in poverty but, because of Covid, no longer from the street. Lord Bird discusses the various other ways you can now help out Big Issue vendors but first we talk about Giving Tuesday and Taking It Away Wednesday, with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea set to dismantle the well-used cycleway on Kensington High Street …

Carlton Reid 3:16
You are known, john, as Baron Bird of Notting Hill in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which is an absolutely fantastic name.

Carlton Reid 3:29
Of course, shortened to Lord john, but but May I call you, john?

Baron Bird 3:34
All right, just this one occasion, just as one occasion I will allow?

Carlton Reid 3:38
Yeah, thankfully, it was because of Baron bird of Notting Hill in the Royal Borough of Kensington Chelsea would be would be a long conversation, wouldn’t it?

Baron Bird 3:46
I tell you, they got the geography wrong. All right. Because Notting Hill is divided between the Royal Borough of Kensington, Chelsea, and also the borough of Westminster, which was Paddington when I was born. So I was actually born in the borough of Westminster as it is now. Right? Wrong and filled in all the forms and it couldn’t be changed. So

Baron Bird 4:12
I’m really the Lord bird of Westminster, but it doesn’t matter, Westminster, nor

Baron Bird 4:18
Royal Borough of Kensington, Chelsea, they’re all posh places now.

Carlton Reid 4:21
But they both both pretty posh, but they weren’t back in 1946, John.

Baron Bird 4:26
They were the actually where I was born, and had the highest infant mortality rate than anywhere in the UK. So if you wanted to kill your children, so for instance, you didn’t want so many children and the bill is once they would die,

Carlton Reid 4:47
not dead but now you live in the equally posh Cambridge Is that right?

Baron Bird 4:51
Well, I don’t live in the town. I live out in the country nearby.

Baron Bird 4:56
Yes, I love Cambridge. I first came to Cambridge

Baron Bird 5:00
When I was 17, I hitched from London.

Baron Bird 5:03
And to go to an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam and I came out the age of 17. And said, one day, I’m gonna live here. It was so beautiful. And also I was kissed by a young student, a young woman, a young girl, who invited me to a party. And I saw, I’m gonna come back, and I came back maybe 45 years later deliver very nicely. Family.

Carlton Reid 5:28
Yeah, that Cambridge is is noted for being a bicycle place. And I do absolutely want to get onto the bicycle related nature of today’s conversation. But let’s go backwards a little bit in that and go back to Notting Hill. And that is

Carlton Reid 5:47
Kensington High Street. I don’t know if you know at the moment, but right the second in time, the Royal bearer is taking out a protected cycleway on Kensington, High Street, were you aware of that?

Baron Bird 6:02
I was not aware of that. But, um, I don’t know why they would do that. Because the future is going to be about bikes. Um, is it not interesting that kind of 40 or 50 years ago, if you saw a photograph of Beijing, it would be full of bikes. And then they move back to cut. They moved into cars. And now even Beijing, and all those places that were that a newly prosperous are now going back to bikes. I don’t know why. The Royal Borough of Kensington Chelsea, but they let you know that, like most authorities, they’re capable of doing things that look very bovine from the outside. I’m sure they have we’ll have a logic that we probably wouldn’t agree with. Huh?

Carlton Reid 6:51
That’s that’s a very diplomatic way of putting it.

Baron Bird 6:53
Yes. Yes. I mean, I used to work for the Royal Borough of Kensington as a as a little as a road sweeper.

Baron Bird 7:02
And I worked in the cleansing department, and I worked in the parks department. And every now and then they would do something really strange. I mean, one of the things they did, I’m sorry, that I’m going on about it, is they over the weekend, pull down the beautiful Kensington Town Hall intensify the high street, because on the Monday, they were told there was going to be

Baron Bird 7:27
one of those preservation orders. So they pulled it down over the weekend. It was it was not illegal, but it was very, very shady practices.

Carlton Reid 7:37
When was that done. But with that, without me going into Google and finding out roughly,

Baron Bird 7:43
that was about 1980.

Carlton Reid 7:45
John, today is Giving Tuesday.

Carlton Reid 7:50
And that’s that’s part of a greater whole, which is like the social kindness.

Carlton Reid 7:59
So tell me a bit about the importance of today and and social kindness in general.

Baron Bird 8:06
Well, I worked in the United States about 22, or three years ago, and I produced a magazine in Los Angeles called Off the Wall. This is where it all goes back to.

Baron Bird 8:19
And working in Los Angeles and meeting some really, really desperately poor people in South Central, in watts in Crenshaw in in Compton, and all that. I was always staggered by the amount of people I met, who were doing things for the community. And I kind of loved that. I thought, they’re not doing it for money. They’re doing it because for the love of other human beings, and these are some of the poorest people on earth. And we in our magazine called off the wall, we had, we chose a day of the month, which was called a 32nd day. And we awarded, we said to people

Baron Bird 9:02
choose any day of the month, whether it’s the third or the fifth or sixth and call it your 32nd day. And your 32nd day of the month was when you woke up in the morning. And you said I’m going to do something for the benefit of others, because it will benefit me. And we had hundreds and hundreds of people sending in suggestions of what could you could do and all that. And it was it was overwhelming. Unfortunately, I then had to come back to the UK because we were having we have to do stuff with the British shoe. And I came back and I popped that up. then lo and behold the COVID-19 heads and suddenly you get these enormous outbursts of people wanting to help other people. And there is no there is no rhyme or reason other than the fact that it’s human beings, forgetting the fact that they’re consumers forgetting the fact that they’ve got their own problems for rent or

Baron Bird 10:00
mortgages and they go the extra mile for the community, the week that the layman the hold. And that is absolutely brilliant. I mean, even somebody like like Markus Rashford

Baron Bird 10:15
tweeting a very simple thing. And he tweets it says, Why does the government not look out for our children for their school dinners, and it’s a bit ratty too. And lo and behold, that gets taken up. And every person who responded to that tweet,

Baron Bird 10:34
in a way, was demonstrating social kindness to such an extent that they change the government’s mind, oh, suddenly, they could afford it. And it looked mean. So we got all these outbursts. I know a company that was one of those largest suppliers of toilet paper, and jail and all those sorts of things that were in that were in demand in March. And they sent out a note now this is anti commercial. But this big company sent out a note saying any of the people they supply

Baron Bird 11:06
if they are found to be up in the crisis, and based on shortage, then they will start supplying. Now that isn’t totally uncommercial thing to do to turn on your supplies and say, you have to be morally strong at this moment. And all those kind of outbursts the way in which readers have a number of newspapers, readers have the big issue got behind the big issue, when all around vendors were removed from the streets, all these sorts of things I am, I think that we’ve gone through the worst year that I have ever known for indecision for too much advice coming from 27 different places, cumbersome pneus not being in the right place at the right time, not knowing how to respond to the covid. But an attempt by the government and by local authorities to impose some kind of order. And you had all there, and you had all those tragic deaths, some of them probably need not have happened if we’d been better organised. yet. 2020 will also be remembered not just as a time of tragedy, but also a time of a new way of working together, and sharing all in it one over one a month for all. So to me, social kindness is a recognition of that. And at the end of this year, when we have our special issue about reviewing the year that we’ve been through, we will leave other people to go on about only other things. And what we will do is we will extract the positivity is the building back better, of social interaction with each other. And we’re going to start out 2021, with reminding everybody that we need to be working together to be in order to get through this, I believe that this is the break, that is possible to create a new optimism in the community, even though it’s founded on a chat, a challenging tragedy of all of those misfortune of people who died last year.

Carlton Reid 13:20
So lockdown ends, December 2, and then you can get your vendors back on the streets because we need to remind people that people haven’t been allowed to be selling Big Issue on the streets, you’ve done a few innovative things, haven’t you with with which haven’t done before? And clearly because of COVID. So what have you done to get Big Issue out there in different ways?

Baron Bird 13:43
Well, one of the things that we’ve done is we recognise the the almost the near death of the streets and said how can therefore can we work with homeless people who and people who who sell a big issue? How can we work with them in a way that says no, we’re not going to accept this laying down. So we moved into subscriptions, getting people on subscriptions, getting digital copies of the magazine, and we’ve been relatively successful. Now, I mean, we’ve lost, we lost virtually all of our sales from one mode, or nearly all of our sales except for subscription and digital. For the for the virtually the whole of the lockdown. This second lockdown. It’s been quite difficult to organise it but we managed to carry on supporting our vendors. And we’ve done one of the innovations we’ve done is where you can go on to the website and you can itemise an alert, you know, find out where the vendor is. And then when you buy a subscription or a digital copy, make sure you know will tell you that half the money will go to them. So we’re carrying on with the relationship. The big challenge for us is what happens

Baron Bird 15:00
plans in the new year will High Street get back to where it was probably not people working at home. And so we will have to innovate at a much faster and an accelerated level. And we’re up for it. Because we believe and this is one of the other things about social commerce, we believe that our readers really want to get behind what we’re doing. They want to support people in need and want to support people out of need. The only tragedy for me and I have to say, maybe I’m more frightened than most people is that a lot of our readers and people who are governance and all these other companies

Baron Bird 15:44
are going to be the people who are lining who’ve been lined up, if they’re not supported, they could end up as the new homeless, and that frightens me because that’s not this eight to 9000 10,000 people we work with a year, that’s hundreds of thousands. And I really do not want any person and their children and other members of their family, caring to go through the dungeon, the Bastille of homelessness that I went through as a child,

Carlton Reid 16:16
let’s let’s talk about that, because you had a rough childhood. So a big part of why you were involved with with the Roddick’s to create the Body Shop fame to create the Big Issue was you had a background where you had been homeless, you did have a troubled background. So tell me about that.

Baron Bird 16:40
Well,

Baron Bird 16:42
I was

Baron Bird 16:44
I think I was groomed to fail.

Baron Bird 16:47
I had a I mean, I love my parents

Baron Bird 16:51
love them to death. They were, you know, working class or labouring class people. My mother was a barmaid when she met a distillery worker who was my dad, they were she was 18. He was 20. They got married, later lived in the slums of Notting Hill where my father came from and where my mother it come from come to from Ireland.

Baron Bird 17:20
And they had children, they did what everybody else was doing, having children. So they had six children, but three, and four in the sons of people. The family broke apart when I was seven. And we moved into an orphanage, but for that period, they had their children.

Baron Bird 17:41
No money worth talking about wages. My father unfortunately was a heavy drinker. So a lot of that money disappeared on a Saturday night. And that was a kind of coping mechanism. That’s how poor people often cope cigarettes and drink would be, you know, the things that helped you get through the poverty. We were made homeless when I was five, because the parents didn’t pay the rent, we were out on the street. We were put into a void in the roof of my grandmother’s cottage around the corner, which was another slum above a stables in a mews, and we became very ill we were moved to a what was called a council house, but it wasn’t, it was a condemned house with some rooms that you could live in, semi condemned, live there didn’t pay, the rent got thrown out, and you’d up in a Catholic orphanage. So in a way, everything that my early life was a preparation for social failure. I was dyslexic. So I didn’t I did very badly at school, couldn’t really understand my brothers did better. My brothers were much better behaved than I was, because I kind of accepted

Baron Bird 18:57
the fact that they were, you know, at the bottom of the pile and I never did. So the older brothers were, you know, my older brothers kind of, I was, I was the third one and then there was another one, the fourth one, and they accepted. You know, alright, then this is where we are. I mean, like my dad did, and my mum did, but I was a real pain in the rear because I hated

Baron Bird 19:23
this. I hated the everybody. I hated teachers, I hated policemen, you know, I was a horrible little Dawber up, you know, you know, swastikas, you know, all the kind of rubbish thinking that went with poverty. I was starting fires and and I was always in trouble. So I was the one who kept getting nicked. So from the age of 10, we came out the orphanage and at the age of 10, first thing, shoplifting, you know, starting fires, you know, tearing down fences, getting into trouble going before the call.

Baron Bird 20:00
The juvenile court and same again at the age of 11, not going to school. bunking off school.

Carlton Reid 20:06
Is that anger, John? Was that seeking attention? What was what was the motivation? Can you can you go backwards and think about what you as a child were thinking?

Baron Bird 20:17
Um, I can’t, you know, it’s so extraordinary because I, I, I see people doing vandal, you know, create vandalism now. And I was, you know, if I’m around, if I’m in a position, I’d stop them, I have no idea. I think a lot of us are on overdrive. And you don’t quite know, I mean, most of us don’t really know all of our motivations and our tastes, and what we like, but I did like, I loved being a pain in the rear, I loved climbing the fence into the new buildings, site, opposite where we lived in getting the bricks thrown in the puddles and smashing the windows, I loved all that stuff. And I was about 7, 6 or 7.

Baron Bird 21:06
And when I was in the orphanage I loved

Baron Bird 21:10
I loved the fact that I couldn’t, they will beat me and knock me around, because I wouldn’t accept what they want to do. And I ran away, and I did all sorts of things. They actually tried kindness on me, and allowed me to go to the cinema. And for some strange reason, what a surprise, I suddenly started to play less of a pain in the rear job and, and kind of fell in love with some of the people who were trying to help us because you had all these nuns, who all they weren’t, you know, they’re a couple of hundred, seriously disturbed children from the slums and rundown citizens of London, really in the south. And they were there trying to help us and, you know, rough love and tough love and all that. But in the end, I kind of got it. But it still meant that when I got out, I was homeless, you know, not a very nice boy. And I was always the boy who was accused in the class, if there was something stolen, and I never stole ever, ever stole from any of my contemporaries. When money went missing the dinner money, they blame me. And of course, and then they find out later on, though, they’ve done it wrong, they’ve added it up wrong. So I was I realised, of course, I had a bad name, and I was getting more and more bad reputation. So, but

Baron Bird 22:36
I can’t say that I was unhappy, I always felt that I was alive. So it’s a pain to have to admit that I kind of like being a bit of an outlaw. And I think that might have been all the kind of silly little cowboy films that I watched. But I love being different. And I think that’s what got me into the prison system. And that is why the age of 16 I could learn to read and write in a boys prison. And my brothers never really mastered that. And that’s how I learned a bit of printing. I learned God, I learned to, to sit in exam, even though I never passed a level,

Baron Bird 23:17
an O level. I tried all I did all that. And, and the thing was, and this is extraordinary thing is that the the state will not spend more than it has to on your education. If you are a labourer, or if you’re a, you know, semi skilled worker, so they’ll supply you with just about enough to get you by. But if you’re a naughty boy, or a naughty girl, they’ll throw a lot of money at you to stop you.

Baron Bird 23:49
offending later in life. So I was blessed with the fact that they spent a shedload of money I was in I was in a place that cost three times what it cost if my children had sent me to Eton.

Baron Bird 24:04
Unbelievable, and that wasn’t painful, but

Baron Bird 24:07
I had the best public school. You know, I mean, wonder I talk right now and I’m very, very

Baron Bird 24:13
well done one of Britain’s greatest public school, it was a reformeratory.

Baron Bird 24:19
There you are, got the accent..

Carlton Reid 24:22
But then you’ve gone to, this is the 1960s now, we’re gonna leap forward. So then you’ve gone to the Chelsea School of Art. Yeah, well, but you’re homeless.

Baron Bird 24:32
What I was, when I was my mum threw me out. Because once she got our hands on my grant and spend it very quickly, because she was a woman who, if a pound would burn a hole in her pocket, she had to spend it. So that went very, very quickly. And then we had an argument over a bowl of porridge and she threw it over my head and burned me quite badly because she was quite an aggressive woman and i i

Baron Bird 25:00
Left and when I left for the day, and when I went back, my dad said, You’re not staying here. So I went, and I slept rough that night. And then a couple nights later, I started to sofa surf.

Baron Bird 25:13
All of the first six months of my time art school, I was homeless, sofa surfer. But the interesting thing was, why was that I an art school at the age of 18, when all my mates were digging holes for London electricity, but I tell you why. Because when I was banged up, they found out that I like to draw and I paint. And I did. And they said they encouraged that. And they encouraged it so much that when I came out at nearly the age of 18, I had this enormous portfolio. Absolutely. And I looked like a boy genius. I was drawing and painting all the time. And all the screws or masters as they like to call themselves. Were kind of proud of the fact that this little get, you know, from Notting Hill, could could actually turn out stuff that they would want hanging in their house. So I went to art school with this enormous portfolio and I looked like Leonardo da Vinci. From the worlds in Chelsea,

Carlton Reid 26:18
Do you continue that? Do you still do art?

Baron Bird 26:22
I’m obsessed by art. In fact, I love to tell my children. When I was 18, I was Britain’s greatest unknown painter, which I still adhere to. And, and if I had my time again, my five children would not exist, I would have got myself, somebody who paid me. And I would be I’d have a room and I live in the room. I paint in the room I draw in the room. And I would have nothing to do with anybody just paint and paint and paint and paint. not have any children not have anything. And I tell them that they say Oh, so you only you only had us because you failed as an artist.

Baron Bird 27:05
Yes. And then when people say to me, you must love the homeless and you must love sorting out the world’s problems. I said I do. But if I had my time again, I wouldn’t be doing it. Now that’s a horrible thing to say. But I absolutely I love painting and I love. I love everything about it in some of the greatest moments I’ve had is standing in front of an American painter, for instance, there’s a beautiful American abstract, pentacle, Helen Frankenthaler, and standing in front of this beautiful abstract work. And or Lee Krasner, who is the wife, who was the wife of jack the dripper, you know, Jackson Pollock, and, and these beautiful, beautiful artists and I, I just, it’s almost the kind of spiritual

Baron Bird 27:55
for me, and wonderful painters, and, and when I get the chance, I’m drawing and painting.

Baron Bird 28:03
And I’m doing things I’ve done. I had an exhibition, which you might not, you might want to Blur. Blur this one out, it was called grasses, arses and trees, and it was life drawings. It was trees, grasses, it was abstracts and all that stuff. You know, I’ve been drawing from models for over 30 years, I’ve been drawing friends, I’ve been drawing everything I’ve been drawing the trees in my garden. And I will soon be launching a

Baron Bird 28:36
website which will,

Baron Bird 28:38
you know, enable people to look at my work and, and even buy some of my prints. So that then because I want to use the money to help on projects, which I’m very interested in, I’m very interested in people given gardening to help them with their mental well being. And so that reformed school education, the prison education, kind of has given you a lifelong interest. Oh, yeah. I mean, before I before the, when the screws, sorry, when the Masters said, were my house masters he was called.

Baron Bird 29:20
said to me in my reformatory, look, Bird,

Baron Bird 29:25
You’ve got from 7.30 at night until 9.30, every night, five nights a week. And over the weekend, you’re going to have time and you’ve got to fill it with something. You can stuff toys with Kpop for the local hospital, you can do a bit of plumbing, you can do a bit of woodwork, you can do anything. What do you want to do? And I said, Well, I’d like to paint and draw. So they got me the wife of one of the screws.

Baron Bird 29:54
Mr. Rahn, Mrs. Rahn had been an art teacher in the isle of Wight.

Baron Bird 30:00
And she was brilliant. And I would go down to a house two times a week. And we talk about art. And we talk about everything. And then she’d lay out an enormous spread, which me and Mr. Rahn would enjoy. And so a combination of good food, and art, and it was just absolutely marvellous. And I love this woman, she is the one who made me feel there was something deep about art. And it was something that that every one of us could share. You know, it wasn’t. No, everybody can paint and draw. That’s the other interesting thing. I’ve had five children, right? Not one of them ever, when they were doing that childish out, when they were doing their art growing up, not one of them produced the dumb, a dumb work, because children start as art geniuses. And unfortunately, we give them all these pre occupations. And we try and straighten out their drawing and all that, you know, one of the greatest painters of the 20th century, was taught to draw and paint like as though he was a photographer. And he spent the whole of his life struggling against Pablo Picasso. He tried to paint like a child the whole of his life, because he realised that there was an insightfulness. The children have a look at things and they know them before you know them, even though you’ve been looking at them for decades.

Carlton Reid 31:32
So did they have the petty offending that that stop? When you’ve got this lifelong interest in art? Is that what it was there a light bulb moment, or you just put on the straight and narrow.

Baron Bird 31:45
I wasn’t quite on the straight and narrow, because what happened with me, which was which is

Baron Bird 31:52
which, you know, I can’t describe as anything other than going in another direction, I met a young woman.

Baron Bird 32:03
And then we, we became an item. And then we married, had a child. And I then got thrown out of art school because I was more interested in this young girl. And I was in art for some strange reason, my biology took over. And then I, and then I went back to another art school, and it didn’t work. And then I fell into the back into crime, and all sorts of things like that. And I was always kind of doing what I wasn’t always doing wrong. But then I got in, I got a number of things that would have got me two or three years. And I disappeared for seven years. And I started using, well, six years, I disappeared this weird,

Baron Bird 32:53
strange anomaly names, anonymous names. And, surprisingly, I have so many of these names. I’ve moved from one job to another and one part of the country to another. And I would have all these names. I didn’t even know who I wasn’t yet. And then after six years, I handled myself in, paid fines and paid other things and got myself straightened. And,

Baron Bird 33:21
and then from the age of about 28, 29, 30, I then started working legitimately, and then I, because I fell in love with printing. When I was in this establishment, I started to become a printer, and I trained myself to become a printer, not in a particularly nice way, I get a job. And

Baron Bird 33:43
after a couple of hours, they realised I couldn’t print it, get rid of me, but I’ve learned something. And after about 10 jobs, I was quite good at it. And then I became a printer. And I started my own business. And I was totally and utterly committed to it because printing is an art. And I could make it it’s printing we’re doing like

Carlton Reid 34:05
was it a jobbing printer? Are we doing magazines, you’re doing fine art and what kind of printer?

Baron Bird 34:10
I did. Well, first of all, I started doing catalogues and leaflets and business cards, and all that sort of stuff. But then what happened was I

Baron Bird 34:21
started to publish stuff. So I started to publish a magazine I helped publish a magazine for the Royal Academy. I published a book for the Royal Academy. I designed it printed all sorts of stuff. I started magazines with other people. I work with somebody called the Victorian Society, I designed stuff for them, help them present themselves. So I became the printer and almost the publisher of this. Then I worked with a number of charities I’ve worked with a homeless charity called the Simon community. I absolutely love them because they allowed people to go and live with homeless people and

Baron Bird 35:00
live and experience homelessness. And I went to some of their places that they had in the country. And I sat with people who were just like the people I worked on a building site with, you know, 20 years before. There was no, there was no difference between them and us. And then I, you know, I saw I do printing for people, you know, and I do that kind of stuff. And I gradually developed a realisation towards the end of my 30s and early 40s that I’d had, I had this enormous experience. And I had a passion for social change and social justice. And I needed to bring it all together. And of course, for sure, fortuitously, I met somebody read met some when I saw them on the telly. And then I pursued them who I’d known when I was 21, hiding from the police in Edinburgh. And that became Gordon Roddick, who with his wife had started the Body Shop, and become multi millionaires, which I was very attracted by.

Carlton Reid 35:25
That ws 1991. And how, tell me about Gordon Roddick, and how you knew him in Edinburgh? Well,

Baron Bird 36:16
what happened was, I had, one of the worst things you can do to the state is steal social security in those days. And what happened was my my wife and I, she was she left me. And I was still getting the social security that I should have been sharing with her. But I was sharing it in the local pub. And what happened was, they found out about it, and they came after me. And that was one of the reasons and I would have got two to three years for that, because I already had a criminal record, back to the age of 10. And now I was 21. And so therefore, I had to disappear. So I disappeared. And I went off to France, I had been educated as a boy online or mis educated, to have many of the problems that you have in in, in the poverty world. I had some very, very bad attitudes towards

Baron Bird 37:16
black people and Jews and Indians and Arabs and all that, you know, and I, you know, a lot of people in poverty, find their mind closes down. And mine was very, very closed. A lot of this inherited from the people around me and from my own parents.

Baron Bird 37:33
And when I went off to Paris, I met some Marxist Leninist, socialist, trotskyists, and all that. And I completely changed because I met this beautiful girl who challenged everything I said, and in order to win her affection, so I started to mimic what she said, about, you know, solidarity with the poor and all that stuff, which I didn’t believe. And then after a while, I started to believe it. And then after a while, I became a committed pain in the rear Marx’s anti racist, anti everything. So I got changed. This is one of the things that I really want to drive home to people, you can start in life or at any one time, with the most pernicious racist Gumby sort of thinking. And if you get the chance of changing it, you grow you develop, I suddenly became a much bigger person, because I’ve been thinking all of this poor, anti semitic, anti black, anti Indian stuff. And when I got rid of it, it was like an enormous weight off my shoulders. And that really did help me in the development of myself as a person who could be useful to other people. And I’ve often

Baron Bird 38:54
had, you know, got involved in in getting rid of racism amongst young people. But anyway, so when I came back to London converted to this socialist from being almost a kind of Nazi and fascist

Baron Bird 39:11
I, then what ended up in Edinburgh because my wife’s family lived up there. And I one night I met this big nose Scotsman, Gordon Roddick and I had a big broken nose and he had a big broken nose. So we shared broken nose stories and we we became mates and then I found out he wrote appalling poetry Absolutely gut rotting poetry, I at the time was writing gut writing poetry. So we we complemented each other on how guff writing poetry books, and we became mates and then I didn’t see him for 20 years and I saw him on the telly when I was with my son Patty sitting watching the telly because he was on there with Anita Roddick.

Baron Bird 40:00
God Oh, I knew them. And then with with Richard Branson, who I also knew, because when he was 17, he started a magazine called the Student, sold by students to work their way through college. And I, at the age of 21, 22, pretended I was a student in London and used to sell his magazine for scoring. He was always astonished at how easy it was for me to sell these magazines. But lo and behold, 20 years later, I’ve taken the same model and used it for homeless people with the Big Issue. So I then went to see Gordon when I saw him on the telly in 87. And then we kind of put a friendship together. And then he

Baron Bird 40:48
he, he was in New York, and he saw somebody selling a street paper called Street News. And the bloke said that he’d been in and out of the penitentiary for most of his life, and he’d used now he wanted to support his children. And he didn’t want to go back into prison because they throw the key away. So he fell homeless, and started selling Street News, which was the first word, it was the world’s first street paper. And Gordon asked me to start one in London, which we, which we then called the big issue.

Baron Bird 41:25
That was 1991.

Carlton Reid 41:26
John, we’ll come back to the Big Issue in a second. But right now I want to go across to have an ad break. And I’m going to pass you across to I’ll pass this all across to David, my co host.

David Bernstein 41:37
Hey, Carlton, thanks so much. And it’s it’s always my pleasure to talk about our advertiser. This is a long time loyal advertiser, you all know who I’m talking about. It’s Jenson USA at Jenson usa.com/thespokesmen. I’ve been telling you for years now years, that Jenson is the place where you can get a great selection of every kind of product that you need for your cycling lifestyle at amazing prices, and what really sets them apart. Because of course, there’s lots of online retailers out there. But what really sets them apart is their unbelievable support. When you call them you’ve got a question about something, you’ll end up talking to one of their gear advisors, and these are cyclists. I’ve been there I’ve seen it. These are folks who who ride their bikes to and from work. These are folks who ride at lunch who go out on group rides after work because they just enjoy cycling so much. And and so you know that when you call, you’ll be talking to somebody who has knowledge of the products that you’re calling about. If you’re looking for a new bike, whether it’s a mountain bike, a road bike, a gravel bike, a fat bike, what are you looking for? Go ahead and check him out. Jenson USA, they are the place where you will find everything you need for your cycling lifestyle. It’s Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen . We thank them so much for their support. And we thank you for supporting Jenson USA. All right, Carlton, let’s get back to the show.

Carlton Reid 43:03
Thanks, David. And we are back with with Baron Bird with Lord John bird but he has graciously allowed me to call him, john. So john, we are back you’ve been you’ve been fascinating history, a troubled history we’ve got to say, but and also a positive history and that you use art to change your life around eventually, you’ve used your printing skills and your publishing skills with Gordon Roddick to create this this iconic magazine, the Big Issue which has gone on to have many

Carlton Reid 43:39
examples of it all around the world. But now you are doing something again innovative with with bicycles. So tell me exactly what you’re going to be doing … [Cough]

Carlton Reid 43:53
Excuse me … with Sharebike of Norway. So what are you going to do with those bikes?

Baron Bird 44:00
Well, it coincides with the tremendous problems that

Baron Bird 44:07
society and the economy is having throughout the world.

Baron Bird 44:12
And that is you we’ve got to create new forms of work, we’ve got to create new forms of business, we were approached by share bike

Baron Bird 44:23
with the idea of putting together I business that would use electric electric bikes. I’ve always been fascinated with bikes. In fact, the number of the times I got arrested and put into detention centres and places like that were to do with my inability to get my hands off of other people’s bikes. But now I don’t know. I want to work with them. And the idea of electric bikes I find fascinating, because it means you can go further or you can get exercise you can get

Baron Bird 44:59
fresh air. And you can do it all yourself not not simply rely on the internal combustion engine. So what happened with with the just previous to the COVID-19, we started to put together this idea of starting in Cambridge and then moving on to other cities. I like the idea that I could gain, I could begin to grow employment for other people, then the COVID-19 hit, and kind of slowed us down a bit, but we still carried on. And the COVID-19 raises the question of lots of people not having a job. And therefore, it’s created a much, much bigger need for us to help create businesses, that will create jobs for people in and around sales, in around maintenance, in and around distribution. And it means that we can take some of the people we work with selling the newspaper, The magazine, and we can train them up. But also we can take people who have fallen into, into unemployment through the crisis, we can start trading them up. So it’s the beginning of a way of intervening in the economic crisis. And at the same time, doing something which is very, very interesting, which is helping people to get exercise to get out of doors, to get away from the internal combustion engine. And obviously, to move towards a world which is environmentally, not as challenged, because you’re not using, you’re not using fossil fuels. So this is the kind of pits all sorts of things. The other thing is that I got a bill going through the Lord’s and it’s also going through the House of Commons with

Baron Bird 46:59
with Caroline Lucas, who is a Green MP there,

Baron Bird 47:03
which is called the well being of future generations. And that is about the importance of environmentalism, the importance of education, the importance of jobs, and all that and making sure that the government doesn’t pass legislation that harms the generations to come. So all of this fits together. So it’s a wonderful, it’s legal, you know, the bill, the parliamentary stuff, that political stuff we’re doing in Parliament, the work around the big issue of growing work for people, and also not accepting the, the fact that people will slip into homelessness, because they will be unable to find work by creating as much work as we can. So we have something called the today for tomorrow, programming. And this, we’ve got a campaign call the Rider Out Recession Alliance, which brings businesses together, brings local authorities together brings charities together, and brings individuals together to try and create the new jobs, and the new opportunities, and at the same time can pay to keep people out of evictions, and get them back working so that they can support themselves.

Carlton Reid 48:29
So, John, tell me how this works a for the homeless person and be for a Cambridge resident, obviously, you want to expand in other cities, but just you’re a Cambridge resident, and you want a bike at some point. So So describe those two ways of operating.

Baron Bird 48:47
Well, first of all, we will be taking some of the people who can be trained up to do some of the skills around marketing, around selling the service, and also around maintaining the bikes, picking the bikes up where wherever they get dropped off, and all of that kind of thing that you would have to do with any form of bike business. So we will be training up people who are who have been homeless or who were trying to get out of homelessness. And at the same time, because we want to, we want we don’t want this to be a ghetto, of the socially displaced. We want to put in other people who have recently fallen into the need for work and grow it almost as organically. So that’s the way that we imagine it for the for the Cambridge resident or the Brighton resident of the Bath or Bristol or whatever city we go from.

Baron Bird 49:50
What we want to do is offer them a service that they’re wanting to use

Baron Bird 49:57
that has a social echo. That means

Baron Bird 50:00
If you use what were doing, then the profits will go back into aiding and abetting people to get out of poverty, and aiding and abetting people to get out of all the needs that go with not being able to keep a job, because you’ve fallen out of it, and help the people to get into a job who’ve been homeless, we’ve been selling the Big Issue, and who need to move on.

Carlton Reid 50:28
So are these are the two kinds of share bikes, you’ve got the docked bikes, which are like the London scheme, where they go into a physical dock that you know, bolted, cemented into the ground, and then you take them from there. And then you’ve got the dockless kind, where they’re freestanding, you can pick them up from from anywhere. But with electric bikes, you really need to have them powered from somewhere at some point. So So what model is this, using?

Baron Bird 51:01
Well, the one that we’re working on, and obviously innovations will happen, those dockless bikes were innovated because of the fact that you had an entrenched place where you pick the bike up before. And, and so we will innovate as we go along. And we may even have a situation where we would deliver bikes to a college or a business, so that they can use it around their buildings and around, you know, like the Science Park or someone like that. But we will start by having got places, and those, we will make sure that we have the staff to make sure that things get, you know, the bikes get juiced up. I think all that.

Baron Bird 51:50
So those are the kind of early steps that we’ll take, obviously, we’ll find that there will be times when people may want to take the bike home with them. And then we’ll have to look at ways of doing that. I know that in the village that I

Baron Bird 52:08
live in on for a period of time, when these dockless bikes appeared, there was five or six of them. And then they disappeared. And I don’t know if they are thrown in the river or struggling. But, you know, obviously, we have to keep security very important, because

Baron Bird 52:26
that keeps your costs down and it means makes you more of a, you know, reliable and viable business.

Carlton Reid 52:35
And what what the timescale on this, when are we going to see the first bikes in Cambridge?

Baron Bird 52:41
It will certainly be probably in the spring of 2021.

Carlton Reid 52:49
Are you a target customer, and you’re going to be one of the people will be using this?

Baron Bird 52:54
Yeah, I am a target customer. Because I would like to, I mean, I cycle everywhere. So I cycle, you know, the seven miles into town, cycle around the town, and all that I’m a sprightly 74 year old. So I don’t need electricity to get me in to town. But if I want to go somewhere else, I want to go really far. And be back from lunch. I will I will use it for a kind of community. And I you know, back to social kindness. I think there is a kind of social kindness factor in everything we do. I mean, the big issue is bought by people who believe in our vendors, they may believe in the magazine, but more than anything, they believe in our vendors. That is social kindness. And I think we will be able to make people feel better in in, in some ways, maybe a very marginal when they say I’m riding a bike that is helping people out of need and into opportunity.

Carlton Reid 54:02
John, it’s been a fascinating talking to you. And I would just like to before we get I just want you to either confirm or deny this this delicious story. And I do hope you’re going to confirm it. But on your Wikipedia page, there is a big gap actually between what you were doing in the 70s and 1991. But anyway, it just says here “for two weeks in 1970, John worked as a dishwasher in the Houses of Parliament canteen” and that’s of course an institution that you would later return to return to in 2015 as a Peer. Is that true?

Baron Bird 54:35
That’s very true. There were in in the late 60s in the early 70s. There was these temporary job agencies, and you would go to them I don’t know if they’re still there you go there. Manpower and people like There you go. And you’d you might have a job for two weeks. I was I had a whole slew of jobs there.

Baron Bird 55:00
quickly and also because I was working under an assumed name. And I went to this agency in in Victoria. And they said, Oh, do you want to wash up in the House of Lords? And I said, Yeah, why not? And and the House of Commons because they used to move you from canteen canteen. And so I went there, I think I started or either started off in the commons, and ended up in the Lord’s or whatever. So I worked there. And that was really, really interesting for me. And I, at the time, I was a kind of mad socialist and I got very cheesed off the management, because I kept saying to the workers, why are you in that in the house of democracy being so poorly paid? Why is it that you’re the working poor? And we’re here we are in the centre of democracy? So I raised that question. And I’ve also raised that question, since then, why is it that you can be working for the state, which

Baron Bird 56:03
runs the the system for the government, the elected government, and yet you can be almost a member of the working poor, you might get a living wage, but a living wage is often not very conducive to living or living in a way that can enrich your life. So I was there. And after a couple of weeks, they wouldn’t renew my contract. Because I was such a pain in the reassigned to people. Yeah, why don’t we go on strike and get to get better wages. In 2016, when I went into the Lord’s, one of the first persons who copped hold me was the cook

Baron Bird 56:45
in in the, in the kitchen, and insisted I walk round. And then the BBC found out about it, and they were making a film called A Year in the Lords, and they chose me as, as a novice coming in. And he took me around the kitchen as well. And I got to know the cook. And I’ve got to know, the star. Why really was pleased with was that the cook and the deputy cook, they were all into the idea of getting people who had, you know, maybe had some problems earlier on in life and training them up in, you know, cookery and, and in kitchen arts and work. So a number of the people were people pretty similar to where I come from in the first instance. So I was very, very pleased. And there was a, there was a whole group of them I gave a talk to, and they were astonished to find out that all of the naughty little things that they may have done growing up, I’ve also done so. So going from, I was washed up at the house in the house of law. I was watching up in the House of Lords. And I hope people won’t say now you’re washed up in the house.

Carlton Reid 58:02
Well, John, I will forgive you everything apart from the bike theft. The bikes. Oh,

Carlton Reid 58:09
but you say that, I mean, that’s the biggest crime in in the world is stealing somebody’s bicycle. I just I can’t forgive you for that. forgive you for everything else.

Baron Bird 58:17
Let me tell you that is that is an interesting thing. That is really, I mean, I’ve had about four bikes nicked. The first week, I moved to Cambridge, somebody nicked my bike, but the thing was, I didn’t steal the bike that got me What happened was, some boys stole some bikes from the school I was in. I found them abandoned in the, in my local park. And then this bloke rode around on the roof few days, and then we put them back to where they were abandoned, where they were picked up by the mum and dad of that. So I was I was what you might call

Baron Bird 58:59
You know, they used to have this thing where you stole it, they wouldn’t have you for stealing the car. They’d have you for taking

Baron Bird 59:07
a car without the owner’s content, consent. So really all I was was I was a user of the bike. I have never stolen a bike but I’ve been put away for stealing bikes, when the person who the two people who stole them,

Baron Bird 59:28
got away with it, and all I did was utilised.

Carlton Reid 59:33
Thanks to Baron Bird of Notting Hill there and thank you for listening to the spokesmen cycling podcast. I’m now off to make a Giving Tuesday donation to BigIssue.com Meanwhile, get out there and ride …

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Monday 16th November 2020

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 260: Say It With Flowers — My Guardian article’s LTN interviews

“When you see a bike like mine, filled with flowers, even the most steely, cantankerous Grinch will smile, because it’s a business that spreads joy.”

Four interviews rescued from the cutting-room floor

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Newbie cyclist Sarah Berry, bottle shop owner Liam Plowman, cargobike florist Victoria Clasen and cycle campaigner Giles Gibson.

LINKS:

Guardian article: ‘I got it wrong. Since the changes it’s become more vibrant’: life in an LTN

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 260 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Monday 16th of November 2020.

David Bernstein 0:24
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson USA, where you’ll always find a great selection of products at amazing prices with unparalleled customer service. For more information, just go to Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast cycling podcast at www.Fredcast.com. I’m one of the hosts and producers of the spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast for shownotes links and all sorts of other information, please visit our website at www.the-spokesmen.com. And now, here are the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:08
Hi there, I’m Carlton Reid. and on today’s show, I’m letting you see behind the curtain. I’ve got three interviews that weren’t done for this podcast. They were done for The Guardian. I have a story well, actually three stories in today’s newspaper, all about low traffic neighbourhoods or LTNs. Now I talked with retailers and cycle campaigners to get their on the ground points of view. And with their permission, I’m including here some of those conversations. I recorded them to do transcripts. So recording them to just basically take notes and not to put on a podcast so the audio is a little less polished then then usual as recorded on an iPhone. Basically, we’ll hear from newbie cyclist Sarah Berry, bottle shop owner, Liam Plowman, and cargobike florist, Victoria Clausen and cycle campaigner Giles Gibson. That’s four isn’t it? So that’s three people, I said three before. Okay, so it’s four people who are recorded and I got their their permission to put their their audio that they didn’t know they’re being recorded for this podcast. But they gave me permission afterwards to to let you hear it. I have edited it in in parts of course. For instance, we didn’t talk about Chateau Musar. Why didn’t I not the Chateau Musar bit on Liam Plowman’s bit coz you don’t need to know about Lebanese wines. Do you? Okay, Chateau Musar is fantastic. Liam doesn’t stock it but he does have a different Lebanese wine. Okay, so first up, here’s Sarah Berry. And if you’ve seen the amended road closed sign that features pictograms of other road users, such as a cyclist, a pedestrian, a wheelchair user. Is there a skateboarder on this? I think it’s a skateboard on as well, with the text saying road open to those folks, but not motorists. Well, that’s Sarah’s work. And they are appearing all over the UK at the moment. And they’re great signs, but the roads aren’t closed to everybody they’re closed to motorists. And that’s a very, very good point to get across. And in pictogram version, or pictorial way of doing it, Sarah did that brilliantly. So here she is. But tell me, bear in mind, I do not live in London. So I will not know any of these places, but where do you live in comparison to Railton Road?

Sarah Berry 3:45
So I’ve actually moved since the LTN came in. So where I used to live, I was on a street that sort of came off Railton Road, they operate as sort of like a ladder. And so I was in one of the lattice streets off of that. I’ve now moved into a main road that borders the Tulse Hill LTN. So just on the other side of the park to where Railton Road is now.

Carlton Reid 4:11
And when you were living there, how did it transform your life?

Sarah Berry 4:19
Pretty remarkably, to be honest. So I had I’d heard about low traffic neighbourhoods as a as a thing before before it had come in. And it kind of felt like, you know, the ideal, the ideal thing that you would want as someone who wasn’t a car user in in the area, and I was a pedestrian predominantly using buses and trains before before sort of locked down here. But the day we got the letter about the LTN and Railton Road I went out and bought a bike. I only learned to sort of ride a bike doing the cycle confident TfL coursea year earlier, but sort of hadn’t had hadn’t worked up the confidence to test it out in, in London streets because it was just, you know, too busy and sort of too scary. And it didn’t feel like there was any way even local that I could cycle to that didn’t feel overwhelming. But when the LTN came in, when we told you that was happening, I was sort of like, right, I’m out of excuses. So went and bought a bike. And you know, that fundamentally, I think, during lockdown has been a real transformation, because, you know, I still haven’t gotten on a bus or a train or the tube or anything since since March. And I think if I had been confined to only the areas I could walk to, over the past six months, I’d be feeling a lot more sort of isolated and depleted than I am now I’ve been able to, you know, go and visit my new nephew who’s been born in Kingston, because I could cycle out there in able to go and visit friends who live all over London by meeting them in Central, I’ve been able to sort of head into my office on Sundays when I needed to do some work from there. And that’s sort of, you know, functionally and practically been really transformative, but also, in terms of like, my own self confidence. seeing myself now I never thought I would be the kind of person who would ride a bike, it just, you know, I’ve got terrible balance, you know, I’m you know, just not I’m not, I’m not super sporty, I’m none of those things. And I always thought it would be beyond me and to be given the conditions that enabled me to build up my confidence that the LTN bought in has sort of made me feel like, even though it’s a it’s sort of a really nothing to say, but it sort of made me feel like I could do anything, because it felt it was definitely in one of those categories of like something that other people do, that I won’t ever be able to achieve. And now that it’s moved out of that category, when I’ve got the right support and the right infrastructure around me, it’s sort of it sort of reveals, you know, how, how much your space and context has to do with with that, rather than, you know, who you are as a person and what you can actually achieve. And then beyond that I just met so many local people, I just know so many more neighbours, so many more people in the neighbourhood in general, from you know, advocating for lt ends and, and, you know, being supportive of them. But also, you know, I’ve been looking out for opportunities where we can celebrate the community and promote the neighbourhood and sort of get together. And that means that you know, you get in touch with people who are organising little festivals, or who were doing, you know, podcasts on design or different things on history. And it just, you know, now when I walk around the area, it always sort of have to allow double the journey time because I end up stopping and running into people and having a conversation and it’s just, it’s just the kind of life that I didn’t think was possible in London. That has come about as as a result of the changes.

Carlton Reid 7:52
And I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a photograph of your bicycle. We’re not gonna get very nerdy here and go into what bicycle do you ride? And I’m pretty sure I’ve seen what a photograph of you riding your bicycle, but I refresh my memory. What kind of bike have you got?

Sarah Berry 8:07
Yes, I have got a Chesterton from it’s called a company called the Light Blue. And it’s, uh, not interested in sorry, I’m forgetting the brand name, I’ll send it to you. But it’s a sort of like a baby pink, baby pink upright Dutch style bicycle from a company that started in Cambridge. And they were used to build like racing bicycles in Cambridge back in the day and then and then stopped for a period and then started up again. So we don’t want to be oldest

Carlton Reid 8:41
1890s. Sorry. 1890s it yeah, it’s Lloyd. I know the guy who owns it. His great, great grandfather was who set it up in a very, very Victorian for sure, like Light Blue. So yes, it’s a nice brand old,

Sarah Berry 8:57
proper old bikes. Would you get that for me knew when I bought when I bought it? All right. I I picked this one out specifically because a friend of mine works in a bike shop. And I’d you know been talking to him about about the fact that you know, I was such a nervous cyclist and I’d full off all the time and all that sort of stuff. And I wanted something that was like, That felt sturdy and stable. And when that came in, he sort of said, you know, like, by sort of message saying, I want to get this bike I want to get it as close to today as I can. And he said well, we just had this coming yesterday. I’ll set it up for you and come in and test it out. And it immediately immediately felt wonderful. I’ve only I’ve only ever written like the Boris bikes in London before so this felt a lot more comfortable. And a lot more me it wasn’t it was amazing the like difference that having my bike made to that level of confidence. Hmm.

Carlton Reid 9:57
Now I can go to your profile and and work got what I should say who you are. But what would you like me to say who you are in job terms and in even in campaign terms? How should I describe you?

Sarah Berry 10:11
So car dependency campaigner would probably be the best the best way to go about it. I’m the co chair of Lambeth Living Streets as well. But if you could mention that as a volunteer role that would be great because Living Streets keep getting hassled asking if I’m on the payroll and it doesn’t matter how many times that we confirm that I’m not they keep getting asked.

Carlton Reid 10:34
Thanks to Sarah Barry there. And if you’ve read the Guardian piece, you’ll realise that Sarah only got like a sentence or two in in that piece yet she spoke there for like, what, seven minutes. And that’s what happens of course with with newspaper pieces, or magazines or any any form of journalism really, I only had 400 words to get across quite a few points of view in the Guardian, so I’m afraid not all of an interview will ever make it into the final piece. And poor Giles got even less space in the Guardian than Sarah. But by by putting this interview out on this podcast, I can actually put more of jobs and more of Sarah and more of Liam and, and and more of all the interviews. So here we go with with Giles Gibson, and Giles is a business consultant and a cycle campaigner. Hi Giles is Carlton here.

Giles Gibson 11:33
How are you doing?

Carlton Reid 11:34
I’m doing good. Thank you. Are you free to talk now?

Giles Gibson 11:37
Yep, yep, no problem. Sorry. Yes to? Yeah, yeah, no problem. Sorry, happy? How can I help?

Carlton Reid 11:44
Well, first off, um, this is gonna be in The Guardian. Did you want your name to be on this or not?

Giles Gibson 11:53
And probably best to keep it anonymous. Just say, keep it local resident. There’s been a few problems with those who aren’t so keen on LTNs. And having a bit of a go that those who are I mean, they the locals know who’s been doing the surveys anyway. And they know where I live, because I’m pretty prominent in the area anyway.

Carlton Reid 12:19
No, no, I kind of I kind of assumed that might be the case. But I just want to check that. So I can say you are a campaigner for the Railton LTN camp, how should I describe you?

Giles Gibson 12:36
And I would just say a local resident who’s been in the area for 25 years. I don’t mind the name being used actually. Cuz thinking about it, all we’ve done is stand there and count traffic. That’s it. It’s that simple. There were three of us last time. And our methodology is to have one person en route and roads and that’s kind of technically within the ltn. And at the same time, we have people in Dulwich road, who are counting the traffic there and analysing it in the same way. So we both do it at the same time, same day. No, Ready, steady, go and count the traffic and analyse it. lambdas have put tapes down in the road anyway, so they’ll be getting the numbers through quite soon. And I’d certainly be measuring the traffic in Railton road, and Dulwich road, which is technically just outside the LTN. And it’s one of the roads that people say it’s going to get worse traffic as a result.

Carlton Reid 13:53
So why why did they do Railton road? Why is Railton road a key corridor to do a treatment like this?

Giles Gibson 14:03
Well, over the last 20 odd years, I’ve been involved with the local community and every single public meeting virtually when we get on to what’s the vision for the area and what’s the big issues. The number one is traffic. Number two is normally traffic and number three is traffic. It’s been that monotonous over the years, and route and road was identified as being increasing in traffic quite a bit over the last seven or eight years. And the local streets being getting fed more and more fed up with rat run activities. And we want to get better cycle routes from Brixton through to Herne Hill and beyond as part of a network of cycle reads. For Lambeth, we’re looking at A cycle dedicated protected cycle lane all the way down railroad anyway, we’re consulting on the whole thing. Because it was a key link. The number of cyclists who are starting to use route and road was starting to increase prior to the LTN. Anyway, there was a byproduct because I managed to get the Station Square development done about 10 years ago now where we diverted the road outside Herne hill station and created the semi predicts pedestrianised area that has provided a safe way for the cyclists to get across the Herne Hill junction because there is a phase of light dedicated, ironically to HGVss over 10 tonnes to get out of Station Square. That’s why TfL insisted on putting a traffic light phase in and very rarely any lorries use it. So the cyclists started realising they get their own dedicated cross. So as a result of that they’ve been using road as a route from Brixton to then get south to Dulwich and Crystal Palace and everywhere else. And so it was obvious that rail road was a contender, so it’s something quite dramatic, alone along with Shakespeare road, which was suffering from high running activity. So that’s some of the background. Can I

Carlton Reid 16:41
kind of just, I’ve got up on maps here now. So it’s where the the, the LTN the close has been put in to motorists at the station. Station.

Giles Gibson 16:54
It’s actually near Hearn place and Hurst Street, Google has it marked about right.

Carlton Reid 17:02
Okay. And then it goes as far north as Coldharbour Lane?

Giles Gibson 17:07
Well, there’s a filter and just in Shakespeare road, where it leaves a nail right across his nail road, it goes underneath the railway. So there’s a filter there. And they had to put the filter there because of the waste transfer station. That is just on the other side on the north side of the railway. They have very big lorries 40-tonners taking the waste from the skip lorries down to their depot in Greenwich. Big lorries can’t get under the bridge. So they had to allow them to continue to go north, up Shakespeare road through Loughborough junction, and eventually, down to Greenwich. So that’s why the filter was put on the south side. So there’s been a lot of objections from people in Shakespeare Road thinking that they’ve been cut off from the world.

Carlton Reid 18:06
So just to confirm if I can’t see on the map here exactly

Giles Gibson 18:11
what it is. It’s complicated. But yeah,

Carlton Reid 18:14
is there anybody and I’ve always had this, come back to me, as I know, is that anybody who has a car in any of these streets, can no longer use their car, or it’s all down to it takes a wee bit longer?

Giles Gibson 18:30
Correct.

Giles Gibson 18:34
Access to every single front door has remained as is. In whatever they call you want to come in be a 40 tonne truck, or a bicycle or your car or what have you. There’s been no change. You know, there’s they haven’t touched the parking, they haven’t touched the roads in any way at all.

Carlton Reid 19:00
So it’s literally just filters on certain roads. It just makes maybe, I mean, the typical thing is you know that your my five minute journey is taking 20 minutes now Well, of course you think well why are you doing a five minute journey? But that’s what he’s doing is it basically people taking longer to do car journeys if they won’t do car just

Giles Gibson 19:20
some car journeys depending in the direction he wants to go in. And it’s only some it’s not all will take longer.

Carlton Reid 19:34
Right. So now going to your or the traffic survey. So this this it that says on there, when would you tell me again, when was it? When do you start and when do you end the survey?

Giles Gibson 19:49
Right we we just want people were starting to think you know what, there’s a lot more bike cyclists around I wonder if it’s true. So we said okay, well that’s nice. It’s just a traffic survey. So we started roughly 815 in the morning, on a weekday, and we count initially, we just counted until there were 400 vehicles of some sort that have passed. But the last count, we actually did nearly an hour. And we analyse the, whether it’s a car, how many people are in it, whether it’s single occupancy, or more, if we can see whether it’s a lorry whether it’s just categories. So we do yeah, lorries, cars, number of occupants in the cars, whether it’s a delivery vehicle, because people are saying, Oh, we can’t get deliveries anymore in a Tesco stop delivering what we were monitoring that, whether it’s an E scooter or some description. And then on the cyclists, whether it was a male cyclist, what we call male lycra. In other words, they were probably a commuter. Or they had to change their outfit when they got to the destination, probably. So we’re trying to differentiate between casual and just popping around the corner, I can just go in anything I’m wearing to the kind of hardcore, call it what you like, like, and whether there were female and female like her. And then whether there were any kind of kids attached in some way or a cargo trailer or sitting on the panniers or something like that. And we just stood there counting. That was it every single one. So 400 was a reasonable number to extrapolate from. And we and we measured the number of minutes it took to get to 400 and and then converted that to an hour. So everything was that same base rate, if you see what I mean.

Carlton Reid 21:59
400 what, sorry?

Giles Gibson 22:02
But we counted in two, we’d got 400 vehicles, right, right. And we timed how long it took to get to 400. So it might be 46 minutes or something like that. And then so that we had the same comparisons each month, we then divided by the number of minutes and multiply by 60. Hmm. That way, it’s the same measuring units, so to speak,

Carlton Reid 22:37
and you haven’t got up before. So you’ve got 75% of traffic on Railton Road with cyclists, you don’t know what it was like, before.

Giles Gibson 22:45
We only started in August. But to be honest, you know, a lot of the LTN kind of started towards the end of July, but they haven’t even started issuing fines yet. Hmm. You know, so to begin with it everyone was laughing at it is that wasn’t still is the usual vandalism on the signs and stuff like that. And so, it has to be said that down at the Brixton end the number of vehicles going through it’s still quite high. Mm hmm.

Carlton Reid 23:20
And then what are you doing with apart from this this nice infographic you put on the website on the twitter feed? What are you doing with this information is feeding into the council? what’s what’s it been used for?

Giles Gibson 23:30
We send it to the council as well. And it’s just for our own interest to see. You know, we’re wondering how the behaviour is changing, you know what trends are coming on here. And we’re certainly noticing that there’s more females out and about casual cyclists prefer railroad to Dutch road. And the you know, little things that we’re finding out that single occupancy cars going from Herne Hill to Brixton us to lower percentage than single occupancy cars going from Brixton toward Fern Hill. And this might imply we don’t know for sure, but the school run goes in Brixton turn Hill direction, which will probably be correct given the type of spills over in the Dulwich Hill area. And so little things like that. The council traffic counts will only do numbers, they won’t do the type of it can’t tell whether it’s a male or a female cyclists Hmm. And so I’m very interested in if we are starting to get people you know, first timers out and their bicycle, the casual one, you know, just want to do a few miles and feel confident enough, within ltn to make the journey by bike. We know we’re always going to get the white, male lycra clad loonies and nothing will stop them. But it’s the vulnerable groups or the more timid, read user, whether that’s changing, and we’re noticing it is,

Carlton Reid 25:13
and is this LTN. Now, for want one of a better expression, set in stone, so it’s gonna last?

Giles Gibson 25:21
I wouldn’t want to be a gambling man on it. The other thing that we’re noticing, and sadly we haven’t counted is pedestrians. And road is being transformed with the number of people walking now. And Sunday was a nice pleasant day in terms of the weather. And I had difficulty having a distant conversation with somebody on the pavement, because the sheer number of people who kept on wanting to walk down the pavement and we kept on having to break the conversation stand aside at someone else. It really was quite remarkable the conduit that is there now between Brixton and Herne Hill, of people getting up by foot. And the atmosphere has changed. And this is the front line heaven sake in 1981. Place was a no-go area for the police is quite remarkable change. And the and the atmosphere, people just coming out more this barrier of traffic on roads. And when you get high density traffic is a real barrier and segregation for a community and just feel the communities like it’s had a mile the grain for X number of years and suddenly it started to lift. People go, Ah, actually I think that’s what lockdown did for people. But the LTNs is continued that positive aspect.

Carlton Reid 27:04
So just a bit this was you this was the in using emergency powers. Yeah. So that’s 18 months that this potentially could last for? Are there any strident campaigns that you that you think would get the ear of the council to get it taken out before then?

Giles Gibson 27:26
Well, there’s the legal issues that are going on whether they’re saying that it was illegally instigated so there is a legal campaign but I won’t land this one once was the group of people who are very anted there’s still quite a vociferous, smallish group who are campaigning against locally. There’s always a question mark about traders, and whether traders benefit or suffer. And it’s something I had, when we did the Herne Hill junction regeneration, we had huge opposition for quite a few traders against getting rid of the traffic in front of the station. Because the shops passionately believe that all their business came from cars, not in cars. And to be fair, after all the passing cars went some of the traders did have a wobble for a good few months. And then they that business deep change or and people change their shopping habits. But then a different type of shopper added to the ones that were there before. And those shops that some quite a few voids, they can see the rundown ones changed. And it’s now the most desirable space in handheld to get. So there’s a wait there’s a waiting list. We turned it from having into shops to having a waiting list people to get it. Mm

Carlton Reid 29:04
hmm. Now I’m gonna bee talking to a wine retailer, I believe.

Giles Gibson 29:12
Yeah, and you’re talking to Wild + Lees, right? And that they I think they understand where their trade comes from. And, you know, we surveyed traders in Herne Hill literally about 10 years ago. And we commissioned living streets to do a street survey. And they interviewed all the traders and on average the traders thought car, their customers around 50 to 60% came by car, and then when you interview people on the street, asking them how they got there, and it was about 13% got there by car. So that the perception of traders some sometimes doesn’t match the reality. Mm hmm. And I think there’s something about in Waltham Forest whether those on the cycle lane or this dedicated cycle lane where now you have to pay a slight premium to get a shot because it has transformed the area so much. And now it’s a desirable area. But it takes a few years before that change happens.

Carlton Reid 30:29
Mm hmm. So what is the council here which?

Unknown Speaker 30:33
Lambeth. It’s Lambeth, only got three green one tory, the rest of labour. Hmm. Some of the designs of LTNs are not great. I’m a great believer in doing it as a trial so that you can tweak and make changes when they pour concrete and that’s it is stuck with it is that’s a problem. So I think that the light touch trial is actually a good urban realm design approach.

Carlton Reid 31:08
Mm hmm. Tactical urbanism. Giles, thank you very much for that . Er, can I just go backwards and because I’d have to look exactly what exactly what you said to nail this on, but may as well just get you to say this now. Did you say you were okay with me to use your name at the end? Yeah, I

Giles Gibson 31:28
don’t mind. That’s fine.

Carlton Reid 31:31
Thanks to the no-longer-incognito Giles Gibson there. Now before I play the audio from Liam Plowman and Victoria Clausen here’s my co-host, David, with a commercial interlude.

David Bernstein 31:46
Hey, Carlton, thanks so much. And it’s always my pleasure to talk about our advertiser. This is a long time loyal advertiser, you all know who I’m talking about? It’s Jenson USA at Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. I’ve been telling you for years now years, that Jenson is the place where you can get a great selection of every kind of product that you need for your cycling lifestyle at amazing prices, and what really sets them apart. Because of course, there’s lots of online retailers out there. But what really sets them apart is their unbelievable support. When you call and you’ve got a question about something, you’ll end up talking to one of their gear advisors and these are cyclists. I’ve been there I’ve seen it. These are folks who who ride their bikes to and from work. These are folks who ride at lunch who go out on group rides after work because they just enjoy cycling so much. And and so you know that when you call, you’ll be talking to somebody who has knowledge of the products that you’re calling about. If you’re looking for a new bike, whether it’s a mountain bike, a road bike, a gravel bike, a fat bike, what are you looking for? Go ahead and check them out. Jenson USA, they are the place where you will find everything you need for your cycling lifestyle. It’s Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. We thank them so much for their support. And we thank you for supporting Jenson USA. All right, Carlton, let’s get back to the show.

Carlton Reid 33:12
Thanks, David. And we are back with the 260th episode of the spokesmen cycling podcast with me Carlton Reid. And here are two more of my notes for the podcast interviews done for The Guardian. First up here’s Liam Plowman of Herne hill’s Wild + Lees bottleshop. That’s a posh name for an off-licence. Anyway, that’s that’s just your trick question for today. Because if you know your Lebanese wines, then you’re going to be very, very specialist. So that’s what you do. You’re basically a boutique wine beer, posh off licence?

Liam Plowman 33:56
Yeah, yeah, exactly that. I mean, so the the sort of phrase du jour is bottle shop. So, which is a bit more kind of gets bit more inclusive. So, I mean, we are primarily a wine shop, we’ve got probably about 250 different wines, but then we’ve also got 400 beers. And yeah, it’s all about you know, small batch provenance craft, you know, getting to know their producers, that sort of thing. But But also, you know, trying not to, not to be too highfalutin, and to you know, supply stuff that normal people can enjoy. So we’ve got, you know, we, we try to stock a lot of wines that are less than 10 quid, so they’re not, you know, we’re not scary. We try not to be scary.

Carlton Reid 34:42
And how long have you been operating there, Liam?

Liam Plowman 34:45
Since November 2016. So pushing for years what actually Oh, yes.

Carlton Reid 34:50
Okay. And I’m looking at the map here now where you are so you’re the other side of Herne Hill station. You’re just outside the Railton Road LTN? But you do deliver? Are you? Are you a national delivery? Or do you local deliveries?

Liam Plowman 35:08
We do. Yeah, we do local delivery. So I do, I do pretty much all the deliveries myself. And, and we, and it’s a combination of methods of transport. So it depends how much I’ve got to deliver. So I trying to with a bike and trailer where I can, but obviously wine bottles bottles heavy, and, and often, you know, delivering, you know, 20 cases at once. So, in that case, we’ve got a camper van. So I just take take that. So yeah, there were there were there were actually a few lt ends on our on our sort of delivery routes as it were. So we’ve got customers who live in the Railon Road LTN, which includes Mail Road and parts of Shakespeare road. And then we’ve got we’ve got customers live in the Dulwich village one. And customers live in the in the Tulse Hill LTN as well. So, yeah, well, well, I don’t live in one or, or, you know, businesses and then one we do interact with them. Mm hmm.

Carlton Reid 36:13
And have you found it? Does it take longer?

Liam Plowman 36:17
Yeah, yeah. So it does take longer. I mean, I suppose the first thing to say is I I’m, I’m really in favour of LTNs. I think it’s unfortunate that they they’ve been are they you know, they’ve had to be introduced at a time where people are being actively discouraged from using public transport. So the inevitable consequences that the streets aren’t in the LTN absolutely rammed all the time. So it’s horrible pollution is worse and congestion is worse. But I said, I think that principle is that great. Reducing, yeah, pollution. Like neighbours more like neighbours, and that’s why, you know, through roads,

Carlton Reid 36:55
and then when you get to your customers, and you knock on the door, and you you, you’re there handing them over your lovely wine, do they then without even prompting, say, oh, bloody ltn or are they going fantastic. ltn. How do you find it on the doorstep?

Liam Plowman 37:13
There’s there’s a real mix. So, yeah, there’s a real mix. So that by the person I did this yesterday, I mean, I started the conversation, but but the LTN, I’ve got, you know, I was panting pathing. And I set up to carry the village because I forgot to bring my trolley and she wasn’t really complaining. But she was saying she had to completely mentally reconfigure her map of the area as a result of the LTN because he couldn’t take the usual route to get anywhere by car. So it was a slightly negative comment, I suppose. But then others actually, a lot of people who live in the well, some road ltn have been very positive about it about one or two people who express negative feelings about it. I think I think most of the people who come in here, because they’re accustomed to the shock, post a talk, you know, speak for them, but most people like discussions with our probe are aware that, you know, there were teething issues, and it’s early days

Carlton Reid 38:24
and using your knowledge of the area. Yeah. Are there any streets houses that are genuinely gridlock? They cannot get out of bed, driveway or whatever? Or literally, is it every car every motorist can get out and go wherever they want in the area, but they can’t any longer take the very shortest route?

Liam Plowman 38:51
Oh, do you mean people who live within the LTNs? Yeah, I think I think that it’s not really a question of gridlock. I mean, the streets in the LTNs are basically, you know, pretty much empty of traffic. I think like so one guy, a book is a regular customer. He lives in in a part of Shakespeare road, that is part of the LTN and he now can’t drive towards Herne Hill, he has to go up to Loughborough junction and take quite a long route to get to where he needs to be so so. So for people like that and for people who will not so yes, village village. You just have to go a lot further to make the same journey because you’re yours. You know, you you might live within 200 feet of where the LTN starts. But you might have to drive half a mile in the other direction to get around.

Carlton Reid 39:46
But I’m sure you’ll have seen on social media and no doubt in local newspapers, people saying they’re trapped in their houses. They no longer can get out in their cars. That’s not true. It’s just they’ve got a drive a bit longer than than then they’ve been used to.

Liam Plowman 39:58
Yeah, yes. well, exactly, I mean that, you know, that, that those, they’ve all been designed so that, you know, obviously residents get in and out. But they have to take a different route and it might be that they have to you know, go very convoluted route to to get to a place that’s down the street from them. But I guess you know, controlling the sliders while you drive to a place of banditry from you. I guess some people have to because of visibility or issues. Hmm. So it’s complex. But yeah, I mean, I don’t think there’s any case in which a visitor is literally trapped and can’t drive out of the street. I mean, that just obviously wouldn’t work. And even in the LTN, like we can, like the wells road out here and you can drive in and out of wells and road from certain side streets. You just can’t go through either end like that. The goal of it is the thought route road being being a thru run from Herne Hill to Brixton. So you can’t enter Belton road at one end to come out the other end, but you can drive out on the parallel roads, drive into Belton road, deliver some stuff for park outside your house, you know, it’s not completely blocked off.

Carlton Reid 41:11
Mm hmm.

Carlton Reid 41:15
Yes, no, I understand. It’s just it that isn’t always the impression that that detractors give, you know, initially.

Liam Plowman 41:24
Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, that’s that, you know, people do get very emotional about their cars and their absolute right to drive wherever they want to kind of thing.

Carlton Reid 41:36
Thanks to Liam Plowman there. And if that made you thirsty, Liam is the co owner with his wife Claire, as the Guardian article says, of Wild + Lee’s bottleshop in Herne Hill, London. And last but not least, here’s my iPhone interview with Victoria Clausen of Brixton’s Pop Florist and you may hear me doing a few weird things in the background because I’m trying to placate our puppy as well. So might be squeezing weird toys and waving treats around just to keep here quiet. I think I achieved that goal. Mostly.

Carlton Reid 42:16
Yeah.

Carlton Reid 42:19
Okay, so I’ll try and do this without interacting with her too much. So I mean, your your business sounds fascinating. I’ve looked at your website for your touring and stuff. So the Urban Arrow which you toured with, that’s also what you deliver with now. The bicycle electric bike, the urban arrow?

Victoria Clausen 42:42
Yeah, yeah, I use it every day. I use it to transport my kids to school and I use it for my business.

Carlton Reid 42:48
And how close are you to the various LTNs that are around?

Victoria Clausen 42:54
Very close indeed. I am in Brixton, near the Railton Road LTN in Brixton.

Carlton Reid 43:03
Okay. And clearly you deliver because it says on your website, you for long distances, you use Ubers and stuff, but you are sometimes delivering locally, and how has that been with the LTN?

Victoria Clausen 43:18
Pretty much exclusively from my bike, to be quite honest. I would say like 95% and then the odd percent like I have done a favour to on the tube now and then. But I would say it’s made a massive difference. It’s safer, I would say as a parents to get my kids to school and for the first time my eight year old is able to cycle to school because Brixton is so congested that it did not feel safe before. I know that there is a highly politicised issue. I’d like to add that both my husband and I are campaigners for Mums for Lungs, which has some very good strong data points as you might have might have already researched yourself on air pollution in London. So we are a family of cyclists. We found that the LTNs have helped us get our kids to school more safely. We noticed a better air quality during lockdown like everyone did. Mm hmm. But I’m also mindful that there are arguments to be made that the pollution has simply, you know, been diverted to main roads. And there is a huge amount of vitriol on the internet over LTNs.

Carlton Reid 44:31
And how about your customers so when you when you turn up on your your electric cargo bike, and maybe they didn’t know that you were coming up on electric cargo bike? Do any of them say to you, oh, you’re one of their side because I hate these LTNs or is it the complete opposite?

Victoria Clausen 44:46
It’s the complete opposite. First of all, if you see a bike like mine filled with flowers, even the most steely, cantankerous Grinch will smile because it’s a business that spreads joy. And mostly, you know, especially through lockdown where people weren’t able to get, you know, weren’t able to get out and about in the normal way they would. My sales definitely increased and my deliveries been busier than ever, because I’m the captive audience. But I would say no one has, no one has given me a hard time, you know, and said, Oh, you’re one of those LTN supporters. You know, you’re a smug, woke, millennial sort of person. No one said that instead, I think they support the business partially, and arguably, mostly because they see it as ‘slow flowers’ and a more sustainable way of doing business and the way that we need to start thinking about doing business all of us.

Carlton Reid 45:52
Mm hmm. And when, when some of the anti’s talk about lt ends, that they often say, you know, I’m trapped in my house, I can’t go out. And then everybody I’ve talked to about this. I say, well, are anybody is anybody genuinely trapped? And people say, Well, no, you can get everywhere in a car. But it just might take a bit longer. Is that your?

Victoria Clausen 46:17
I mean, personally, I couldn’t agree more. It seems that seems to be the evidence. That seems to completely Yeah, it’d be exactly the right way of looking at it. But then there’s a there’s a slightly more sinister argument, which is that I’ve heard people put out which is that, you know, the ambulance and the emergency vehicles cannot get to, you know, two people in time, and I’ve actually heard a GP say that they strongly believe that not to be the case, because there is less traffic. And once you get through the barrier, you actually have a quicker reaction time to get to that patient.

Carlton Reid 46:54
Mm hmm.

Victoria Clausen 46:54
Along LTNs. So I don’t know what evidence I you know, I I’m not ready to stand behind that evidence. But I’ve heard that which is interesting, huh? Look at that. I don’t know

Carlton Reid 47:03
most of the the side roads to Railton Road, are they planters, are they cameras? What are they? What’s stopping people getting through?

Victoria Clausen 47:13
They put planters down? I mean, definitely, people are still I mean, I don’t know how, how much what percentage of that traffic is actually local. And how much of it is people thinking? Oh, what a nice quiet road now like we can use it. And I certainly haven’t seen any enforcement whatsoever around LTNs and cameras and so on and so forth. Have you?

Carlton Reid 47:39
I haven’t no, have you seen I mean, the other lt ends and other parts of London have had bad planters vandalised damaged and knocked over. Has there been any anything like that?

Victoria Clausen 47:51
I haven’t seen that. However, I will point out that there is an LTN on our back route to school, which I can give you the name, I can text you the name today. And there’s a whole lot of signs of local saying stop the LTN sign this petition and my husband actually put up some months for long signs in that area to provide a counterbalance to that prevailing view. And also I in our own school community. A number of parents have gone viral on WhatsApp saying you know that the LTNs our socio economic, you know, scheme to keep the poor poor and all of this like Bs, which I don’t buy any of it, like, you actually need more money to have a car and to pay for a car permit, then to have a bicycle. Now my bicycle is, you know, a very expensive bicycle. So not everyone can afford that. But almost everyone can afford an analogue bike,

Carlton Reid 48:54
Mm hmm.

Victoria Clausen 48:56
Carlton, I really appreciate you doing this article. I think it’s a really important issue. And if we don’t seize this opportunity now, it will be lost. We must have good momentum on air pollution in London. That is, I mean, there’s no better time than now. Because otherwise, it’s just not gonna happen is it?

Carlton Reid 49:16
Thanks to Victoria Clausen there of Brixton’s Pop Florist, and thank you, of course to all four of my unwitting guests on today’s show, and I hope you enjoyed that slight reveal behind the curtain and see what basically gets left on the cutting room floor which unfortunately, it’s most of those comments which is why I’ve I do a podcast to to get everybody’s longer point of view. And rather than just one sentence that ended up in the newspaper, and eagle-eyed listeners/ viewers will will understand that this has only been the London segment, so I had three segments in today’s Guardian. I had a Edinburgh segment and I had a Newcastle segment which is my home, my hometown, the hardware shop in my hometown, a business that basically doubled in size when when Steve Robson eventually benefited from having a low traffic Street. And then the final segment was the London Railton road segment and I haven’t included the Scottish segment I’ll have included the Newcastle segment, because I wanted to keep it into a into a one theme show. So it was a London themed show. And if you enjoyed today’s show, it’d be really helpful for us if you could like, subscribe, and comment on the Spokesmen cycling podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you are listening to today’s episode. Show notes transcript and a link of course to The Guardian article can be found at the-spokesmen.com. And this is Carlton Reid signing off and suggesting, whether you’ve got an LTN or not, get out there and ride …

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The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 258: “This is a transport revolution” In conversation with Chris Boardman

Thursday 1st October 2020

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Chris Boardman. Greater Manchester’s walking and cycling commissioner

Below the transcript there’s the full press release from today’s announcement of :

Cycling and walking building boom: 55 miles of new routes and 140 new crossings to be createdacross Greater Manchester by December 2021

_____________________________________________

TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 258 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered Thursday, 1st of October 2020.

David Bernstein 0:24
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson USA, where you’ll always find a great selection of products at amazing prices with unparalleled customer service. For more information, just go to Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast cycling podcast at www.Fredcast.com. I’m one of the hosts and producers of the Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast. For shownotes links and all sorts of other information, please visit our website at www.the-spokesmen.com. And now, here are the spokesmen. there.

Carlton Reid 1:08
Hi I’m Carlton Reid. And on today’s show, I’m talking with Chris Boardman, Greater Manchester’s walking and cycling Commissioner. Now, socially distance by about 175 miles, we discussed a spades-in-the-ground announcement of 55 miles of protected routes for cyclists in Greater Manchester, and 140 new crossings for cyclists and pedestrians. And Chris also talks about his long term plans for national change of culture, getting Brits out of cars. What’s being announced tomorrow? And why is it so special? Because it has not all been, you know, announced before?

Chris Boardman 1:52
Good point. Yes, it has. And I think what’s happened over the last two years has been a huge amount of work to mobilise which isn’t very newsworthy, and people don’t really want to know how you get it done. But we just said, we said in the end of 2017, actually, right, we’re going to do this, and we’re going to do it region wide. And we spend, as you know, about six months putting together a plan in record time, really, the whole re for the whole region that’s added up to over 1800 miles. And and then we’ve had to employ the people get the engineers start to do consultation. So there’s an awful lot involved in in getting ready to deliver. And we’re at last there, and it’s been painful. And but now we know that by the end of next year, we’ll have the first 50 miles in. So it’s the start of delivery. And for me, you know, I it’s my intention that it’s the start of a revolution in the way we travel in Greater Manchester. And in the last six months, we prove just how necessary that is and for how many different reasons it’s necessary. So it’s just to celebrate, and to reconnect people with this project and remind them just how bloody brilliant it’s going to be.

Carlton Reid 3:12
And have you had buy in equally from all the different councils or have some been a bit, you know, more amenable to it and others less. So.

Chris Boardman 3:22
Now we’ve got champions we’ve got I mean, Salford is a prime example of one of the districts that was already on this mission. And they’re going to start delivering early. But we’re seeing reasonable ambition from every every one of them. But I think from the start, I said that one, we’re not going to allocate money equally, we’re going to allocate it to those with the ambition. And if you don’t want to, if you want to do something good, then we’ll fund it. But if you don’t, that’s your choice. And I think it needs to be that way. Really, I think we need to actually prove the point. And I because you want to get to a point where you have a low traffic neighbourhood, and the people next door are complaining because they haven’t got one, and then you’re really off. So leading by example is important. And I think we’ve we’ve got a huge amount of projects to create that healthy competitiveness, I think.

Carlton Reid 4:15
And then you mentioned before about the community involvement, and that is part about that what was Brian Deegan and his crew, and he and his crew go in? And they ask people, you know, where your bottlenecks were, where do you feel you know, that it’s dangerous for you? And then it’s post it notes. And like I said, so how important of an element is that to this going forward?

Chris Boardman 4:37
I think it’s, it’s critical, really, because how people understand what you’re doing and keeping control of what this is about and stopping people hijacking the message is essential. I think as we as we both know, it shouldn’t be but communication is more important than the product because if you allow this to be I painted as this is going to be terrible, it’s going to ruin business, they’re ripping out disabled parking spaces. If you allow that to become the messaging, then people won’t support. But if you say, this is making space, so your kids can ride and walk to school, these crossings are going to actually enable your kids to go out and play with their mates without you. If you actually keep on message and make sure that people understand what it’s for, then you’ll get support. And the best way to do that is not to do it retrospectively. It’s from the start. So you mentioned Brian Deegan, who is part engineer, part activist, he’s got quite a few different hats. But we when we went to councils, the first thing that Brian wanted to do, which, and it was totally his idea I just adopted it immediately was he gave them the pen, figuratively and literally, and said, Tell me where you can’t go with pram? Or you will you wouldn’t want to walk with your kids? And you said you wouldn’t let them ride a bike? Tell me why not? That’s a really busy road, where would you want to get across it and they draw on the map. And so we we let them tell us what they wanted to be able to change the way they travel. And so it is their network. And then we put it out as a draft for everybody in Greater Manchester online and got 4000 comments in a month saying, and then our biggest complaint was Where’s ours? And I think, if anything has come from the project I’ve been involved with for the last three years that it’s Give, give the pen to the people who live there and let them decide. And that includes the right to do nothing. Because they have to choose what it is that they want. But I’m amazed by people how positive people are, once you give them control, not not phone control of Oh, no, we want to have your opinion. But genuinely, if you don’t want to do this, we don’t do it. People respect that, and then take it seriously. And then it becomes theirs, not yours. And that’s essential.

Carlton Reid 6:59
And how much in cash terms and how much in actual things going in on the ground, are walking, and how much I psyched and kind of had you many times before talking about? Because clearly people recognise you from your previous career and your current career, in fact, and they see you clearly as a cyclist. But then you’ve said and you’ve been gone on record say well, actually, it’s the walking elements that are potentially more transformative, potentially, what are more like to do? So is that something that you absolutely stand by? And how much so the elements how much is walking and how much is cycling?

Chris Boardman 7:38
Well, first of all, we try not to separate them, because they should be happy bedfellows these are activities that require space. And and they should coexist, we get just to clarify, though, we don’t we we very, very rarely found anything that shared space. Because once you get a speed difference, it doesn’t work, then the person on a bike becomes the hostile elements. So we respect the hierarchy, that walking is going to be the most convenient and easy solution for most people. So it’s the most important so of the 55 miles that will be in by next year 100. And we’re going to put hundred and 40 new crossings in and we’re looking at the 20,000 cross side road crossings across the region. As you’ll know, we’re spending half a million pounds doing a study to prove that crossings as used around the rest of the world, outside roads on the desire lines help. And they will reinforce a right that people walking have forgotten that they have because to assert that right they have to walk out in front of the car. So understandably, people don’t do it. So no walking is it’s hard to make it visible. It’s hidden in plain sight every day. But it is more important than riding bikes. Having said that, the thing that’s going to get people out of cars is going to be bikes because that replaces your three to five mile journeys, which is two thirds of all the journeys that are made in the country nevermind Greater Manchester.

Carlton Reid 9:10
So Greater Manchester has excellent public transport. So trains, trams, buses. So how much of the work that you’ve done on the Bee network will take, as you’ve said, talked about there really will take passengers away from them from public transport rather than attract motorists get motorists out of cars?

Chris Boardman 9:29
Well, I think you’ll get some of that. And that’s not a bad thing. In general for Greater Manchester view. If you’re getting people to ride and walk rather than be sedentary, then that then you’ve still got a winner. It’s not as big winners, you’re getting people out of a car. But ultimately if you get people travelling actively, you’ve got a net gain. But I suspect that a lot of the journeys will be part journey. So I’m going to ride into Manchester tomorrow with Andy Burnham on his route and it’s an hour and a half journey for him. And that’s not sustainable. On a daily basis, you just can’t do that. But what he might do is right down to the station, jump on the train, pick up the higher bike at the other end, and leave the last mile or so to the office. So that’s how we see it working. That’s the vision that Andy has. It’s, it’s actually this is part of our network. And, and the intention is in a few years time to have an integrated ticketing system for bike hire, for trams, for trains that’s kept. And so you can use any mode, you can mix and match depending on the day, the weather where you going, and it will be kept for the day. And that’s what’s in train at the moment. And this is a part of it. So the point is to give people a choice, an easy choice not to have to drive. And I think we we kind of have to really, there’s no option to keep driving, it just doesn’t work.

Carlton Reid 10:52
So how far you down the line with with the cycle hire scheme? And even agencies appointed?

Chris Boardman 10:57
first phase will be on the ground next early next year. In the spring. It’s been really hard

Carlton Reid 11:03
who’s doing it? Some of you have you announced who’s doing it, who’s there.

Chris Boardman 11:08
Now down to the last three firms. So we’re doing some work in parallel. So we’re out to tender now. And we have contracts have gone out to firms to to actively bid. So we’ve narrowed it right down to a very small number. And and in the meantime, we know where the parking needs to be we know where all the pickup and drop off points. So all the things about the tedious stuff about planning permission and making sure that the space there. All of that’s happening in tandem, so we can speed up delivery. And we’ll do it we’ll do it in a phased approach, because to do a whole city region is obviously Well, it’s massive, it will be geographically bigger than London. So we’re starting with phase one is in the regional centre, so Salford and Manchester. So to get it going there, and then work outwards.

Carlton Reid 11:58
And where does e-scooters fit into this ecosystem?

Chris Boardman 12:03
E-scooters is something I’m very interested in. But I’m keeping it at arm’s length, to be honest, because the studies that I’ve seen show that they get people off bikes, they don’t get them out of cars, and the potential for conflict. If you didn’t, if you haven’t got if we had lots of cycle lanes now, then that’s where they go. But right now the potential for conflict with pedestrians is high. What I do like about them is they’re a travel disrupter. And they’re another client if you like for bike lanes. So that’s a good thing. But I don’t want to get confused because these scooters, they don’t make you fitter. And they’re not necessarily getting somebody out of a car. So they’re not the highest on my list. What I recognise is that good fun, people are really interested in them, that there may be a client to give for bike lanes that gives more emphasis and more reason to build more bike lanes. So I think it’s quite a good thing, but it’s not directly within my remit. It’s a potential future client.

Carlton Reid 13:09
Okay, and do you know the average car ownership or use stats Greater Manchester?

Chris Boardman 13:16
It is for Greater Manchester. It is a third of households don’t have access to cars in Greater Manchester. And that’s considerably higher. I think it’s over half in Manchester itself.

Carlton Reid 13:28
And what are you doing? So you’re doing some good stuff here, encouraging people to get onto bikes to walk more, what are you doing to discourage motoring physically discouraged motoring?

Chris Boardman 13:41
I think most first and foremost is we have to give people an option to an alternative because once you build this is where I’m a pragmatist on that once you build a car centric society, and you let people build their lives around using cars, you can’t just say, Oh, you can’t do that now until you provide an alternative. So cycling and walking is a solution a viable genuine solution, as you know, for about two thirds of all journeys. And then for the rest, trains and trams need to be integrated and become really regular, particularly in the case of trains, the train service has been dire serving Greater Manchester, the lines of the service is bad, and it needs upgrading. So all of those things need to happen. So by making pavements for people, so tackling anti social parking, on pavements, things that you you couldn’t get a double Boogie Down. So you know, you can’t allow that to happen. So we need to reclaim the pavements and by filtering neighbourhoods, so you’re not stopping people driving, but you you can’t run through a neighbourhood. All of these things make other modes of transport more attractive and more competitive. So I wouldn’t say I’m trying to reduce car use directly. It’s might be semantics. I’m trying to make other options much more viable. Much more competitive and making logical and attractive.

Carlton Reid 15:04
And more. Yeah. What’s being announced? Tomorrow? How much of that has been stymied by COVID? And how much has actually been boosted by COVID?

Chris Boardman 15:17
Well, it’s a good point, I mean, 25 miles of the stuff that we intended to put in is pop up routes that are from low low traffic neighbourhoods through to semi permanent. So you know, using bollards and and what they called condemning ones in orcas. So we’re going to accelerate some stuff. And it’s also, I think, given some confidence that we show the people want to do it. You know, people when you I don’t know if you saw any of the features I did for the BBC or ITV over the last month, but we we effectively turned off traffic globally, and inadvertently started at consultation. And so for whatever reason, be it on board, I’ve got bored kids need to get to work and the buses aren’t running at my shift time, all of those reasons, people showed that if you give them safe space, they’ll ride bikes. And I think that should give everybody a huge amount of confidence that this isn’t all they won’t do it in the UK. Well, they did. And there are lots of different reasons they did. And so if you make this space, people have shown you that they will use it. And that confidence, I think counsellors can take it and are taking to accelerate schemes. Manchester itself is, is doing quite a good job now of accelerating schemes that they had on the books, because they also know that this measures are likely to be in place for several months to come yet. And they don’t want to be locked down completely. So they don’t want people cramming together on buses and drains.

Carlton Reid 16:50
So an awful lot of the funding, not all of the funding, in fact, for pop ups nationally has come from the national Tory government. And yet on the ground, it seems that Tory councils aren’t that keen at implementing Tory policies. And it tends to be labour councils that actually want to implement whatever better word and Tory policies, politics, politics play into all of this?

Chris Boardman 17:21
Well, people are scared to change. And I think for me, I have to put myself in somebody else’s shoes and understand where they’re coming from. I don’t have to agree with them. But I know that if a local counsellor might be a locksmith, or work in a shop, and they’re doing this part time, and somebody is having their life changed, so I’m going to take some parking from outside of your shop. And that person is screaming down my ear saying this is a random, you’re going to ruin my business, I’m already scared to death around COVID. And that counsellor has to see this person where they go and buy their bread day in day out. So I understand that I get it that people don’t necessarily. They don’t get into the details and the facts and why it’s good for the bigger picture. They’ve got to deal with people on the ground. And so not everybody will support everything. But the majority do. And as we found from recent surveys for every person that objects, the six that support, and we need to remember that we need to give that silent majority of voice. And I hope the majority of councils will stand up for the majority.

Carlton Reid 18:27
They do seem to a wavering though that there was this this was tested and a lot of it is faded away and they took schemes and in Manchester, even doing some schemes that look quite ambitious. And then we take

Chris Boardman 18:42
Yeah, the A56 was was scaled back. Actually, it was scaled back. It’s still the longest in the country. But it was scaled back at a point where there was a problem. But most of the problems were actually caused by roadworks that were going on slightly further down. So they amended them. And they took seconds out. But of course it hit the presses. It’s all being ripped out. Well, it wasn’t actually it was just amended. But yeah, and it’s not everybody’s going to support it. Because it’s changed. And it’s scary. And that’s where you need political will. And this is really where we need government to actually step back in and remind people that they are committed to this task, because they’ve gone very quiet since May. So they made some groundbreaking statements and said, we have to do this for our country’s health to protect our public transport to stop having the second lockdown to help people who don’t have cars, which we seem to forget about in the short term. And in the longer term, give us all a chance to try something different that we don’t have to commit to. And then if we like it in six months, we can keep it there’s all of these good reasons, but we need government to support it and to keep showing that ongoing support. Because that really helps counsellors when they have to do something that’s disruptive to the status quo, then that’s pretty scary when it looks like government’s gone silent and hang on a minute. I’m going to be left holding the can hear you’re not going to support me to see it all the way through. So some noise from government right now would be very welcome. Hmm.

Carlton Reid 20:09
Because [Andrew] Gilligan has never really put his head above the parapet, but he was clearly behind a lot of the DFT letters. They had the language of Gilligan, through and through.

Chris Boardman 20:21
Yeah. Again, I think it’s very clear that Andrew Gilligan is a trusted adviser to the Prime Minister. And his writing is very clear, in a lot of the communication with councils, the top the directives that have come out on the forcefulness and clarity of it. Absolutely, his writing is clear. But ultimately, he is an advisor. It’s the ministers that need to stand up for this. And it’d be really good to hear the Health Minister standing up for it as well, to actually get all of the people that will benefit from changes. You really want to protect the NHS, then start clapping for bike lanes, not just the NHS staff themselves, because we can take the strain off it just by changing the way we travel.

Carlton Reid 21:05
You were quoted in the press release the other day for the active travel transport. Active travel agency, what the the Laura Laker thing

Chris Boardman 21:21
press guidelines.

Carlton Reid 21:21
press guidelines. Thank you. So you quoted that in that press release. And then the Daily Mail has, I don’t know if they’ve even looked at the press release, but then or even looked at the guidelines. But they’ve come out with a story, which is basically they assuming that this is a war against the motorists, and that the guidelines want to remove things like like rollouts, I’ve got to be banned, and that kind of stuff, which aren’t actually in the gut. So when do you think that part of the media, which represents, you know, a fair chunk of the public? When will they be on board with walking and cycling changes, but I guess, especially cycling changes?

Chris Boardman 22:04
Well, I can’t speak for people I can understand. I think ultimately we need to make sure as just to double back to something I said earlier that the the six people for everyone that support this, we need to make sure that they’re well represented. And we don’t let other people own and twist a message when what Lori Lightfoot and Martin Porter are asking for is guidelines that say how things should be reported, which is federal is just tell fact, right? Just Just give the facts and use language that portrays that reality? Not your personal view. And I don’t think the newspaper that you’ve just mentioned, has ever been constrained by facts. And is any newspaper that cause High Court judges the enemy of the people, you’ve already made a choice by by reading it, so I can’t really talk to it.

Carlton Reid 23:01
And then last question, Chris, and this is almost an impossible one to answer, I think, or maybe you’ve got very strong views on this. But how long is this project going to take? Does this project ever end? What what’s what’s, what’s the timescale?

Chris Boardman 23:16
That’s quite a good question. Actually, the timescale when I started, it was 10 years. And we said, right, we want to put in a network across Greater Manchester in 10 years, and you need a timeframe, because you need a yardstick that says, How are we doing? And right now, it’s 5055 miles is a great number. It’s meaningful, and it’s large. But it’s quite a small part of 1800 miles. But now we can look at that and say, Can we go faster? How do we go faster? Because we’ve got a destination, eight years time, we have something we want to achieve in a years? How How, how much closer to that can we get? I think if you don’t state a time frame, and I don’t like this, kick it down the road by 2050. Because anybody who’s made those decisions will be accountable. By that point. I want meaningful, relatively short term objectives to meet. I think it’s very healthy to do that. I think it’s going to be very challenging. Now to get it done in eight years. There has been some setbacks with COVID. But mostly because it’s taken us a lot longer to get mobilised than we wanted. But now we’re off. And we have to celebrate that as well. So that’s,

Carlton Reid 24:25
Sorry, I’ve got a supplementary question. So that’s, that’s Manchester Greater Manchester. Hopefully, you would then be a catalyst. And London is also a catalyst here for other parts of the UK. So how long will that project take?

Chris Boardman 24:42
Well, that’s up to a government. You know, this is genuinely anything that’s culture change for a nation, then it has to be government led, or what’s the point of government? You might as well just happy little fiefdoms and you all get together for a conference. This is National change. And so government was lead it and they can choose And the announcements they made in May, if they stick by them, if they reinforce them if they back them up with resources. And also with legislation. I mean, it’s been said that if you, if you don’t do this, then this will count against you for all of your transport funding. I mean, that’s proper, strong language. If they continue with that they can make it happen very quickly. The point of me coming to Greater Manchester was to try and create an example on such a scale it was on ignorable nationally. And that’s still the mission, because that’s what we work well with in the UK examples. We want. We want the fear of missing out to be not having a bike lane and an active neighbourhood rather than not having a motorway. And I think we can make that change. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be wasting my time with it. But it’s not going to be easy. And it will depend very much on government. I think the beauty of some of the things that have been done by this government is whatever denomination is in next, no one’s going to want one pick what they do. So and that’s a good thing.

Carlton Reid 26:06
Thanks to Chris Boardman there. And thanks to you for tuning in for today’s episode via whatever podcasting client you use. The next episode will be uploaded to that client for you real soon. But meanwhile, get out there and ride

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PRESS RELEASE

Cycling and walking building boom: 55 miles of new routes and 140 new crossings to be created across Greater Manchester by December 2021

55 miles of protected routes and 140 new crossings for people on foot and bikes will be created next year

The projects that councils across Greater Manchester plan to deliver total around £85 million, creating world class infrastructure and kick-starting the city-region’s plans for the UK’s largest cycling and walking network – The Bee Network

25 miles of pop-up routes and two low-traffic neighbourhoods will also be delivered
Plans heralded as a “huge step” by Mayor and “the start of a transport revolution” by Commissioner Chris Boardman

Greater Manchester will see a major building boom in cycling and walking routes delivered by next Christmas with 55 miles of new routes and 140 new crossings being created, Mayor Andy Burnham and Commissioner Chris Boardman announced today.

Funded by the Mayor’s Challenge Fund, all of Greater Manchester’s 10 districts will begin to benefit from new routes, also known as beeways, with the first Bee Network signage expected to be installed in Summer 2021.

The Mayor and Chris Boardman marked the news with a 90 minute bike ride into Manchester, taking in Wigan’s Muddy Mile, the first Bee Network route, completed in Summer 2019.

Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, said: “It’s been years in the making, but GM’s cycling and walking revolution is finally starting. To build the capability and scheme pipeline to deliver a new way of travel for a whole city region has taken us two years, but we are now ready to begin delivery. By next summer we will begin to see the fruits of our labour and the region’s residents will finally have the chance to travel to shops and schools easily and safely without using a car. Today heralds the real start of our cycling and walking story, coincidently aligning with bike to school week.

“Next year is going to be incredibly exciting with spades going in the ground. This is a huge step towards making Greater Manchester a true cycling and walking city-region. Projects like the Chorlton beeway and Bolton’s new junctions are world-class and they are going to open up cycling and walking as a new option for hundreds of thousands of people. Greater Manchester residents have told us that they want safe space to travel on foot and by bike, so this is exactly what we are delivering.”

Greater Manchester’s Walking and Cycling Commissioner, Chris Boardman, said: “We started this mission nearly two years ago and I’m so pleased with the significant work GM’s local authorities have been doing behind the scenes to get this monumental mission underway.

“The Bee Network was a vision, now having completed the planning, paperwork and many consultations, we are ready to start making it a reality. It will create better places to live and work, give those with a car the option to leave it at home and for those who don’t, it will provide them with a reliable, safe and pleasant network to walk or ride to shops, schools and workplaces. This is the beginning of Greater Manchester’s twenty first century transport revolution.”

Around 25 miles of pop-up cycling and walking routes will also be delivered by next Spring, as well as two low-traffic neighbourhoods in Salford and Tameside, using government funds in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Tameside’s pop up active neighbourhood is being launched today.
The news coincides with the publication of an update and forward look report on cycling and walking activities in Greater Manchester which will be officially presented to the Greater Manchester Transport Committee on 9 October.

Completed cycling and walking projects in the last two years include the CYCLOPs junction at Royce Road, the first of its kind in the country, designed by Greater Manchester engineers, as well as Talbot Road in Trafford, Saddle junction in Wigan and Wigan’s Muddy Mile.

The 32 projects that will be delivered across Greater Manchester up to December 2021 are:

GM wide projects
Bee Network crossings – £2.2 million – a series of new and upgraded crossings at locations across Greater Manchester, initial crossings due to be completed during Winter 2020.
GM safety camera digitalisation – £6.1 million
GM Bike Hire – £7.1 million, due to launch in Spring 2021
Bolton
SBNI Manchester Road Gateway – £7m, due to be completed by Winter 2021 – Full junction upgrades to create protected cycle tracks and crossings outside Bolton station on Trinity Street and Bradford Street, and a contra-flow cycle lane on Newport Street.
Bury
Crossing point and junction improvements – £2.2 million – a selection of new and upgraded junctions to improve connectivity and safety for people travelling by foot and bike, expected to be completed by Winter 2021.
Elton beeway – £1.8 million – this scheme will complete a pleasant, direct route from Bury to Radcliffe via the canal towpath and is expected to be completed by Winter 2021.
Manchester
Mancunian Way / Princess Road junction – £3.25 million, due to be completed in Winter 2020 – a full junction upgrade where Mancunian Way meets Princess Road. The existing subways will be removed and protected cycle tracks will be created, as well as pedestrian paths and a signalised crossing.
Manchester to Chorlton beeway (area 2) – £2.2 million – The Upper Chorlton Road section of the Chorlton Cycleway which will create a protected cycle route from Chorlton Park to Manchester city centre. This section completes the cycle link between the Brooks Bar junction and Seymour Grove. The route is due to be completed in Spring 2021.
Manchester to Chorlton beeway (area 3) – £2.2 million, completion date TBC following consultation The Manchester Road to Barlow Moor Road section of the Chorlton Cycleway which will create a protected cycle route from Chorlton Park to Manchester city centre. This section completes the cycle link from Seymour Grove into and through Chorlton district centre with its many bars, shops and cafes.
Manchester to Chorlton beeway (area 4) – £1.8 million – The Barlow Moor Road/Manchester Road section is the most southern part of the Chorlton Cycleway. It connects the Chorlton district centre to the National Cyel Route numbers 6 and 60, the Manchester Cycleway (Fallowfield Loop) and number 62 the Transpenine Trail. The route is due to be completed in Spring 2021.
Beswick active neighbourhood (phase 1) – due to be completed in Summer 2021 – A ‘filtered neighbourhood’ to make roads in the area safer and more pleasant.
Beswick active neighbourhood (phase 2) – £2 million – A ‘filtered neighbourhood’ to make roads in the area safer and more pleasant, subject to consultation.
Route 86: Northern Quarter – Piccadilly to Victoria beeway – £10.5 million – Walking and cycling route through Manchester’s Northern Quarter, connecting Piccadilly and Victoria stations.
Rochdale Canal bridge – £1.3 million, due to be completed in Autumn 2021 – upgrades to the Rochdale canal corridor linking existing and developing communities. This includes improvements to the canal towpaths, improved access under a low bridge at Butler Street and improved accessibility to four sets of steps.
Oldham
Union Street West bridge improvements – £228K due to be completed in early 2021 – The bridge has already been the subject of a partial refurbishment. This project will see the refurbishment completed, providing a replacement bridge deck surface to ensure the best possible level of service for users.
King Street bridge improvements, £452K, due to be completed in early 2021 – Complete refurbishment of an existing pedestrian and cycle bridge, providing a key link into Oldham town centre from a number of residential areas to the south.
Chadderton improvements – £612,000, due to be completed in Autumn 2021 – Updated crossings and walking and cycling routes in Chadderton.
Royton town centre connections – £706,000, due to be completed in Autumn 2021 – Improvements to cycling and walking facilities in and around Royton town centre.
Salford
Swinton Greenway – £4.6 million – This project will deliver a traffic-free, off-road walking and cycling corridor connecting Swinton to Monton, plus lots of other links, connecting communities into the route.
RHS Links – £2.6 million – This scheme will significantly improve the on foot and by bike experience in the area, improving access to the new RHS Bridgewater Garden, Parr Fold Park, Worsley College and Walkden Train Station.
Gore Street connection – £1.1 million, due to be completed in Autumn 2021.
Stockport
Gilbent road crossing – £500K, due to be completed Winter 2020, this scheme provides an enhanced crossing for people travelling by bike and on foot in Cheadle Hulme. It will better connect residential areas, including access to Thorn Grove Primary School.
Offerton to Stockport beeway – £700,000, due to be completed in Autumn 2021 – A continuous cycling and walking route from Offerton to Stockport town centre.
Hazel Grove upgrades – £1.1 million, due to be completed in Autumn 2021 – A number of off-road routes to link communities and encourage walking and cycling.
Ladybrook Valley -£800K, due to be completed Spring 2021 – Scheme to complete a ‘missing link’ of the continuous walking and cycling route through the Ladybrook Valley, connecting previous sections which were delivered by CCAG. The section is around 1.1km long connecting between Ladybridge Road and Bramhall Park Road, with an additional spur to Blenheim Road. The works will provide a surfaced route suitable for cycling, along a route which is currently a grassy footpath.
Heaton Cycle Links – £5 million, due to be completed in 2021 – A package of measures to create a series of quiet routes for pedestrians and cyclists between the Manchester Cycleway (Fallowfield Loop) and the Trans-Pennine Trail at Heaton Mersey.
Cheadle Hulme Crossings Package – £1.2 million, due to be completed in 2021 – The scheme includes three new signal crossings on busy roads in Cheadle Hulme. This will provide access to the wider walking and cycling network and better access to local facilities.
Tameside
Tameside active neighbourhood (phase 1) – Phase one, which is due to be completed in Summer 2021, includes a package of improvements such as creating filtered neighbourhoods where people are prioritised over cars. Upgrades will also be made to traffic free routes and segregated facilities will be provided for bikes on more major roads.
Tameside active neighbourhood (phase 2) – £1.7 million – A package of improvements which will include the creation of more attractive, safer and accessible routes for cyclists.
Trafford
Urmston active neighbourhood – Phase one due to be completed in Autumn 2021, this major active neighbourhood scheme will significantly improve the walking and cycling environment in the Urmston area. Interventions will be community and stakeholder driven and it is expected that they will include segregated cycle routes, new and upgraded crossings, improved signage, parklets, school street treatments and collision reduction measures.
Five junctions on Talbot Road, including the junction with Seymour Grove, due to be completed in Autumn 2021. This project involves upgrading stretches of Talbot Road, enabling a consistent level of service for people travelling by bike or on foot.
Wigan
Standish mineral line – £700,000 – The project will deliver a 1.6 mile long traffic-free path for people travelling on foot or by bike serving new housing developments and providing new connections to link existing cycle schemes to future major segregated routes.
Victoria Street / Warrington Road junction – £1.7 million, due to be completed in Autumn2021 – This scheme extends the innovative Saddle Junction cycle facility, which is under construction, to the southwest with further high quality cycling and walking infrastructure connecting with Alexandra Park.
Leigh town centre to Pennington Park – £800k – the project includes a new bridge across the Bridgewater Canal to connect Leigh town centre at the Loom to new housing development to the south of the canal. There will be a new safe and accessible route to connect from the new bridge to the education, leisure and retail facilities at Leigh Sports Village and beyond to Pennington Flash.

Your podcast catcher not showing in links above (black circle with three dots)? Loads more on PodLink. Show is also on Spotify. and Google Podcasts.

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 256: In Conversation with Two Ians

Saturday 5th September 2020

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Environmental psychologist and ultra-endurance cyclist Ian Walker.

LINKS:

Ian Walker’s webpage, drianwalker.com

Strava article on the Transcontinental, which inspired Ian to enter the event.

Holly Seear cycling coach

Ian Walker’s article on parking

TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 256 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Saturday 5th September 2020.

David Bernstein 0:24
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by JensonUSA, where you’ll always find a great selection of products at amazing prices with unparalleled customer service. For more information, just go to Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast cycling podcast at www.Fredcast.com. I’m one of the hosts and producers of the Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast. For shownotes links and all sorts of other information please visit our website at www.the-spokesmen.com. And now here are the spokesmen.

Ian Walker 1:09
Today’s show is a conversation with two blokes called Ian. I’m Carlton Reid and I’ve been talking with record-breaking ultra-endurance cyclist Ian Walker. I’ve also been talking with environmental psychologist Dr. Ian Walker. As you’ll hear they sound awfully similar — the first part of the show delves into close overtakes of cyclists and why motorists park on the infrastructure meant for pedestrians. The second part is a dissection of Ian Walker’s brilliant new book, Endless Perfect Circles. There’s a little bit of psychology in this but it’s mostly and gloriously an account of his surprise discovery that he’s actually quite good at sport, specifically riding very long distances, fast, over multiple days and without support. Ian was a high placed finisher in the Transcontinental Race, won the North Cape 4000 and then, last year, set a new Guiness world record for riding across Europe, north to south. For relaxtion he rides 650 miles around the whole of Wales — in a long weekend. I read Ian’s book and loved it — not only is he a great rider, he’s a great writer, too. The book includes a neat Jedi mind trick that anybody who turns up at hotels with a bike will use for ever more, and we discuss why it works, so here’s my chat with the first of the two Ians. So I have absolutely really really really – as have many people – enjoyed your book.

Ian Walker 2:58
Oh thank you.

Ian Walker 3:00
I absolutely do what I do want to discuss it I do want to I want to I’m actually going to quote loads of things back. Okay? Because it was very funny. I’m going to quote lines back to you and you can even read it out in your own voice so we can hear the lines from you which were quite good but I because of who you are, yes okay so everybody now knows you of course not as your your super intellectual self but your physical self your your long distance endurance amazing feats Ian – we will get on to that, of course, but I want to start with your the intellectual in the brain Ian and how would you tell us what you do for a living when you’re not in that cottage? When you’re at university? What do you actually do?

Ian Walker 3:43
I do research on a whole variety of environmental psychology issues. So there’s, there’s a strand of this that’s probably not very interesting to your listeners, which is, I do work on energy consumption and water consumption and that kind of thing and how we can help people use it [YAWN from Carlton] as predicted. But probably more interesting to you and your listeners is I also do work on travel and transport. I try to encourage healthy, active travel modes. And I do work on traffic safety, especially for vulnerable road user groups like cyclists,

Ian Walker 4:25
So to lots of people and I know you’ve had about 10,000 citations on this. You can tell us how many citations and in fact, I’m sure you know this, but you came to probably my attention to everybody’s attention a long time ago, and you can tell us when that was, but you were wearing a dark wig. You weren’t wearing a blonde wig. So that’s the mistake a lot of people make it was a dark wig. But what were you wearing a dark wig for, Ian?

Ian Walker 4:50
Well, that was part of a series of experiments, trying to get an idea of whether anything you did on a bicycle made a difference. To the people overtaking you in the street. So the thing I was particularly setting out to look at was the riding position. So did it matter how far to the left or to the right, I was riding in terms of how much space I would be left by passing drivers. But as I was doing that, various people suggested other things that I could look at. And so I incorporated all of those into the study. So for example, I incorporated notoriously whether wearing a helmet made any difference to how much space people left and also the really last minute, I think about three people just said, Do you know it’d be really interesting to see if men and women are treated differently, and So sure enough, I went to a local novelty shop and bought this long dark wig and rode around either with or without the wig. Basically, I’d ride to the end of the street. Reach into my pannier, whip this wig out, stick it on, go up and down the street again, hide the wig and I Did this over and over for several days. And sure enough, I’ve got quite a bit more space on average from passing drivers when I had the wig on.

Carlton Reid 6:08
And you put that down to …?

Ian Walker 6:10
Probably something about people’s stereotypes about riders. So, you know, it’s hard to pin down at an absolute hundred percent definitive answer, but it’s probably something to do with people holding, you know, very unfair stereotypes that women riding need more consideration than men

Ian Walker 6:32
And wobbly riders, that kind of thing? So if somebody sees somebody wobbling up ahead, they’ll give them more space?

Ian Walker 6:38
Do you know we’ve never tested wobbly writers specifically, although an interesting development is we’ve got a paper hopefully coming out literally any day now. Which was done with a series of Belgian researchers who got in touch with me. And what we did there was we tested something that a lot of people have anecdotally taught About, we tested child seats, and thankfully, the results went the right way that riding with the child seat led to more consideration from passing drivers, which is the way round I think we all hoped it would be.

Ian Walker 7:15
Yes, so even if you’ve got a rucksack in your your child seat, you haven’t got the child at that moment. So this is this is a safety tactic you could use even without a child and this is just something just put a child seat on your motorcycle pass your wider

Ian Walker 7:31
it certainly appears that way. I mean, maybe sticking a dummy in there might be the best approach of all to really make sure people pay attention.

Ian Walker 7:39
So I’m now imagining “Airplane” with like the inflatable child in the in the back seat all the way back me. So people have replicated your study.

Ian Walker 7:50
Yeah, a lot of people have done similar studies. So one of the things so I’ve done two sort of big studies of overtaking distance and joining The second one of the things that I was able to do was develop a really quite simple, low cost, easy to produce device that you can stick on a bike and measure how much space drivers leave. And that’s all open source that’s just on the web. If you want to make one you can make one, it would cost less than 100 euros. And so that’s been kind of exciting. And what’s been really nice is to see people run with that. So I’ve seen several groups over the last two or three years who’ve taken that and gone further with it. They’ve added extra sensors or ways of gathering additional data points. And so the whole thing has become really quite democratised. It’s very easy for anybody to go out and collect data on how much space they get left.

Ian Walker 8:47
And as that research gone away from the small field of cycling, and then got into transport research in general. So this could actually you know, make real world differences because You know, designed things have been put in place because it’s it got into outside of cycling.

Ian Walker 9:05
Well, it’s interesting you say that. So one of the things that I’ve really come to conclude from quite a lot of years of looking at this issue of how drivers interact with cyclists on the road, is there is nothing that a cyclist can do to guarantee that they will be safe. And that’s a couple of reasons. In particular, it seems there’s always going to be a really difficult minority of drivers who just will not behave safely. So I’ve really come to realise that if there’s only one way to guarantee safety, which is segregation, get the cars off somewhere safe, where they can’t hurt anybody, and let cyclists travel safely without having to mix. Now obviously, there are all sorts of issues with that, like, there will still be places where mixing is necessary. We’re not going to get ad networks have cycleways that go to every single address in the country. So we still need to solve some of these problems of mixing. But ultimately, given that you can never trust motorists to entirely do the right thing all the time, some level of segregation and good quality infrastructure really seems to be necessary. And so that’s why it’s been so exciting. And I’m sure you’ve been part of this as well. It’s been so exciting seeing the UK Government recently issuing quite strong guidance on what Cyber Infrastructure should look like. And I think all of us over here who work in promoting cycling have been quite excited to see central government for the first time saying infrastructure needs to be high quality, it needs to work for everybody. It can’t just start and stop. You can’t just slap a bit of paint on the road and call it infrastructure. And it’s been really exciting to see these developments happening.

Ian Walker 10:58
Well, you mentioned those developments and that’s that’s an immediately made me then think of grant Shapps, which is not something I do all the time I do hasten to add, but he yesterday or a couple of days beforehand, when when we were recording, he announced that the government is now looking at perhaps more closely and I find this very exciting, looking more closely at the issue of sidewalk parking, pavement, parking. And that then brings me on to the next thought trip that I had was, Well, you did this very, very interesting and fascinating blog posting. God knows how long ago a long time ago but I know I always refer to whenever I refer to this issue, I always refer to your excellent excellent blog posting. And that’s where you put a big book you tell us what you did you put a crate on the on the road and why do people do that with cars? So explain that blog

Ian Walker 11:56
posting? Yeah, well, that was actually I think 12 years ago, which is really depressing back when I had dark hair and, and enthusiasm. And yeah, so that was kind of a thought experiment at the time it was, I realised, you know, I was struck by one of the many double standards that we seem to have about motoring, which is, if I had any other item whatsoever, and I had nowhere to store it, I would not be allowed just to dump it in the road and expect it still to be there the next day. And so I use the example of a crate that was you know, sort of two metres by three metres or something like that, but the same dimensions as a car. So if I had a big box or oceti sofa if I had a caravan, you’d have anything at all that I needed to store and I didn’t have space on my own land, and nobody would tolerate me just leaving it in the road blocking traffic, but the moment it is the car, we offer That’s completely acceptable. And so my point there was to try and illustrate that slightly crazy double standard. And the other thing I mentioned it as a little addendum to that essay was, I was struck by another really good example from the world of transport. So quite a few years ago, I lived for a while on a boat on the English canal river system. And what’s interesting there is that they operate a completely opposite system, on the canals, you are not allowed just to just to leave your boat there. You’re only allowed a licence to have a boat, if you solemnly swear to keep moving, and never stay anywhere for any length of time. And, you know, just freeloading by saying, well, I’ve got a boat and I’m just going to store it here in people’s way. is not is specifically not allowed. And yet we do it on the roads. Hmm. So that’s, that’s separate

Ian Walker 13:56
to the pavement parking issue, but it is just this entitlement issue. have Yeah, I’m going to park my my private property where the hell I like and then I when when it comes on to the pavement is you It’s like I’m going to leave it on the place where people are trying to get past with double buggies and guide dogs which we if you might hear in this that later in the show when my guide dog puppy comes back in the house and pedestrians it so motorists just have this many motorists, not all but we must stress that have this entitlement complex that which is a psychological condition in

Ian Walker 14:33
Well, I don’t know because my experience with the motoring side of things is more as an observer. So I you know, asking motorists what they’re thinking is actually really difficult because when you do that, you often find that the answers you’re given are not the right answers. So in it partly because people don’t know why they do what they do. So a big part This is that, and I think any of us who are interested in traffic will appreciate this. What we see in the motoring context is people just unconsciously imitate one another. So, you know, it starts with one person just bumping a couple of wheels up onto the pavement onto the sidewalk, because they’re worried about slowing the flow of traffic. And then, you know, within six months, other people start noticing this and thinking, Oh, yeah, I’ll do that as well. And then, you know, another six months, everyone’s doing it because they imitate one another. And then another six months later, the cars are completely across the pavement. And there is this very strong tendency to just unconsciously imitate one another as social beings. And that’s a big part of what goes on in traffic. But people are not aware of just how much they unconsciously imitate each other. And so what the problem is, as soon as you ask somebody, why have you just done this particular thing? The answer you get is going to be one that’s Often just constructed on the spot as a way of trying to answer the question, but the answer might not be valid because the behaviour was the subconscious imitation of other people or a subconscious and ascertain events entitlements or something like that, rather than a considered decision to behave in a particular way. But the explanation you get when you ask somebody why they did it will be as if it were deliberately considered and chosen. And so the explanation won’t really be the right one for the behaviour.

Ian Walker 16:40
Which might mean if the government – and I’m touching wood here – if the government did actually bring in some more London style, even though it does happen in London, most London style draconian fines, parking on the sidewalk on the pavement that might actually change behaviour of that bulk of the population which are doing it unthinkingly you’re gonna get the radicals are always going to want to park on the pavement. But a good bunch of people are just doing it for the reason you just said they’re just they’re not thinking about it, they’re just doing it.

Ian Walker 17:12
Yeah, absolutely. I think that that’s what we really hope is going to happen. You can see how it how it’s come about that this you know, let’s face it fairly anti social behaviour has become normalised because if you’re in your car, and you need to stop at a shop or a house or something like that, it’s more convenient for you to just bump it up on the pavement, Job done Off you go get about your day. And and if you have essentially been licenced or permitted to do this income, this convenient thing, because everybody else is doing it. And nobody has ever told you not to. Then of course you’re going to do what’s easier and convenience people fundamentally do what is easy and convenient. So clear message from government saying, Okay, look, this is no longer acceptable. This is causing problems for lots of people, especially people in many cases whose lives already have enough problems. The central message is going to show that it’s less acceptable, that should start to eat into the number of people who are doing it. Once it’s less common and normal that eats into that subconscious copying tendency. And hopefully, it will be the small snowball that starts the big change.

Ian Walker 18:35
So I’m not hopeful. There’s there have been many, many reviews into this over the years. There’s there’s all sorts of it’s probably every 10 years, there’s a government review into this and the government, you know, farms it out, and they say, right, we’re going to we’re going to, we’re going to go with recommendations that the panel gives, the panel comes back and says well ban payment Parking them. And the government says, oh, oh, well, yeah, so better not do that. So I’m not terribly hopeful. But it’s it’s kind of like, the signs that it occurred. Some changes could be afoot. So why would grant chaps float these things if he wasn’t going to do some tweaking?

Ian Walker 19:17
Yeah.

Ian Walker 19:19
And you write that and there will be resistance. I mean, when it comes to traffic issues, I keep finding myself coming back to that phrase that’s often used in very different contexts of when all you’ve known is privilege. Equality feels like oppression. And, you know, we see with a lot of motorists that as soon as you say, you’ve got to have some responsibility for your actions. There’s this knee jerk, oh, my god, you’re taking something away from me. Anger approach, and we’re going to see that as we ask people to no longer inconvenience other people for their own convenience because they’re just so used to having the world accommodate them coming first.

Ian Walker 20:02
And what we’re seeing that right now with the Low Traffic Neighbourhoods concept in that I’ve asked on Twitter, for example, genuine examples of people who have been cut off, they can’t motor they can’t get out of their house, they can’t go where they prefer to go. Show me a genuine example of where you are being blocked in into your driveway by a low traffic neighbourhood. And of course, nobody can, because it’s hyperbole. It’s, you know, literally they just got to spend another five minutes maybe going around. But then John Crace the journalist, The Guardian journalist, put in one of his columns last week, the exact same thing that you know, I you know, motorists are now blocked from getting anywhere. And I challenged him and said, Well, can you please show me a map where you are genuinely blocked in by these wonderful phrase, the modal filters, the bollards and stuff, and he hasn’t responded Now assuming it has seen Because there’s an awful lot of first that background kicked up when he said this and what I said that this is what he said, and I’ll probably approach him offline to see if he will say these things because these Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, they’re not genuinely stopping people going anywhere. They just make it slightly more inconvenient if you choose to do a 500 metre journey in a car.

Ian Walker 21:21
Absolutely. And I’m sorry, I can’t remember who said this, but somebody on Twitter made the good point that the percentage difference it will make to your journey is completely related to how long your journey was in the first place. So if you’re leaving your home in a city centre and driving to another town, it’s not going to make any real difference. Whereas if you’re leaving your homeless centre and driving 500 metres to buy a newspaper, it’s as a percentage of your journey time. The hit is going to be quite substantial. But that should be the sign that your journey maybe needed reconsidering in the first place.

Ian Walker 21:56
But you are asking people to in that case, modify their behaviour. Yeah, that’s a psychology. You know, that’s, that’s kind of tough because these are ingrained behaviours.

Ian Walker 22:04
Hmm. It’s true. But one of the things that I’ve really come to realise over the recent years, is fundamentally the geographers had it right all along, and we psychologists didn’t, because if you want to know about why people behave the way they do in travel, it’s mostly about the physical environment, the physical environment, shapes the way we travel more than what we think we might kid ourselves that our travel behaviours are rational, deliberate, considered choices, but really, they’re in much bigger part they’re, in most cases, a response to the built environment of the built environment makes something easy and convenient. People are going to do it. If the built environment makes something difficult and feel dangerous, people are not going to do it. And of course, for those of us who are interested in promoting walking and cycling. What does the built environment do? It makes it difficult, slow and feel dangerous. And right there is the problem.

Ian Walker 23:10
Hmm. So let’s talk about SMIDSY for a second. So, “sorry, mate. I didn’t see you.” But what you were saying before, in effect was there’s another category of Yeah, yeah, I absolutely saw you. Yep. But I want to kill you. So there’s a small subsection of motorists who as as you know, Andy Cox, the superintendent, and West Midlands Police have found out there is an awful lot of people who are doing this deliberately. So, is the only way we can mitigate against that literally. Having cycleways.

Ian Walker 23:50
Oh, good question. I mean, I think on the one hand, just as for context here, it’s another example of The kind of strange double standard that exists in our culture in context of cars. So I did a long ride with a friend this weekend. And we had several instances of people using their vehicles as weapons against us, simply riding along the road, and people swerve their cars utters or screamed abuse at us as they passed for doing nothing wrong whatsoever. Now, as my friend and I were commenting later, I’m sure every single one of those people is perfectly nice in any other context. I’m sure they all think of themselves as perfectly decent people. And I’m sure several of them probably do lovely things like giving to charity or volunteering. And it’s just our culture has this toxic strand, where as long as you’re in a car, all bets are off and it’s certainly okay to behave like this. So for example, the person in the large mistake who flew right pastors was leaning on their horn for no reason whatsoever on an otherwise empty road, I, I can guarantee that when they Next go in a shop and have to stand in a queue, they will not scream at the person in front of them to get out of their way. Whereas that’s what they felt it was perfectly okay to do two guys on bikes. And so we have this very weird, messed up cultural problem with driving that and that condones and encourages and permits otherwise completely normal people to behave in deeply aggressive and dangerous anti social ways. And I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the rest of your question because I was going off on a rant about that.

Ian Walker 25:49
Well, that’s okay. Well, I’ve actually just segue into into what you’ve just said there actually, rather than go backwards. And that is that that behaviour that weird Jekyll and Hyde behaviour that you have when you when you get behind the wheel of course was very much recognised and parodied by Disney 50s 1960s I’m sure you know it the famous storyteller Goofy, Mr. Walker, and Mr. Wheeler. So Mr. Walker is the sweet mannered, lovely pedestrian, which you’ve just kind of mentioned, people are like that in real life. And then as soon as he got behind the wheel of a car, psychologically, Mr. Walker changed into Mr. Wheeler, who was this awful, aggressive character who just said that is that is that what it is? It’s that it’s that trigger? It’s getting behind the wheel of a car and then you feel something different?

Ian Walker 26:45
Well, apparently, yes. I mean, I’ve never personally studied this in detail. And I do have one or two colleagues who do work on driver anger. And your ultimately from what I’ve seen of their work, it is does seem irrational, it seems. Anger in drivers is often triggered by things that in any other context would not be permissible. So for example, a minor delay to your journey is seen as a legitimate cause of becoming angry. And and this is why I think the real explanation doesn’t sit within a person’s head. The real explanations for this sit at the level of our culture. You know, we have a strange cultural, double standard about almost every aspect of motoring. One part of which is it’s perfectly fine to be aggressive and to assault people, as long as you do it with a car.

Ian Walker 27:47
And we are seeing it to absolutely horrific effect in America at the moment, you know, with these big big muscle SUVs going through the city of Portland with the driveers – if As if they’re not aggressive enough, then that Macing people out of the window. And then of course, you’ve got the President saying, well, they’re patriots doing that you think, Oh my god, that behaviour is going to be so cemented in people?

Ian Walker 28:13
Well, I mean, it fits into a slightly wider picture as well, doesn’t it have something that society has wrestled with for literally thousands of years, is how do we reconcile people’s freedoms when they’re not when they’re in conflict with each other? So how do we reconcile my freedom to drive whatever I want, however, I want, with your freedom to be safe from the consequences of that and your freedom to not breathe poisoned air and things like this. And ultimately, the way we’ve addressed that, that conflict between your freedom and my freedom for quite a long time in countries like ours and countries like the United States, has been to say Well, if you’ve bought the car, your freedoms are more important than the person who isn’t in the car. So the person who’s not in the car will be at the edge of the road, in their space at the edge of the road, the person who’s not in the car will pause and wait until the person in the car has got out of the way. before crossing the road, the person who’s not in the car will make a special journey to a designated crossing point, so as not to inconvenience the person in the car. And, and hopefully the various things we’ve been talking about here today, you know, the ideas coming from grant shops, the ltn 120 guidance for promoting active travel. I’d really like to believe that these are the beginning of a swing in the opposite direction where we say, Well, you know, the person who just wants to walk down the street, their freedoms are important to their freedom to make a journey, their freedom to breathe clean air, their freedom to be able to go to the shop without their life being in danger. Hopefully we’re seeing a rebalancing towards those freedoms being taken seriously as the freedom of Yeah, I’m good. I’m doing air quotes here, the freedom to drive what you like.

Carlton Reid 30:13
Oh, well, we’ve now got into not just

Ian Walker 30:17
recent government announced we’ve gone back thousands of years into, into absolutely, how we classify freedom. But at this juncture in I would now like to cut for a commercial break. And we will be back, however, to talk about your absolutely fantastic book.

David Bernstein 30:38
Hey, Carlton, thanks so much. And it’s it’s always my pleasure to talk about our advertiser. This is a long time loyal advertiser. You all know who I’m talking about? It’s Jenson USA at Jenson usa.com/thespokesmen. I’ve been telling you for years now years, that Jenson is the place where you can get a great selection have every kind of product that you need for your cycling lifestyle at amazing prices and what really sets them apart. Because of course, there’s lots of online retailers out there. But what really sets them apart is their unbelievable support. When you call and you’ve got a question about something, you’ll end up talking to one of their gear advisors and these are cyclists. I’ve been there I’ve seen it. These are folks who who ride their bikes to and from work. These are folks who ride at lunch who go out on group rides after work because they just enjoy cycling so much. And, and so you know that when you call, you’ll be talking to somebody who has knowledge of the products that you’re calling about. If you’re looking for a new bike, whether it’s a mountain bike, a road bike, a gravel bike, a fat bike, what are you looking for? Go ahead and check him out. Jenson USA, they are the place where you will find everything you need for your cycling lifestyle. It’s Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. We thank them so much for their support and we thank you supporting Jenson USA. All right, Carlton, let’s get back to the show.

Ian Walker 32:05
Thanks, David. And we are back with Ian Walker. In the first half of the show, he went through his psychological training and background. And in the second half of this show, we’re going to switch completely different lives. It’s almost as if we’re having like Mr. Wheeler, Mr. Walker conversation here we’ve got two different people we’ve got Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde here in that psychology psychologist in is different to this other guy, this athlete in these these are two different people you would you would think so Ian, you’ve written this brilliant book. It’s called Endless Perfect Circles and I’m gonna be asking you questions that I know the answer to because you’ve written down in your book. I’ve still got to ask them so I will I will come and ask them but but first of all, so this is this is a story about a number of endurance rides you’ve done and and and run system running in there too, but just tell us How did you get into long distance endurance sports in the first place?

Ian Walker 33:08
Well, I basically did it very late. So what I’ve explained at the start of this book is I went to a fairly poor School, where, yeah, most things were not really encouraged. So they certainly weren’t very good at encouraging people to learn. But also in particular, the teachers there had no real ability to push or encourage people to have a good sport. And so basically, the short version is I came out of school 1618 years old, absolutely convinced that I had no ability to do sport whatsoever. And I hung on to that perception for something like 25 years. And then shortly after turning 40 I got encouraged to have a go at long running race, which I did on a spur of the moment decision and yeah, okay, yeah, let’s do it when a friend invited me. And from that point on, I did this first long distance running race, and actually did reasonably well at it. And one of the things that I keep coming back to across the course of this book is how long it took me to go from 25 years of thinking I could not do anything sporty, to realising I was actually reasonably good at certain sports, and just how difficult it was to claw back 25 years of misperception on that count,

Ian Walker 34:41
And you are not just kind of okay at it. You’re a record holder. So you can tell us about that. That the way you you didn’t, you were going to go one way across Europe and they decide to go north south to Europe. will tell us about all the different rides you’ve done. So let’s get into the cycling. Talk about the the record breaking across Europe. But then also tell us about the you know, the trans continental and all the right races that you’ve done and where you came in them, for instance,

Ian Walker 35:12
well it was so I was very, very happily doing long distance running. And I’d found this wonderful world full of amazing, friendly accommodating people, everyone so encouraging. And then I stumbled across a photo essay on the stryver website about a race called the transcontinental race. And this essay just revealed to me a whole new world of scale. So I’d done running races that take, you know, maybe a day or so, and at the time, running for an entire day, feels vast It feels like this huge event. But then I started reading this essay and realise that there was a world of cycling races That went to a whole new level. And that if I was to start riding a bike, I could do events that didn’t last a day, I could do events that maybe lasted two weeks. And I just got absolutely hooked on on this idea of, of just handing myself over just like putting my life on hold for one or two weeks or more, and just taking part in a race that that is your whole world for that period. And so I entered the transcontinental race back in 2017 or 2017, and just threw myself in at the deep end again. Basically, I bought a bike started riding through myself in the race and did a lot better than I thought I would certainly not troubling the winner, but I was sort of fairly high in the field despite having lots and lots of punctures and breakdowns and getting stranded in Romania. And things like this. And so the following year, I decided to have a go at another race of the same sort, which is called the North Cape 4000. That race, it’s similar bikepacking self supported. Hundreds of riders set off from the north of Italy. And it’s a race to the very top of Norway. So the very, very last point in Europe if you’re heading north called North Cape, so it’s about 4300 kilometres. And basically, again, I set out just with a view of, let’s see what happens. And then there was this really astonishing turning points partway through the race, where I realised that if I was bowled, and if I really, really pushed myself, I had a chance to get into the lead of the race. And I’d never done anything like this before. And you’ve got to remember this 25 years of thinking I didn’t do sport, to suddenly find myself in that decision point of interest. Heck, okay, I’m, I’m actually in a position here where I could take the lead in an international race. And to do that, to make that jump, required opening quite a few new doors, it involved partly just pushing myself physically much further than I ever had in the past. But also, it really did involve throwing off this mental baggage of believing that I was a person who could not compete. And so, yeah, taking part in that race just was transformational. Because I made that decision. I made that decision of like, okay, yeah, let’s let’s do this. Let’s just see what happens if I try to win if I try to do sport properly, and so I threw myself in and there was a bother. Well, for an outsider, thrilling, and for me, nerve wracking section of about five days or so, of being in the lead If the race to the finish, and I book I refer to it as the thousand mile breakaway, and it genuinely was 1000 miles of me riding as hard as I possibly could, with the entire rest of the race chasing me down. And I’ve got to say it was so incredibly mentally stressful to spend days being hunted like that. But again, you know, it, the whole thing was just this revelator experience of to discover what it’s like to push myself that hard. And thankfully, I was able to maintain that lead to the finish and, and was able to finish in first place.

Ian Walker 39:42
Which was, which was, as I say, quite revelatory given my background and how I’d for so long carried around the idea I couldn’t do this. And then that brings me on to the final thing, which in many ways is the meat of this book. Which was me saying to myself, Okay, I’ve competed I’ve won this international race. And maybe I am actually okay at this stuff. How can I go further? What’s the next step for me? And the answer I came up with was to try and break the record for cycling across Europe as fast as possible.

Ian Walker 40:20
And how fast did you do it?

Ian Walker 40:24
And so I went from I went back to North Cape at the top of Norway. And I set out there and headed south aiming for to reefer which is the southernmost point in Spain. So it’s from the very top to the very bottom of Europe. And, and I managed to do it in 16 days, 20 hours and 59 minutes. So that was averaging 377 kilometres a day. I was riding for 16 to 18 hours every day. Pretty much a non stop efforts. And then there’s all sorts of Extra challenges involved in this. So for example, because I wanted to do it as a Guinness World Record, they place all sorts of restrictions on what counts as a record attempt. And critically, one of the things is it must be continually overland. So that raises all sorts of extra issues like, you have to go through Russia. There’s no way to get from the north to the south of Europe without going through Russia. And your that raised all sorts of interesting questions about customs and border controls. And frankly, the astonishingly bad standards of St. Petersburg drivers.

Ian Walker 41:41
And then you got through Russia. And you actually got through the checkpoints much quicker than you thought, didn’t you?

Ian Walker 41:48
Yes, sir. I I’d read all sorts of stories about people going through Russian border controls. And in particular, the one that stuck with me was Sean Conway, who at one point broke the record for cycling east to west across Europe. And he’d written about, you know, being made to empty his bags out and wait around for hours. And, you know, it sounds and I’d read various other stories from previous cyclists who talked about just hours and hours of delay and bureaucracy and aggressive border guards and being searched and questioned over and over again. And in the end, I turned up and basically found this young Russian woman who was going through ahead of me, and I just sort of latched on to her and essentially pretended to be her boyfriend without her realising. And whistled through the whole thing in about five minutes, which is fantastic.

Ian Walker 42:45
So you mentioned roads there and then the very different so you go from one border to another border and all of a sudden the road a completely different so where where were the best roads? Where were the worst roads?

Ian Walker 42:55
Oh, there’s a question and probably the best roads I’ve ever written were earlier on the transcontinental race where I would say Austria and Switzerland have some of the greatest roads, just very well constructed really great surfaces. And again, in the transcontinental race, the worst roads by far has been Macedonia. You’ve got really long stretches that are just cobbled roads. And you bear in mind I was hitting these after something like 12 days or sitting on a bicycle saddle, and doing 20 kilometres of cobbled road after you’ve been sat on a bike for two weeks is not much fun. So that they’re the worst on the most recent journey when I did the record for crossing Europe. Probably the, the scariest road so the worst road in terms of the traffic was definitely Russia in going through St. Petersburg. And they just have these vast, vast six eight lane boulevards, full of speeding traffic people literally crashing into one another. Right next to me. It was genuinely terrifying at times to get through there. One of the curious things was that a couple of days later, I found one of the easiest fastest roads, which was in Latvia. And there’s a section there where you’re allowed to cycle on the motorway on the freeway. And, to my surprise, that actually felt much safer than most of the roads, because ultimately, a lot of roads any any kind of reasonably substantial road, the traffic is going that speed Anyway, you know, hundred hundred and 10 kilometres an hour 60, 70 miles an hour. Whereas on a typical road, you’ve got the traffic doing those speeds past you, and you’ve only got a little bit of shoulder at the edge. Whereas on the motorway, you’ve got an entire lane to buffer you from the traffic and the speeds are essentially the Same so the motorway felt incredibly convenient and safe compared to typical roads.

Ian Walker 45:06
And then in Spain you did a long stretch before Seville where there was a like a parallel road so there’s that like a tip would be to find a motorway and then found like an equivalent a road that’s that’s like next to it.

Ian Walker 45:22
Yeah, I did that really deliberately. So I what I did for the whole course, I looked for new motorways, and Spain has had a lot of new motorways built in the last sort of 1015 years. And I found this stretch that went for hundreds of kilometres, where there was the new motorway built directly parallel to the what was the Old Main Road and the old roads are all still there. And it was just unbelievably convenient. Because the roads that have been replaced, they’re still there that well surface they’re good quality roads. They Pass through towns, their shops, there’s petrol stations, there’s motels, all the facilities are still there from when they were main roads, but there’s hardly any traffic on them. So I just spent like three days, gliding along these highways at almost having them to myself with the incredible convenience of being able to stop and get food and water and so on whenever I needed to. So that is an absolute top tip. Look for motorways and look for the roads that they’ve replaced.

Ian Walker 46:30
Another top tip in the book is the what you do when you go into a hotel. So, so describe how you get your, your bike past the receptionist.

Ian Walker 46:41
Well, this is a really good one. And in fact, I mentioned that I was riding this weekend with a friend and we stayed in a couple of hotels this weekend and I was able to demonstrate to him that this works. So what I’ve discovered and I think any of your listeners who’ve gone on cycling trips will probably have experienced this The typical thing when you’re going to a hotel is you come up to the reception desk, and the receptionist will say, okay, you need to leave your bike outside. And what I found that just magically works almost every time is, if you carry your bike in, rather than wheel it in, they almost always let you take it into your room. I think when you wheel your bike in, and you’ve got the clicking free wheel, and it’s making noise, and they see the wheels going across the floor, it starts to make people ask questions and say, Well, look, that thing’s a vehicle that needs to be outside. I don’t want that filthy thing in the room. Whereas if you carry it in, on the one hand, it’s silent. And I think also, it seems to send this message to people of, Oh, well, you know, he’s got it in his hands. It’s just another piece of luggage. I guess it’s fine if it goes to the room. And I i’ve, since I discovered the secret of carrying bikes into hotels, I don’t think I’ve ever been refused. Taking it up to my room, which is just this magical little trick

Ian Walker 48:04
It is a good tip. I mean, even if you’re you’re you with a bike with lots of bags on, you could probably take them off before you go into the hotel and still do the same trick. You don’t have a lightweight bike like you’ve gotten a bike. So yeah, we’re kind of describing your route. in stages here. We’re kind of like we’ve definitely segwayed away, but you’re not you’re now in Spain. You’re on this wonderful motorway or road that’s parallel to the motorway and then you you’re very nearly at the end, but then you have a meeting with with your girlfriend Hmm. And you how many kilometres Have you still got to do I mean, that must have been so so numbing to do that after you’ve met somebody after haven’t seen anybody. For a long time.

Ian Walker 48:49
It was so hard. So something I learnt a year or two earlier in my first big bike packing race was I really learned and I learned this the hard way. I learned that pushing through the night is a bit of a mistake. And yet, you know, just to prove that we’re all capable of being absolute idiots at times, as I came towards the end of the world record crossing, I failed to remember that lesson and decided I was going to push right through the night to get to the finish. So at this point, I’d written something like 300 kilometres, it was another 200 to the finish. And I thought, gar, come

Ian Walker 49:29
on, let’s do this. Let’s just let’s push

Ian Walker 49:31
through the night and get this done. And so I set off and basically, as I should have predicted, I just slowed down and I slowed down, and by my speed plummeted, it became harder and harder, keeping myself focused and going forward became harder, you know, your, your body just wants to shut down at three o’clock in the morning. And so I’m pushing myself through this My girlfriend and our parents heard arrived in Spain the day before. And up to that point, I’d really deliberately said, No, don’t come and meet me. I will meet you at the finish. I wanted to keep myself focused keep myself in this little bubble of just me. And so I thought if I met them, it might almost break the ceiling. And, you know, stop me being able to focus on just keep moving forward. But in the middle of that night, I just cracked it was something like four o’clock in the morning, I was cold, I was hungry. I was really exhausted. I still had quite a long way to get to the finish. I was crawling along to terrible speed on some really hilly roads. And I just cracked and I phoned Louise and said, Did you think maybe you could come meet me after all, and so they came out and we caught it with each other in a A nighttime car parked outside a restaurant. And in some ways that was great. It was really nice to have somebody pat me on the back and tell me I wasn’t far to the finish. But then on the other hand, it did as you alluded to, it was, it was almost mentally hard for them because having that external world reappear, and burst my bubble made me realise how far it was still to the finish. And it was still maybe four more hours of riding to the finish. And that was the longest four hours you can imagine. So it was a really tricky one. It was it was really great to see them and get that, that boost of seeing familiar people. But at the same time, there was an effect of the bubble bursting, and being brought out of my own head, after being in there for 16 days was a really dislocating experience.

Ian Walker 52:00
So a lot of this writing a lot of what you talked about in the book is about what’s in your head. Because clearly humans are capable of these feats of endurance we know that we are physiologically capable of doing amazing things you know that’s that’s just our ancestors and living in the in the forest have given us that and long distance running etc. But then the modern person has then got to get round these in their head. So, a What are you thinking about? And are you using any psychological training is any tips you can give us from your your day job as to how to get through what can often be a grind?

Ian Walker 52:44
It is a grind and yet so to give, give the game away slightly. A really substantial chunk of this book is what I’ve learned along the way about how you deal with difficulty how you deal with keeping yourself moving when you don’t want to. And, you know, I’ve really partly from my own experience, and partly from listening to other people with experience, I’ve managed to capture a whole load of information about ways you can do this. And one of the things that I think is really interesting is how what I’ve been able to do is use endurance sport, as a kind of practice for suffering. And I think other people have had the same experience of how you can, you know, there are times in life when things are hard, and there are times in life when keeping going can be difficult. And endurance sport is a place where you can practice in a fairly safe, comfortable sort of way. The techniques that you need to be able to keep yourself moving when life gets difficult. It’s almost you know, it’s like a dry run for coping with adversity. And a way to test yourself and learn that you are able to keep going, you are capable of pushing on when things are really difficult, that you just need to find the ways that will motivate you and the ways that will keep you going forward. And so what I’ve done here is share all the various things I’ve come across the good ways of keeping myself moving forward. And so sometimes, you know, that’s as simple as breaking down the task ahead of you. So certainly, when you’re travelling a long distance under your own steam, you hundred percent can never, ever allow yourself to think about the destination. If you’re trying to think about the end point, it’s always always too far away. That Thank you thinking about it will never be useful. So it It’s all about breaking down the enormity of the task into tiny little sub goals, because each tiny little sub goal is a victory. And it might be that those sub goals if it’s really tough, those sub goals might be something as simple as getting to the next tree getting to the next road junction, it might be that the sub goal is simply getting 30 metres further up the road, but that’s fine. After that 30 metres, you’ve had a little victory, and you’re further on than you were before. And as long as you can keep yourself just in the moment, and don’t look too far ahead. Just keep yourself in the moment, focus on something tangible and achievable, like reaching the next street sign. And that is amazing for keeping you going. And the other thing that I talked about quite a lot is the importance of acceptance. And this is where there’s some overlap with my more professional, psychological World, one of the things that I’ve really come to value from doing endurance sports is the kind of pleasure or liberation, I’m not quite sure what the right word would be. But the there’s a real joy in accepting difficulty there, putting yourself in a difficult position and saying, This is it, it’s going to be like this for a while, and it becomes pleasurable. At the point you stop fighting the difficulty, if you’re in a situation that can’t get better. So, you know, if I’ve put myself in a position where I’m 200 kilometres from the nearest source of food, and it’s the middle of the night or something like this, and maybe I’m really tired. And, you know, I’m falling asleep, and I just want to stop moving. And there’s nothing to be gained by giving into that by fighting that, you know, if my circumstances are hard, just wishing They were different isn’t going to make life better. Where what I find works for me is to give into it to say, Okay, yeah, I’m in a really tough situation here. Okay, that’s fine. I accept the fact I’m in a tough situation. And that allows me to keep moving. That that acceptance that that giving into it, and frees you up. And as soon as you’re freed from trying to fight your situation, dealing with the situation becomes wildly easier.

Ian Walker 57:32
So I loved the microcosm of life in the book in that if you do something incredibly hard, this then translate into into the real world. I’m gonna give you an anecdote now, if you don’t mind. So I’ve been in my dim and distant past I have been a long distance cycle tourist – I’ve not done it in record breaking times, I took lots of bags and stuff on but I have done you know, cross, Europe and cross continental trips. I’ve also done 24 hour solo mountain biking in the past, so I know that kind of aspect of your book about going through the night again, it’s not 16 days of it, but it’s 24 hours. It’s it’s through the night. But it’s the bit in your book where you talk about this is you know how you can you can treat your life like this, if you do these endurance events. If you could do this, you can do anything in effect. And the anecdote is one of my early tours in the UK long before I did anything across Europe, was going to see my sister in Nottingham, and I was living in Norwich at the time it was only 100 miles. So it wasn’t a huge distance. But I had bags on because I was going touring. It’s so it’s five in the morning. And it was very soon I started having diarrhoea and I then had to go 105 miles with incredibly bad stomach cramps, and that to this day is my worst day ever ride for all the reasons you can imagine, like, you know, disappearing behind you know, haystacks and the just the sheer physical and discomfort of that and, and I didn’t want to stop I was just going to go ahead and do this anyway, I’m not going to turn back. And that was a life lesson for me in that and I’ve always used that that’s always in my head. Whenever there is a I do a tough ride anything tough in life, I always go and this is now 30, 40 years since this happened, but I always go Yeah, it’s not as hard as travelling through the day with with chronic diarrhoea. So there you go. Yeah, that’s that’s, that’s my anecdote on on toughness. Now, in your book, you describe it as a as a textbook, because of what you learned. So it’s absolutely people will who buy this, and I do recommend they buy this book, don’t just take the anecdotes that Ian’s giving you now because they’re far funnier in the book, not that you’re not funny in real life here, but in the book that absolutely fantastic and I just want to get on to now and I’ll read some of the ads because they are they are just laugh out loud funny, some of them and I’ve grouped them all together and maybe you can you can you can describe them in yourself. But it’s the food so clearly a cyclist has got to be fueled. So that’s that’s absolutely top of your mind when when you’re riding is so when my question is what are you thinking of? You’re probably thinking about most of the time. But this for anecdotes that I’ve that I’ve picked out. And I’ve described first and we can we can go into greater depth. So here they are. It’s the 7-Day croissant. It’s the anecdote about seagulls and fish and chips or one seagull probably. I’m hoping it’s just one seagull. Latvia’s one kilo bags of yoghurt, I laughed out loud at that one just imagining you doing this and then the ‘one in one out’ policy. So we’ll go backwards out what is your ‘one in one out’ policy in for saving time?

Ian Walker 1:01:05
Oh, this is horrible. So if you’re eating, I think you should probably put your food down now. And yeah, this was on the record attempt, one of the things that was going to make all the difference was being efficient with my time. You know, that obviously, I trained really hard. But you very quickly realise there’s a point where I, there’s a limit to how fast I can pedal the bike. But there’s no limit to how much time I could waste off the bike. And one of the things I had to do was be really efficient and spend as little time as possible off the bike. Because if I’m on the bike and moving, that’s forward progress, that’s good. That’s getting me towards the goal. And so I had this really strict 30 minutes. rule for myself in the mornings that I woke up, I had to be on the road within 30 minutes of waking up and that might not sound much at the moment. By if that sounds easy, I challenge you to have a go at it, when that includes making breakfast, getting dressed, servicing your bike, and so on and so on. So one of the things I hit upon as a way of trying to get as much done as quickly as possible in the mornings, was I started having breakfast while sitting on the toilet. So that was my one in one out policy was basically shoving food in one end as yesterday’s food came out the other way.

Ian Walker 1:02:29
I don’t know why you mentioned that because that’s just normally. Yeah, that would that was definitely funny. And I can actually recognise that that is that is yes, I won’t I won’t go any further than that. Right. Latvia has one kilo bags of yoghurt. So what did you do to Why are these bags of yoghurt so good. And what do you do with that that made it so special in the book?

Ian Walker 1:02:48
Well, the thing is, when you’re writing these sorts of distances, life just becomes entirely focused on finding calories. So you know, I’m burning through eight hours. And 10,000 calories a day, on top of just whatever’s needed to stay alive. So that is just a hell of a lot of food. And especially after a few days on the road eating junk from petrol stations and stuff like this, you really start to lose taste for food, it becomes hard to make yourself eat after a few days of vast amounts of cheap, nasty food. And one of the things I stumbled across when I crossed Latvia the first time during the North Cape 4000 race was in the supermarkets, they have these kilogramme sacks of yoghurt and ease are intended to last a family for a week. So you know, the idea was to have a little squirt of this on your breakfast in the morning. But this kilogramme of yoghurt it’s something like 1200 or 1500 calories in a bag. And it turns out you can rip the corn off the bag and just fester. Work the whole thing down your face in 10 seconds at While I was able to get something like 1500 calories into me with one big squirt of this bag, the problem is it turns out, people don’t think it looks very good when you’ve got witnesses. So at one point I came out of a soup and chug two week supply of yoghurt in 10 seconds. And there’s basically a village full of people staring at me in disgust. But yeah, I didn’t care. It was it was entirely functional and got the job done.

Carlton Reid 1:04:29
That was wonderful. That worked. That was I’m laughing now and I’m laughing when it was in the book as well. That was great. I’m going to go I’m going to finish with the fish and chip supper anecdote last but first of all, let’s go to the 7-Day croissant – so what’s the 7-Day croissant? Would you eat one now? And why is it so good for the trip?

Ian Walker 1:04:47
Well, the 7-Day croissant is almost like a talisman for long distance European cyclists. So what they are they are these pre packaged croissant that are sold all over eastern Europe. So basically Basically, that used to be, I’m now imagining there used to be hidden behind the Iron Curtain. And but, you know, as the Iron Curtain fell, then the 7-Day croissant were released. So basically you only find them in the old Eastern Bloc. So you know, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia places like that. And they’re basically absolutely foul. But you can buy them in almost every single shop and petrol station, they’re incredibly cheap, and they’ve got a huge amount of calories in them. And you know, they’re just convenient because you can just stuffed them in your jersey pocket and eat them on the move and so on. So they are absolutely rancid. And I just realised I’m not going to get a sponsorship deal this way am I but they taste vile. But they are so incredibly convenient for the fact you can just shove them in a pocket you can buy them every shop, that I ended up eating them the whole time in Eastern Europe on all three trips.

Carlton Reid 1:06:02
Would you eat one now, when you’re away from the bike and away from this trip?

Ian Walker 1:06:05
Well, I have actually eaten one quite recently. So about a month ago, I cycled down to the south coast where one of my friends lives. And yeah, basically there back in a day just to have lunch with him. And as a little surprise, he ran off to the Polish shop the day before, and bought me a triple of 7-Day croissants.

Ian Walker 1:06:28
And so I did eat them on the way home all time.

Carlton Reid 1:06:31
Very good. And then the final anecdote I’d like you to recount and you’re going to recount this cleanly, in that you can’t say the same word you said in the book. You have to have some of the euphemism. Some other way of expressing this, but talk about this is a trip in Wales. And this is a seagull supper, we could say,

Ian Walker 1:06:53
yeah, this was a ride. Actually. Coincidentally, it was a ride I was doing exactly two years ago. today because Google Photos reminded me this morning, so exactly two years ago today, I was doing 1000 kilometre ride with a friend in Wales. And we were, I think two days in at this point. And we’ve had a really tough day of climbing because Wales is a hilly country. And we were in a little town called Bala. Towards the end of the day, we still had maybe five hours or so to go and we stopped to eat and we got to the fish and chip shop in Bala just as it was closing so it was one of those real skin of your teeth moments where you’re thinking I’ve I’ve been here just five minutes later I wouldn’t have been able to have any food. So I got this fish and chips, massive fish and chip dinner. And we were sat on a bench outside and some huge dunking great bird just did the biggest plop across my dinner. And so you can just imagine my faces I’m starving, hungry. I’ve got the Only hot food in town and I’m just watching seagull droppings, erupt across my dinner. But the thing is, and this is one of those things that makes you wonder about long distance cycling, I was so hungry. I just pushed all the plop to one side and carried on eating. And that’s the sort of animal that you become after a couple of days on the road. And that was only going around Wales. That wasn’t like crossing Europe that was just three days in Wales.

Carlton Reid 1:08:31
Okay, so I’m not giving every single part of the book away. There’s still tonnes of people that people will find hilarious and and fascinating in this book. So but yes, that’s a fantastic anecdote and thank you for giving, fleshing that out. And thank you all. So for the the euphemisms for the word. Which actually, I think an Anglo Saxon phrase actually probably makes it funnier. Anyway, yes. That was excellent. Thank you. Now again, I’m going to ask you a question that I know the answer to but let’s talk about it anyway. And that is your coaching. So in previous ride you didn’t have a coach, but in the in the in the record attempt you got coached

Ian Walker 1:09:11
Yeah, it was it was genuinely a sort of a situation of not wanting to have any possible regrets. You know, I knew I was almost certainly only ever going to try something like this once. And I it became really important to me that if if things went wrong if I didn’t manage to break the record, and I didn’t want to have any regrets in the future, I didn’t want to risk looking back on this as an old man and thinking, you know, I reckon I could have broken that record If only I’d done something different. So I decided that the best way to leave no stone unturned was to find an expert and I found a wonderful coach called Holly Seear, who’s a very experienced cycle coach. And she was absolutely wonderful for helping me in all sorts of different ways just get on top of the process, partly just making sure I did enough training of the right type, which of course is exactly what you’d hoped from a coach. And but she was also very good at helping me think about logistics thinking about how much I needed to eat and all those kinds of things. And so she fulfilled the whole role of a whole raft of different roles. Partly just the raw physiological knowledge that’s needed to make a good athlete, but also she was a sounding board she was encouraging. She was a planner and so yeah, I really valued working with her on this.

Carlton Reid 1:10:43
I want to talk about dotwatchers now because I’m sure lots of people who listen to this potentially dotwatch you have said they might have dotwatched other people I’ve certainly dotwatched my son who cycled back from from from China and he want to have one of these Spot GPS devices on so just explain what a dotwatcher is and and why they were very important to you and how you sometimes met them on the road?

Ian Walker 1:11:06
yet, so I think ultra distance cycling does actually have a slightly

Ian Walker 1:11:14
hidden world of spectators. And it’s the thing that makes it slightly unusual is it’s probably the only spectator sport that unfolds even slower than cricket. So you know, cricket fans have got extraordinary patience watching an event unfold over five days, whereas the people who enjoy watching endurance cycling ultra and john cycling, there’ll be watching races unfold over two weeks. And obviously, when the race is unfolding across an entire continent, you can’t televise it, you can’t watch it, and so on. So the way people follow the races is that the riders carry satellite trackers that upload their positions. Every five or 10 minutes through communication satellites, and the race organisers will provide a map of the continent. And you can see exactly where every rider is. And it’s, you know, you’ve obviously had a go at this, I’ve watched other people’s races. And it’s just it’s kind of strangely compelling, fascinating thing to sit at home, at refreshing your web browser every couple of hours and seeing how the race is unfolding, especially when you’ve got some of the races that allow riders to choose a route. So for example, the North Cape 4000 rate that I mentioned earlier that had a fixed route, we all had to follow exactly the same path. Whereas a race like the trans continental, you can go whichever way you want, as long as you hit the checkpoints. And so there’s such an excitement of going, Oh my God, look, she’s gone that way. And he’s gone that way. I wonder who’s going to get there first and you’ll sit there for maybe a day watching these two lines converge on the butor in just thrilling to see, see this thing unfolding such slow motion. And so the people who who spectate on these ultra distance sports, become known as dot watches. And one of the things that I just absolutely loved of the past few years is where you bump into them. So because of course, there’s this real asymmetrical relationship where they know where you are, but you don’t know where they are. And every now and again, you’ll just meet somebody in the streets. So for example, you know, on the transcontinental race, I was riding through a really old Slovenian city called Ptuy, which I think is how you pronounce it. P. T. U. Y., if anyone wants to look it up, it’s really beautiful. And as I’ve rolled into the town, there’s a young woman there, and she just waved and made a sort of stop/stop/stop gesture. And she’d been watching the race and she’d come out and she was greeting everybody who came through that town and similarly other parts of the world. So you know, in Serbia and in Italy and places like this, people would just appear out of nowhere and say, Hey, you must be Ian, I’ve been watching you on the tracker. And it’s just this absolute delight after, you know, maybe you’ve been riding for a week at this point. And you’ve just spent seven days completely inside your own head, focusing on the race, and it’s an absolute joy to have somebody just appear and drag you out of that for a few minutes and be reminded that you’re part of this bigger event. And so the dotwatchers are just one of the most wonderful things about this sport.

Carlton Reid 1:14:40
But you’re also a dotwatcher. Certainly when you’re doing it against other people, because you’re watching where the people who are chasing you are coming with so that’s also a demotivator for you. or perhaps a motivator?

Ian Walker 1:14:53
Yeah, and it’s one of the things I mentioned earlier that’s in the North Cape 4000 race where I was able to take the lead with 1000 miles to go, I became really quite obsessive about checking the tracker, because obviously you can look on your phone and see where the entire rest of the pack is. And it almost became unhealthy just how much I was fixating on where everybody else was, especially because there were one or two riders whose trackers weren’t updating very frequently. And so you the addition, the additional stress was quite considerable. I was in this position where I was pushing myself to the absolute physical limits in a way that I’d never done before. And then to have the additional mental anguish of worrying about where everybody else is and, you know, are they catching me up? Are they going to appear on this next bend without me realising it? Yeah, it became really quite a stressful thing. And in the end, I had to just stop myself looking at all I just said, Look, knowing where people are, cannot change the outcome of this, all I can do is just write as fast as I possibly can. And I just have to put the phone away and devote myself to just writing as fast as possible.

Carlton Reid 1:16:14
Always checking people like that uses battery life, which must be stressful in its own way, because you are not always going to be at hotels you sometimes can be sleeping in, in all sorts of exotic and not so exotic roadside locations where you’re not going to get electricity. So describe how you charge your electronic devices. And I know it’s different in the later races because you’ve now got your own onboard electricity generation. But talk about how you originally did it and then why you went to onboard electricity generation.

Ian Walker 1:16:51
Yeah, so for the first of the two big races for the Transcontinental and the North Cape. I took just a big battery Packer sort of to dead 20,000 milliamp hour USB battery pack, and I’d use that to recharge my bike computer, my phone, my lights, and it works kind of okay, that would be enough power to get me two to three days of autonomous riding. But the problem was, I had a moment on the North Cape 4000 race where it really led me down at a bad moment. So it was maybe 11 o’clock at night, I was quite high in the mountains in czechia. And I just ended up low on power. And so I was forced into a hotel you know, several hours earlier than I would have liked to, just because hotels were the only place you could get a good recharge. And so it really is kind of threw a spanner in my plans for that day. It led to me doing what I knew was a mistake, which is sleeping at altitude, because this was just near the border with Poland. And it’s quite mountainous and the border is up on top of the mountains. And sleeping high up is a mistake, because it means that when you start the next day, you’re descending without doing any physical work in the cold air. So you always get really cold if you sleep altitude. And so having made that mistake and having, you know, been caught out and have had to change my schedule to fit the needs of my battery pack, rather than have the battery pack work for me, I realised I needed to become more autonomous. And so I switched over to a dynamo system. And that has just been absolutely wonderful. It means I can run a headlight on full brightness the whole time, which makes night lighting so much safer and faster. It means I’ve got USB charging facilities so I can charge my computer and my phone and and that autonomy just opens up options and it’s always nice to have options. So even if I do end up sleeping in a hotel or whether I end up sleeping in a bush shelter. I can in principle, I can keep going indefinitely. And just knowing that I’ve got the freedom to go indefinitely if I want to removes a big source of anxiety, and lets you ride much more efficiently.

Carlton Reid 1:19:19
Hmm. So, the final question is I’m going to I’m going to going to come back to the first part of this show and that in and that is, when we’re discussing the, in the first episode we’re talking about how cycleways are the way to go. distracted drivers and all sorts of aggression on the road is not very nice. That’s that in that’s the, that’s the cerebral Ian, and then if we come into this half of the show, where we’re talking about the the athlete Ian, there going across Europe as fast as you can, in that’s an Ian that that that is throwing all that out the window because you’re going on fast roads where you’re going to guaranteed to get these awful drivers to how do you square those two circles, those two different Ian’s?

Ian Walker 1:20:13
Yeah, that’s a very good question. And I don’t know if I do entirely. Certainly, as you’ve alluded to they’re racing for long distances forces you to ask yourself some questions about which roads you will travel on. Because I think, for most people, given a free choice of going from A to B, across a continent like Europe, you would naturally seek out the back roads, the quiet lanes for all sorts of reasons, partly because they’re quieter and safer, but also they’re often more scenic. Whereas something I realised quite early on in my bike racing was, if you want to go fast, that’s not an option. If you want to go fast, you’ve got to take Bigger roads. Now, having said that, one of the things I’ve realised is there are bigger roads and there are bigger roads, and they’re not all the same. And it’s a little bit like with the motorway that I mentioned earlier. I have found that, you know, a good, wide, long, straight road, where there’s plenty of space at the edge, they don’t feel bad, you know, even with trucks going past and, and so on and so on. And lock the drivers, it doesn’t feel particularly dangerous. Probably the thing above all that determines how safer road feels when you’ve got the bigger roads is just the width. So a nice wide road just means everybody’s got some space to coexist. It’s when things get narrow, that it doesn’t feel as safe. But in terms of how I reconcile that with the professional roadside In? I don’t know, I just don’t know what the long term solution could be, I can’t realistically imagine a situation where we’re going to get lovely, safe, efficient, off road cycle facilities that travel long distances across the continents or even across the country. And so, to some extent, the solution will have to be getting drivers in check.

Ian Walker 1:22:27
Absolutely. Now, that’s going to be the end of this show they’re in. So now is the point where we can plug your book with actual details. So I want three things off you on where you can get your book from. Maybe from from yourself, I’m sure because I’ve seen that on Twitter that you have other copies, you’re quite happy to sign them. Secondly, I want to know where people can find you on social media. And then thirdly, websites, and specifically because we talked about the crate on the road. So where can people read if they indeed is still a blog that’s still going on? It’s still fine, double anyway. So those three things in,

Ian Walker 1:23:16
right three things. So first, the book, it’s called Endless Perfect Circles. It has all sorts of things in it. It’s not just anecdotes about crossing Europe. It’s also all the lessons that I’ve taken from doing it, how to cope with adversity, how to deal with difficult situations. And you can get that from pretty much anywhere you’d expect to get books. In reality, the fastest place to get it is Amazon, who have it in stock and can get it to sort of next day, or obviously the Kindle version, you can get instantly anywhere else that sells ebooks will have it so Barnes and Noble nook, all of those other places. They all have it Kobo or have it Immediate download, in principle, any physical bookshop can get a copy that, yeah, because it’s independently published, they might not have it in stock, but they can order it. If you ask. Alternatively, if you can find me on Twitter, where I’m @Ianwalker, I can probably send you a copy directly. But you might be to be honest, especially if you’re not in the UK, you’re probably going to find a bookshop the easier way. So yes, I’ve where I am @IanWalker, on Twitter, or at Iancyclesalot on Instagram. Or everything’s pulled together in one place at my website, which is drIanwalker.com, which has links everywhere. And finally, you do want to find that article about parking. That’s on my old blogspot thing, which I have not updated for a long time but does still exist and it’s bamboo badger.blogspot.com Which was a name that just popped into my head when I had to think of one very quickly. But if you go to bamboobadger.blogspot.com and search back to 2008, then I think you can find that article about parking cars.

Carlton Reid 1:25:13
Yes, or just follow me cuz I certainly send that one out on Twitter quite a lot. I think it’s a very apposite and timely and perennial, sadly perennial piece. Ian Walker, Dr. Ian Walker, thank you ever so much for being on today’s show that has been absolutely fascinating as the book is entertaining and fascinating in equal measure.

Ian Walker 1:25:40
So thank you. Thank you so much. I’ve really enjoyed it.

Carlton Reid 1:25:45
My thanks to the one and only Dr. Ian Walker for taking the time to talk with me there. I hope you enjoyed listening to today’s episode as much as I enjoyed recording it. The next show will probably be a roundtable with our usual suspects, attorney Jim Moss and my co-host David Bernstein. Meanwhile, get out there and ride..

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The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 254: From the Tour de Trump to the Tour de France via Arkansas

Monday 24th August 2020

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: David Bernstein and Jim Moss.

LINKS:

Forbes.com article on Donald Trump, the Tour de Trump and Joe Biden

Guardian article on Tour de France Covid protocols.

Bentonville, Arkansas: “Mountain bike capital of the world”

MACHINE TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 254 of the spokesman cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Monday 24th of August 2020.

David Bernstein 0:24
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson USA, where you’ll always find a great selection of products at amazing prices with unparalleled customer service. For more information, just go to Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast cycling podcast at www.Fredcast.com. I’m one of the hosts and producers of the Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast. For shownotes links and all sorts of other information please visit our website at www.the-spokesmen.com. And now, here are the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:08
Hi there. I’m Carlton Reid and after the last audio comm video episode with Josh Horton of turn, Hi there I’m Carlton Reid and after the last audio-cum-video episode with Josh Hon unveiling the new GSD we’re back with our usual suspects, my co-host David Bernstein and attorney Jim Moss. We talk about the Tour de Trump, Joe Biden’s bicycling technique, the Tour de France, airstream bike touring, mountain biking in Arkansas and other stuff. We’ve got a whole bunch of topics to talk about. I would like to start and we kind of like preempted this beforehand. And of course, David’s been in this industry for so long. Of course he was around at this point, but I’ve got a story on forbes.com and It’s actually going quite viral at the moment. It’s quite funny I put on last night because it’s President Trump, of course and his use of bicycling. And I smuggled in because I’ve been around the trade also for an awfully long time. I smuggled in, in this story, even though it’s a current story about his views about bicycling now and Joe Biden, I smuggled in the fact that Well, actually, Trump does have a bicycle connection. And this is a lot of people don’t know, this is the Tour de Trump in in the late 1980s. And then I asked David, I said, David, what do you know about where you still have any costs? David, you said you were so let’s get talking about President Trump’s views of bicycling right now. But let’s just go into to to Trump kind of memories and I’ll bring Jim in in a second. So David, what were you doing in the industry at this point?

David Bernstein 2:53
Yeah. So in those days, I was working for the parent company. Well, the parent company of a number of different Bike related brands, but I think the one that most people know the best is Tioga Tioga was a popular mountain bike and BMX brand. I mean, my goodness, I still see tires on BMX bikes that look a whole lot like the comp threes we used to make back in the 80s. And see you guys you guys remember these? And, you know, we were we were we were sponsoring john Tomek at the time. JOHN John’s, john was a great guy a great, he would do anything we wanted when it came to print ads, and we put him in some silly ads. And we were sponsoring Tinker Juarez and then of course, Johnny became a roadie as well as some of you may remember. And, yeah, so we were I was in I was in that business at the time. And certainly we had product in the Tour de Trump and the tour du Pont and which

Carlton Reid 3:57
is the race that came after So, to the drum was two years, DuPont was involved with the first two years but then took on the title sponsor. And then it faded because this was a Tour de France or meant to be the Tour de France. It was going to be eastern seaboard to begin with, but it was meant to then go the whole of the US, wasn’t it? That was the idea. Yeah. Tell David, tell me. What was the idea about this raised originally it was going to be bigger than the Tour de France.

David Bernstein 4:23
Well, well, you know, everything Trump does is supposed to be you know, a superlative. Right? And, and it was it was intended to be America’s Tour de France. Although you could say the same thing about something like the Colorado classic, and some of the other road races from the time. It is, and it was, of course, as again, a lot of things with the Trump organisation it was it was it was really intended to get that name out there. And to be an advertisement for, you know, the Trump casinos in Atlantic City and things Like that, if you remember, Jim will remember this at the time. There was an East Coast interbike in Atlantic City. That’s right. Remember that? Yeah, I forgot

Unknown Speaker 5:11
about that.

David Bernstein 5:13
And it’s funny, I was thinking this morning, this is like the time of year, not when we’re not normally talking about the Tour de France’s I’m sure that we will, when we’re usually talking about things that eurobike in interbike. So it’s kind of depressing that we’re talking about the Tour de France and August and September. To know that, yeah, the Tour de France, the tour to Trump and the tour du Pont, were popular among diehard cycling fans. But at the time, there were far fewer diehard road racing cycling fans than we have today. And I think at the end of the day, and of course, you know, there was no internet and there were and these and there weren’t, you know, 50 million channels on our televisions. Because of those,

Unknown Speaker 5:55
I’m strong.

David Bernstein 5:57
I don’t want to talk about Armstrong because of all of the things. I just don’t think that it was. I think it was bound for failure because of all

Carlton Reid 6:05
this the Armstrong came in. He was in the Tour de Pont. He wasn’t in the tour to Trump. But it wasn’t the to the Ponce. It just came into that era. Right. And that’s when the era bill I know Jim might not want to talk about Lance Armstrong, but you cannot escape the fact that he built industry.

Jim Moss 6:22
Oh, yeah. No, I I like talking about Lance. Um, I, I mean, I don’t I have no idea why, but I have a very different opinion from most of the regular spokesman podcasters nobody is wearing the yellow jerseys from his seven wins in the Tour de France is just, you know, they can’t find anyone to give them to. He was the best among the developers and everybody was doping. So granted, it was illegal. It was wrong. It was dangerous. It was deadly. But it still was it he was still the best of the best and The argument is, if nobody was doping would he have still won? And, and I, you know, my knowledge is minimal on those issues, but I still think he would have been so he made a lot of money and he created a bike industry in the United States.

Carlton Reid 7:15
So let’s, let’s bring it back to to the Trump. So did you end to watching Pro Cycling in 1990?

Jim Moss 7:24
I want you to remember Trump, I don’t I remember watching the Tour de Trump, but I couldn’t hang in there. The way I hang it on the Tour de France. I would I would watch it for 20 to 30 minutes, and then I fade in something else at back then I was into being a mountain climbing guide, whitewater rafting guide that type of stuff wasn’t into cycling as much. Second thing is what you did to recover from your knee injuries back then

Carlton Reid 7:50
said that the story that I did on this wasn’t about the type of jump but it’s kind of like brought some of that in, but it was the I don’t know if you saw this a couple of weeks ago is by Comes past a fox news reporter who shouted him. He’s on a bicycle. And he comes past the reports I’ve read him he’s How old is he? 77. And he comes past him fast and is able to, you know, mentally say stuff to the reporter as they’re coming past but he comes past really quite fast. So he’s clearly in my piece. I say he’s clearly varial agile and pretty fit for or very fit for a 77 year old. And then what the story is, then Trump yesterday, day before yesterday, says I’m never going to ride a bicycle and we kind of know that because you kind of just look at him. And you probably know that he doesn’t ride a bicycle. Are you?

Carlton Reid 8:46
Are you with me there? Do you think? Do you

David Bernstein 8:48
think he rides a bicycle interesting. here’s here’s the interesting thing about that. And that is if you remember the president when Biden was vice president was Barack Obama. And he, he, he was sort of famous for riding a bicycle for a different reason. If you remember, he was raked over the coals because he was wearing quote unquote mom jeans. Do you guys remember this? And, and, and, and here is his Biden. And he’s like you said, He’s going and he’s 77 years old and he’s going by on his bicycle. He was, you know, people are shouting questions at him. And he’s, he’s giving answers back, which was, which was cool, not wearing mom jeans. And of course, you know, part of Trump’s thing I’m never gonna ride a bicycle is because he’s worried about getting injured. And then of course, he has to bring up john kerry again. Who is an actual roadie. So Ron’s has remembered. Yeah, I remember john kerry had had an accident, and he hurt himself. But you know, haven’t we all? Hold on? Yeah, well, I can show you scars from surgeries and things.

David Bernstein 9:57
I want anyone else No,

David Bernstein 9:57
I don’t. I don’t see Donald Trump getting out of it. anytime soon,

Jim Moss 10:00
I rode off a cliff on my mountain bike Friday and to make sure I protected the bike. I made sure it landed on me both times I rolled down the cliff that was protected by.

Carlton Reid 10:13
See, I think you mentioned there David, you mentioned Barack Obama. I definitely think Biden looks better than Barack Obama on a bicycle looks more natural on a bicycle. Yeah, of course, if we go backwards, we’ve got bush on a bicycle. Absolutely. If john kerry ever had become president, then you’d have had an absolute roadie in the White House, Bush was of course, a mountain biker more than a roadie but Biden Biden looks pretty good on a bike. We don’t really see him on a bike that often but when we saw him he looked good.

David Bernstein 10:48
Of course, you know, he’s neither a roadie nor a mountain biker. You know, he’s sort of on a

Unknown Speaker 10:51
get around the farm bike if you

David Bernstein 10:55
if you I don’t

Jim Moss 10:56
I don’t think it has anything at all. to do with cycling, I think it’s that if, if Biden would said I like chocolate ice cream, Trump would say I’m never eating chocolate ice cream, I only eat white ice cream. And I use that analogy that way for a specific purpose. I think if David you should have caught that by now you should have been grinning. And it doesn’t matter what it was. It was you know, I Biden loves pancakes and eats and I hop and Trump would never go into an eye hop is nothing to do with the realities of cycling which is sad. Maybe if he got on a bicycle and and use these got blood flowing to what little brain there it to his brain. Um, you know, things could be better. I better shut up.

Carlton Reid 11:54
Well, we kind of know that that that that Trump isn’t it isn’t a bicycle for all sorts of different reasons. Now Jimmy, you mentioned there that you’re watching the tour. Did Trump say it was on television back then? Yes.

Jim Moss 12:08
That was one of the big things is that the money that Trump tour to Trump and DuPont, the sponsors had that brought them in was they got time on TV. Now, I don’t ever recall watching the entire race on TV, but I can’t remember if that’s because I didn’t watch the entire race or you couldn’t see the entire race. But it also was on newscasts. Every once while in the evening, you know, the final hundred yards type of deal. What we

Carlton Reid 12:38
saw, I don’t know the history of, of what was on TV or what people could see bicycle races back in the day. But was that kind of in your recollection was that kind of early for seeing Pro Cycling? So this was quite newsworthy from a from a cyclist point of view that all of a sudden you’re getting all of these European guys coming across and you’re seeing them in the US Was that early to see cycle? Yeah, on TV? The first

Carlton Reid 13:02
time I ever remember cycling on TV?

Carlton Reid 13:06
Hmm. Do you remember anything earlier?

Carlton Reid 13:12
David, what were you what was what was it around? Was that kind of some of the earliest? So was that good from a sponsors point of view you were thinking that we’re on TV here.

David Bernstein 13:22
You know, it’s funny I I don’t remember watching that race. But now, you know, I’m sort of casting my mind back to because I was more involved in the mountain biking scene at the time with mountain racing and things like mountain bike racing. And any of the mountain bike coverage that was on TV was all pre recorded, edited. And a lot of it as a sponsor of major mountain biking events at the time, a lot of it was edited and packaged for sponsors. So for instance, we used to sponsor the Famous Kamikaze downhill in Mammoth, which was at the time, huge race, and we part of our contract was to make sure that our name was seen on the racecourse at the finish line in the in the announcements on TV. And so at the time, you know, obviously we weren’t getting the kind of live coverage that we get now, which is almost ubiquitous. It was all prepackaged pre recorded and quite frankly a bit hokey I mean, it just it was it was it wasn’t great coverage. It’s just a very fast

Carlton Reid 14:38
downhill and it’s not not nothing really heavily technical about the chemicals. And it was miles rock right? Wasn’t it? It was like the top guy at the time. He was the guy to be miles Rockwell

David Bernstein 14:48
tomac was so Mac as well was was huge at the time. By the way. Here’s a piece of trivia. JOHN tobac son, today is one of the top motocross riders in the world figures, Eli tomac. And that’s that’s cool anyway, no at the time it was it was guys like, like net overend and john tomac even though they were known for and and Tinker Juarez and people like that, because oh and Greg herbold Oh, there’s forgot asked. Yeah. And and, and at the time even though they were also known for cross country, because as you rightfully said, the Kamikaze and at the time most downhill at the time, was on very wide fire roads. It was only later that they added jumps and chicanes and things like that to downhill, which I never Sorry, I’m an old guy. I never really liked that. And I actually had a friend a guy that I actually sponsored, who died on one of those races. bylaws, I believe, have all of the the sort of features that they put into the race. And so I, I lament the loss of those super fast downhills that just are no longer there because now it’s all about jumps in and doing cool tricks but

Carlton Reid 16:12
and that was back in the day when they didn’t have I mean not that would have made a huge amount of difference if you hit something at 50 miles an hour anyway, but they didn’t have armour back then. They were racing in spandex and a helmet. They had a hell down but they weren’t. They weren’t in like full on downhill gear.

David Bernstein 16:26
Yeah, we all had because I raced downhill. I was crappy, but I raced downhill at the time. And I had a full face helmet. I think I had some, some some, maybe some elbow pads and maybe some knee pads. Maybe she had I don’t remember, but it was all sort of billion that came from the soccer industry or something

David Bernstein 16:43
like that.

David Bernstein 16:45
I think I think it came from BMX at the time. So I think people were wearing that for BMX, and of course, where did the BMX gear come from? It came from the motorcycle industry. So I remember at the time there were a lot of manufacturers of BMX and mountain biking. That started in the motorcycle industry, which kind of at the time made sense. I’m sorry, we were like you somebody said, we’re just a bunch of old guys here, john.

Carlton Reid 17:11
Well, we aren’t diverting from from the TV aspect of this because I was doing a segue here for you, David, which was gonna be how we’re going to watch the Tour de France. So, you’ve raised the point of owning, I’ll just tell you mine point of view. So from here, it’s not really a huge issue. We have a terrestrial TV station, we watch it via that or we have Europe sports, we’ve got two options. For instance, in the UK, and then of course, the internet. If you want to watch on your on your on your computer, you can go and get various streams and what have you. But the way you’re mentioning it as though it might be kind of problematical for you so how do you watch it in the US

David Bernstein 17:54
So for the most So for most people, depending on their cable package, and I’m I’m cord cutters so I have no cable package and because of where I live, I can’t get anything with an antenna. If you’ve got a cable package that has NBC sn which is the NBC Sports Network, then you can watch the Phil Liggett Bob roll circus yen’s vocht circus. Yeah. general thing. I I’ve grown tired of it primarily because of the number of commercials and the repetitive nature of the commercials. So for folks in the US, the option is if you want completely commercial free, is to buy the NBC Sports gold package, which is actually quite reasonable. It gives you like a year for something like $55 and then it’s completely commercial free. And I’m telling you that the commercials are repetitive. You see the same

Jim Moss 18:54
commercials, every thank heavens, we’re watching those commercials because without them The majority of Americans would not see professional bicycle racing. And not know I mean, I get up early in the morning. Yeah, MSNBC is about the only way I watch I get up early in the morning and watch the the podcasts or the shoot that’s like an hour late with all the mistakes and because I think it’s hilarious, you know, it’s 430 or five o’clock in the morning and I don’t get up. I’m not an early morning person. And I’m just rolling around on the couch laughing my butt off because then you’d go in and watch it later in the day with it cleaned up but to correct spelling mistakes and stuff. Then you go he’s gonna say Oh, they clean that one up. He got that one right the second time around. I think it’s hilarious. I told you guys that bell sports up in Boulder the the below press. They have a big whiteboard where they put all the announcers names and they track who makes what mistakes and how many each day and then have a running total for the whole tour. It’s hilarious.

David Bernstein 20:00
So when I get tired of fill, and that’s usually after that stage to look, here’s the problem filling it is, is is I mean, he’s, he’s probably Encyclopaedia of cycling knowledge. But what I find is that they tend he and his and the gang tend to dumb it down a little bit for the non cycling audience. And so every day, it’s like, we need to tell you what a sprint is, we need to tell you what a KLM is we need and and quite frankly, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of non cycling, you know, endemic cycling folks that are watching all the time, so I wish that they wouldn’t do that. So if and when I get tired, then I crank up my VPN. And I will watch SPS from Australia, which is pretty good coverage. I can usually figure out a way to watch Eurosport in the same way And then if I just want to watch and maybe turn the, you know, turn the volume, sometimes I’ll watch Fred’s TV, again, using a VPN so that, you know, I’m, I’m getting around the geo restrictions look and and disclaimer, this may or may not be ethical or legal. I leave that up to you. But I think this year, I’m probably just gonna pay for the NBC Sports gold just because it’s, it’s simpler, I can just turn on my TV and it’s, you know, on my Roku or on my Apple TV, and I can just not have to worry about screwing around with VPNs and figuring out where all the feeds are. So that’s my plan this year, the best place I’ve found to find where all of this is available, is steep. hill.tv steepen hill.tv. I think he does an amazing job of telling you all of the places where you can find the coverage. So

Carlton Reid 21:52
can I ask David just just as a bit of a left field stuff here because because Jim raised this as you know, this is what actually pays figuring this coverage Do you have an ad blocker on your your Mac when you’re on your browsers so you don’t see any ads? Or do you see all the ads?

David Bernstein 22:12
I have an ad blocker and when I go to read your stuff, I have to turn it off because Forbes makes me turn it off.

Carlton Reid 22:21
Forbes has got a lot of ads Yes, it makes a lot of money but

David Bernstein 22:24
but no Forbes literally so I’m happy to pay your salary. But no Forbes says Oh, you’ve got an ad blocker if you want to see this content, you have to turn it off. So yeah, I have an ad blocker cuz Di Di Di

Carlton Reid 22:38
Di ng is how I know it. I know it’s annoying, but I’m kind of with with with Jim here and that I’m kind of I know the content annoying sometimes. But I don’t turn it off. So I don’t have an ad blocker. Jim. I’m assuming you don’t have an ad. No,

Jim Moss 22:51
I actually have an ad blocker but I do turn it off for some things, man and but but I’m also bugged by The idea that, look, the only success we’re going to have in cycling and professional bicycle racing in the United States is if we educate more people, it is an extremely difficult sport to understand. For the majority of Americans, I mean, the Colorado classic, when it would be 100 TV or in the news in the evening here in Colorado, the sports announcers would screw it up every time. And that one great one actually said, and his boss and I are friends, you know, why do they have teams you know, they don’t block for each other. They don’t you know, lay their bikes down and you know, I mean he is he can compare it with football. And so yes, when someone goes into why a sprint or that type of stuff, it just gives me more time to go to the kitchen or go to the bathroom. But but it’s necessary to get the new people Because 99% of the people that were getting into the sport, have no idea how to ride at 21 miles an hour or faster and to get into paceline. It would scare the daylights out of them and to draft them, you know, they understand drafting from NASCAR, you know, and that’s 100 miles an hour. They don’t understand drafting at 24 miles an hour. We have to explain that we’re going to get the future Dale sits down and she watches for a little bit. And she asked me questions and I try to be patient and answer him. But it’s not an easy sport to understand here in the US because it’s so completely different from everything we do here that we call it sport.

Carlton Reid 24:50
So we could just watch breaking away on loop just make up a watch that as like, you know, here’s your prep, watch breaking away.

David Bernstein 24:58
You know What you said, Jim, I think is is is is right. And I think that we’re getting better at educating the general public about cycling. And I’ll give you an example. I’m on the phone with my mom the other day and my mom’s in her 80s. And she said, You know, I read that the top guy isn’t gonna be in the Tour de France this year now. Okay, just stop there for a second you the two of you know who I’m talking about. Okay. But I thought it was cool that my mom who isn’t reading cycling press and isn’t falling cycling somewhere in some newspaper that she’s reading during her, you know, lockdown or quarantine, she found out that team in iOS said that Chris Froome wasn’t going to be in the Tour de France. So explain to her why that was. And the fact that, you know, he had a horrific crash last year, he’s lucky to be alive, and he’s just not quite ready, but they’re going to give it to burn all and he’s gonna be the standard bearer, and I thought it was cool. That moment. I read about this and if my mom’s reading about it, Jim, and I think the general public is getting more information these days. Oh, coverage.

David Bernstein 26:07
Yeah. But yeah.

Jim Moss 26:10
Look, if you if you go to the you walk out the street, across the street to your neighbour, and you say, bicycle racing, the only name they know is Phil Liggett nowadays. I mean, it’s sad that

Carlton Reid 26:26
there is the aspect of it. People want to know more about it, they the internet, you can find out about it now. It must have been that people don’t want to know about it. It’s not a case of we have to educate people. This case of people don’t want to be educated. They don’t want to watch bicycle racing. It’s not because they don’t understand it.

Jim Moss 26:43
They just don’t watch it on my blog. There’s all sorts of flags up front. There’s one guy that’s got a Wisconsin flag. There’s one guy that’s got an ohio state flag. And everything else is a bronco flag. Right? I mean 12 other houses all have Bronco flags. You know, this, we have a guy that has a 1960 fire truck that’s painted Bronco colours. We, I mean, there is a blue beautiful statute at our airport, you know, with these blazing red eyes and if you look at it as the sculpture it is it’s just stunning. And people bitch all the time because it’s not white to represent the Broncos.

Carlton Reid 27:28
You know?

Carlton Reid 27:30
We This is

Carlton Reid 27:31
American football. Oh,

David Bernstein 27:32
yeah, sorry. I

David Bernstein 27:34
need to educate me here. And for reference cards in the Broncos colours aren’t orange and blue.

David Bernstein 27:41
Yeah. So you’ll see a firetruck.

David Bernstein 27:43
This is why I’m a Rams fan because because because blue and gold looks much better.

Jim Moss 27:50
Yeah, orange. I mean, you can’t miss them. Well, I walked into my bank a couple years ago on a Friday where it is okay. Now. No matter what your profession to wear an orange and blue Bronco jersey, and the assistant vice president says How come you’re not wearing your Bronco shirt? And my response was because I don’t have one and I never wear anybody’s name on my back. I’ll put my name on my back, but you gotta pay me to wear your name. You know?

Jim Moss 28:23
me my banker talk about

David Bernstein 28:25
talking about talking about rabbit holes yeah

Carlton Reid 28:29
well it can be that already streams of course we could. We could go.

David Bernstein 28:33
Don’t get us started. Just

Carlton Reid 28:35
tell people like 15 minutes before we had if you went on a holiday day

David Bernstein 28:40
you got it explained air stream.

Carlton Reid 28:44
Do you take a bicycle? Yes. Do you take two bicycles? Please?

Carlton Reid 28:49
So it’s a it’s a bicycle story. Yeah. If two bicycles in your Airstream you can you can mention on the show.

David Bernstein 28:55
We went to Grand Teton National Park. We rented an Airstream. We had an amazing time. Part of the what made it amazing and this is actually this is a bicycle story. A lot of times when I go to national parks I mean I take my we take our bikes everywhere but a lot of times when we go to national parks, I’m scared to death of riding on their main roads. And the reason is because you get people who are first time renters of Airstream. They’re not paying attention when they drive. But here’s the thing. Grand Teton National Park has some amazing distance and variety of off the road bike paths, which were great for road riding. We had some great rides through some beautiful scenery. And we were off the road but we were on pavement it was and there were a lot of roadies, actually, especially on Saturday and Sunday. So I’ve written in Yellowstone I’ve written in in the Grand Canyon. I’ve written a lot of national parks. But I’m going to tell you Grand Teton National Park had some great facilities for cyclists. She didn’t need a mountain bike didn’t need a gravel bike. No, you just know

David Bernstein 30:10
about biking. Yeah,

Jim Moss 30:12
we got it. Yeah. And and we got to explain the airstream thing my parents started their retirement 30 years ago, by getting an Airstream and taking off and living in it for a month. And then the next year, two months and eventually six months until finally, for a couple years they lived in airstreams full time. They then found a place in Florida where they bought a house where you had to own an Airstream to buy a house in this community. And they travelled my parents have been to Alaska with that Airstream. They’ve been all over the United States. And so the my mom’s Airstream numbers three to three, she was the international recording secretary for the club or something I don’t know. And so when he brought up Eric I’m not getting that. Oh, you got to you will. The cult is coming for you. They have their own clothing. They have a song book, they have a pledge to the cult is coming

Carlton Reid 31:14
off to this was we had before the show started we had you to waxing lyrical about espin. And are you now going to get an Airstream or you think

Carlton Reid 31:28
now I’m thinking about actually you demoed

Carlton Reid 31:30
my stick blender.

David Bernstein 31:32
Well, yes. No, our plan is this art. It’s It’s, it’s, it’s it’s a way of going to some amazing places for both road riding and mountain biking and not having to worry about things like hotels and tents and things like that. And we had a great time. So we will probably Yeah,

Jim Moss 31:51
it is the most phenomenal and safest way to haul bicycle. You got $100,000 of aluminium around your bike.

David Bernstein 32:02
I’m not spending that kind of money. So I don’t want anybody thinking that next subject, Carlton,

Carlton Reid 32:08
Arkansas.

Carlton Reid 32:10
Yeah. So Jim

Carlton Reid 32:11
this is this is your cue for talking about Bentonville and talking about

Carlton Reid 32:18
that the heirs to a certain fortune.

Jim Moss 32:21
I am on all these press lists, obviously. And one of them I got in May during the pit Well, during pandemic, which we’re still doing with it announced that Bentonville Arkansas was the mountain bike capital of the world. And if you go to the Bentonville, Arkansas, you know, tourism page, it’s the number one thing on the page. And the reason is the last time I actually looked at the number I know that the grandsons great grandsons, the heirs of the Walmart fortune, had put 30 some million dollars in to Arkansas mountain biking they have the longest mountain bike trail there’s a 500 mile mountain bike trail I guess they own what’s the clothing company they just bought the other day starts with a p

Jim Moss 33:16
but you know because of their

Carlton Reid 33:18
longtime investors then Rapha

Unknown Speaker 33:20
they

Carlton Reid 33:21
so they Rapha

Jim Moss 33:24
Rapha they’re now sole owners of Walmart’s now the sole owner of rapha. And it’s it’s big. I mean, they they hosted the world races mountain bike and cross races there for years now. I mean they’re supporting mountain biking and living here in Denver where I’ve been riding at least in Colorado once a week and not repeated a trail sits, you know and writing areas were on a trail You’ll see every 10 miles for trails take off and go different directions from their main trail. You know, I mean mountain biking, just, you just go for days here. It just cracks me up to see that Bentonville is the mountain bike capital of the world. I mean, I’m glad to put the money into it. So I’ve been bills realised

Carlton Reid 34:19
I’ve never been there either. I’ve been to Colorado, so I know you and I’ve certainly been to Park City Of course, Deer Valley, David, but is Bentonville, Arkansas? Is it is it ski? Is there skiing there in the winter and they’ve just extended out or is it they’ve just made a mountain bike community out there? So they haven’t got that infrastructure of it being a ski resort. The highest

Jim Moss 34:45
point in Arkansas is 2753 foot.

David Bernstein 34:53
I don’t it’s not my understanding that Arkansas

David Bernstein 34:57
is a ski No, they haven’t But no, I never heard They have a ski area as as,

David Bernstein 35:03
as a resident of Park City, Utah, which is a gold actually the first gold level mountain biking destination. According to imba, I need to know the Bentonville is only a silver level and we were the first gold level. And that here we have 450 miles of trails. And of course, we do have actual mountains. And yeah, we do have the infrastructure for skiing. And don’t forget, we’re also a resort community, which means we have lots of restaurants and bars and nightclubs and things like that when the pandemic is over. So I just need to defend a real mountain biking destination. Which is

Carlton Reid 35:40
Yeah, it’s an interesting claim. And it’s like all of these you can you can claim what you like nobody’s gonna stop you. Apart from other resorts. I’ll go well hang on one. And then there’s like a bidding war game.

Jim Moss 35:51
One of my riding buddies has gone to the area twice for the World Championships and really sort of scaling The racing because the writing was so phenomenal. He says the trails are immaculate, he says the perfect and they just rode on the whole time and then we get back in time to watch the vintage. But you know, it’s what 12 hours driving versus eight minutes.

Carlton Reid 36:21
OK, I can see, you’ve sent me some links here. So I’ll put them in in the show notes. Thank you.

David Bernstein 36:27
I have a cynical question for Michael forgave ignorance. But yeah, I didn’t. I didn’t realise that first of all, that they that they bought a majority stake in Rapha. I looked that up while you guys were chatting there. And of course, Walmart does sell bicycles, not that I would necessarily take them on trails. I get mad a lot or so. So the cynical question. Yeah. So the cynical question is this. Is this just sort of a marketing effort to sell more bikes and more

David Bernstein 36:59
clothes? No. Great

Carlton Reid 37:02
they just got lots of money the grand sons like now Yeah,

Jim Moss 37:06
they love Stuart Walton. Yeah,

Carlton Reid 37:09
stick with it dispel this stupid funny it’s kind of it’s not the normal way of spelling so I think he’s one of the key ones Okay, so hey they just got a tonne of cash so they’ve spent on their their prediction which is mountain biking and they certainly wouldn’t have made any money from from Rafa because Radford was losing lots of money so again, it was almost a vanity pile they got to buy this iconic brand Rafa but they they do have a pro really apologise here. I’m not going to search for this. I’m trying to think of it in my head. It begins with a V, but they’ve got a pro mountain bike brand, which was

Jim Moss 37:51
one of these handmade bikes, but they’ve declared bankruptcy twice.

Carlton Reid 37:57
No, no, it’s not that one. It’s a different one. I’ll search it up later on but it’s a V and I’ve done stories on it so I should know this. So they own Viathon that’s Walmart owns that I do apologise it’s Walmart owns that not the Walton grandson’s. That’s different. This is where it becomes confusing. Yes, yes, thank you. That’s the one. So Walmart owns that. But of course the Walton grandsons here, they’re on the Walmart board, but their businesses are totally different from Walmart. So they’re not trying to you know, get more business into into entry level Walmart bikes at all because they’re totally separate businesses,

David Bernstein 38:37
but that would be like me

David Bernstein 38:38
and well these viith on bikes are not going to be sold and

David Bernstein 38:42
it would be like me opening eliminate

Carlton Reid 38:44
the plan was eventually to maybe but yeah, it was it was a standalone thing.

Jim Moss 38:48
Yeah, that’s like, that’s to me opening a lemonade stand to support my income as an attorney.

Carlton Reid 38:56
Hmm, yeah, yeah, it’s pinprick stuff for sure. So while we’re talking about product, and we’re talking about where you can get bicycles from David, do we know any, any retailers of bicycles? Who might have gear advisors? Do we know any we have any stories we can tell about a such a brand, David,

David Bernstein 39:24
as a matter of fact, we do. What What a great question, Carlton. I am so glad you asked. You know, there is a site, there’s a site on the internet that you can go to where you can find your advisors. It’s called Jensen usa.com. slash the spokesman. Make sure you use that URL. Jensen USA is our longtime oil and wonderful sponsor. And and it is a place where you can call when you have questions before you make a purchase. And I’m going to give you an example. So we we were just talking about airstreams I rented one. I’m gonna come around to a point here. And in order to do that I needed I needed to buy a bunch of products for the trailer hitch on my car. And there is a website that you go to. And they say that you can talk to them and ask them questions I did that. I called, I asked them questions. I bought a bunch of products and it turned out not they weren’t, it wasn’t the greatest advice. The point of the story is this. A lot of times when you’re dealing with internet retailers, when you call, you may not necessarily be getting somebody on the phone, who has the kind of intimate knowledge of the products that you’re looking for. But when I’ve called the gear advisors at Jensen, USA, what I have found is that they know their stuff, and the advice that they give you is really good and the reason for that is simple. They’re cyclists. They’re riding to work to in front. They’re riding on the trails around Jensen, USA. At lunch or on the roads, and so they know the products that they’re selling. So if you’re looking for advice to on buying a product, best thing you can do is go to Jensen usa.com, get their phone number and give a call to one of their gear advisors. And while you’re there, here’s what you’re going to find. You’re going to find a great selection of products at really competitive at excellent prices. And of course, those gear advisors to give you some great customer support, we I would recommend them even if they weren’t a sponsor, but because they’re a sponsor, it makes it that much easy, easier. But in order to show them that you’re heard about them, on the spokesman, do us a favour and go to that URL. It’s Jensen usa.com slash the spokesman. And if you’ll go there, they put some products up there every once in a while that change that are some good suggestions, some things that we like and some things that they like, but go to that URL to let them know that you heard about them here on the spokesman that’s Jensen usa.com. We thank them a tonne for their support, and we thank you for importing Jenson USA. I’m so glad you asked that question.

Carlton Reid 42:06
It seems to come up every show.

Jim Moss 42:08
It’s not. I don’t know why. Yeah.

Jim Moss 42:13
topics.

David Bernstein 42:16
One of those perennial topics. It was funny, though, because you started, you started asking the question, I thought to myself, where’s he going with this?

Carlton Reid 42:27
Now, we were talking before about the Tour de France, but we can we can segue back to the turn of France. And I know, I know, David, I know both of you were saying we shouldn’t really talk about a certain pandemic issue. It is pretty much unavoidable at the moment, however, and we talked the last time we were together about whether the Tour de France is going to go on it right now. It does seem as though it’s going to go on and one of the ways they they are making sure it goes on is having this rule, which I think velonews broke the story. Two or three days ago, where the protocol they’re going to use the ASO that organises them tour France is two strikes and you’re out in effect. So if you have two riders who test positive, the whole team is out of the Tour de France

David Bernstein 43:23
riders. It wasn’t somebody sorry. Yes. They were upset. Yeah. I mean, it could be a bus driver. Yes. One year. It could be.

Carlton Reid 43:32
Anybody. anybody involved with the team? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. So do you think that’s gonna I mean, this three week has an awful long time and especially when you look at the cases in France are going up. They’re going up quite fast. And so the closer we get to the sort of rounds that that’s gonna be and we also know that you know that the world championships are already off. So France is putting on there and Massive a massive event with these protocols. Are they enough David to do you think the show will last the whole three weeks the show that is the greatest annual sporting event.

David Bernstein 44:13
I am neither a doctor neuroscientist.

David Bernstein 44:18
But

David Bernstein 44:20
But I have done a lot of reading. And I have been following this very, very closely. And if you and so a couple of things, number one, you’re right. The case case numbers in Europe, unfortunately, over the last couple of days and weeks have been increasing. And people are getting very concerned about a second search happening. And so that that’s that’s an issue. A number of teams have already had positives throughout the last few weeks. And so that’s a concern. They’re putting the teams in sort of mini bubbles, which is sort of a silly thing when you think about the fact that okay, but then they’re out on the roads of France and they’re all drafting and in a peloton. So I just I have doubts about that. And then you think about think about this, I was, again, because my mother asked me about Chris Froome. And so she was asking me the same question you asked about you, will they actually be able to pull this off? Let’s talk about a climb and the top of a climb and what it looks like during a normal race. And does that seem a bit dangerous to you, from a, a, an infection prevention standpoint. So my hope because I’m looking forward to watching the race. My hope is that it will go off weeks, and I pray that nobody gets sick. But the realist in me is very concerned about whether or not this will happen now, I’m very curious to hear what justice moss has to say.

Jim Moss 46:20
Well, I think you’ll be one of the most effective virus

Jim Moss 46:25
movement centres in the world.

Jim Moss 46:28
How many colleges and universities had these great plans, spent the summer disinfecting, and then tried to tell 20 year olds not to get close to each other and failed miserably and now are all you know I mean, we think up to a dozen that had students on campus and now the students have been sent home and said you’re going to learn virtually this year. I mean, I love the Tour de France. I love everything about it. I you know, it’s just the one have the greatest spectacles that we see each year. And spectacles meaning a good word for the first time, but you’ve got people screaming bloody murder on the sidelines, and you know that they’re spewing particles all the way across the road. And these writers are going to be writing through that. If you got a two strike rule you better at quarantine your entire staff and bus drivers a week and a half ago so that you got at least 14 days going in. I don’t care how much testing they do the the the testing is good for an hour, you know, and then you can be sick and spewing. You know, the study just came out that kids don’t get the disease but they all spread it. In fact, I mean, some some astronomical numbers above 50% of the kids in some areas have had the disease but if show no symptoms, and yet they are still able to spread the disease. I mean, it’s just, you know, you’re gonna have to put barriers up the entire hundred and 80 mile route sometimes 120 mile routes to be able to keep people away. And then you got people in the peloton. I mean I know going uphill that I ride breathing slowly through my nose when my mouth closed. Okay, people climb back into chairs after falling out.

Jim Moss 48:26
You know your

Jim Moss 48:28
I if I’m wearing a mask, I take it off because I think it’s slowing down oxygen. And I need all that actually I get especially with our fires right now. Um, I just I mean, I hope I pray I want but I don’t think it’s gonna work. I just, there’s just no way.

David Bernstein 48:47
You are you guys. Are you guys writing masks, like wearing them? I didn’t hiding it riding riding. No writing Ronnie.

Jim Moss 48:56
I wear a buff, keep it around my neck and then when I see Somebody’s yeah pull it up. unless somebody’s gotten off the trail a long way so a lot of people are doing that a lot of people used to be people pull the bikes off or step off the side of the trail so you can pass mountain biking, road biking, you know it’s it’s the slalom weed as I say you’re just working your way around people. Few of them are wearing masks, but very few people wear a mask outside here in Denver. Yeah, and most the time I’m not really either. And, and after the first five minutes of writing, it’s wet anyway was sweat.

Carlton Reid 49:38
About two months ago, there was a sounds strange to say that there was a viral posting. I think it was on medium.com of athletes. There was like the graphic of the droplets being breathed out into the outside air, and then how many people it would in fact outside and then A huge controversy over that particular graphic is not as dangerous out there. It was controversial it was it was by Burt Blocken. I know the guy who did it. He’s the aerodynamicist. So he’s the guy who models aerodynamic effects

Carlton Reid 50:18
of cycling.

Carlton Reid 50:18
So he was then out of his comfort zone, I think here and he was doing this particular modelling got shot down in flames very quickly by lots and lots of other experts. But then a lot of that has still is still lingering in that you should be wearing masks even outside and it came from that particular block and modelling, but David, are you saying you are wearing a mask outside and the reasoning behind

David Bernstein 50:46
it is or No, No, I’m not. I’m like Jim, you know with a buff. I can’t imagine climbing you know, a mountain with a with a mask on it. I just think it would be tough, but I’m not around anyone, you know, maybe my wife because we ride together, or my daughter. But the good news is, I’m lucky and fortunate in that I live someplace where even when I’m out for a long ride, I’m usually not seeing anybody and I’m seeing them. You know, I’m passing them really, really quickly. And at least according to like, for instance, the doctors in charge of our Department of Health here in our county, you know, he says, it’s all about viral load. He says, if you’re outside and you’re hiking, and you’re just passing somebody, you’re not getting that load. And again, I’m not a doctor or scientists don’t believe anything I say. But so anyway, no short answer is no, I’m not wearing a mask and I’ve got the buffer

David Bernstein 51:46
in your you’re not passing or seeing anybody when you ride.

David Bernstein 51:53
I choose where I go. So for instance, on the weekends, riding around here in Park City, the roads are are literally clogged with cyclists. I choose not to ride in greater park in the Park City area in this valley. I will drive someplace to go for a ride because a there’s fewer cars and B there’s fewer people and see I can generally I get, you know I get tired of riding in the same place every single day. So during the week number riding in Park City, and on the weekends I go someplace where usually there’s far, far, far fewer people. See, you

Carlton Reid 52:26
know, in the last show, I actually griped about this and this is a crazy and stupid thing to brag about. But the fact that the teams don’t have team masks, and they still don’t. And I’m just I’m sure I am. I am blown away that they haven’t got loaded up masks. That’s just what why not. You can make them medical you can make them you can make them just put some covering over and these are big bits of real estate for putting in front of the TV cameras

Jim Moss 52:56
that you can find a place in around Park City to rock Hi. I went for a mountain bike ride on Friday. Yeah, we started in a well known parking lot. But we rode for four and a half hours. Which I figured out with a keto diet is stupid. I got to switch things because man when you when you bonk on, keto you’re done. There’s just nothing and nothing you can do so, but we probably passed.

Jim Moss 53:29
I’d say 150 cyclists.

Jim Moss 53:33
Well, but you’re talking about even road riding. I

Jim Moss 53:38
I bet you there’s 10 times more cyclists out right now, on the road. Wherever I mean, on the bike trails, they’re just they’re just crowded. I mean, they’re literally crowded. I used to go for a ride at certain times on the bike trails and I wouldn’t see anyone for miles. And I’m seeing I mean, literally 10 times more cyclists. And, and 10 times so even more African American cyclists, which is I is really great. The diversity is awesome right nowadays, but hundreds of cyclists

David Bernstein 54:16
have it you you live you, you’re you’re you your greater metropolitan area has more population than my entire state. And I’ll give you an example. So I’m every year on my birthday, I ride my age in miles plus one to grow on. So this year, I rode from essentially the Park City area to Evanston, Wyoming. Okay. You think we saw any cyclists out there? No.

David Bernstein 54:44
It was the two of us.

David Bernstein 54:46
That was it. And a bunch of cows and antelope drive out.

Jim Moss 54:52
Well, first of all, being in the right now you can ride other than for six miles section from downtown Denver to Utah. bike trails. Okay, we got a six mile section in the canyon where I’m going well, you can’t get there right now because, of course, I 70 through Lynwood canyons close because we’re fires. But saw that I mean there we have cyclists everywhere that there are if you go into the bike shops I thought they had some new bikes on display and I walked around yesterday finally looked at the new bikes, and it was just repair stuff that it had no place else to put. They put it in the stands where they normally have bikes for sale. But there are bikes that I haven’t seen in 20 or 30 years that are being brought out of closets and attics and garages and said here fix this up. I want to write it, including, did you know that Ford made an electric bike 25 years ago, Lee Iacocca invented an electric bike and this bike my bike shop at Mountain Sports had won on the show floor and it was a beautiful bike.

Carlton Reid 56:03
When when he left, he then started the electric bike company.

Jim Moss 56:07
They were so big for dealers and this guy actually gave one. It was amazing. I was stunned about how, how closely it matched what we have today.

David Bernstein 56:21
You know, one of the talking about electric bikes one of the things we’ve talked about on the show for years and years and years and years, is electric bikes. And what I’m finding lately around here is that I’m seeing an explosion of electric bike sales. There’s just it seems to me like there’s electric bikes.

Jim Moss 56:40
The only electric bikes that I can find right now are the extremely high end $6,000 electric bikes in Canada. Other than that, there’s nothing left Ah, and and Friday’s ride four hours of riding we solve for electric bikes, electric mountain bikes.

Carlton Reid 57:00
Do you know what I’m getting next? My next electric bike and it’s from a good friend of yours, David, that we mentioned last show as well. Josh at Tern. So I had a big a big episode with him. The last episode to find out the spokesmen was actually a show with with Joshua. Okay, so they’re sending me one of those bikes. So trial. So it’s the new GSD with all these trick new features on it. So I’m going to have that for a couple of weeks to ride around on and that is an expensive, that’s like $8,000 up isn’t it? That’s the you get all the bells and whistles and you’re talking $12,000 So, but that’s a cool bike and that’s, that’s, that’s that’s a

Jim Moss 57:52
son to soccer practice and his son is on the back of the plate reading you know, I mean What besides that amazing podcast and amazing story about this bike, the fact that was the one thing that I left with was, it’s so comfortable and it’s so easy to ride that your son on the back on the way to soccer practice is reading. Mm hmm. I like it.

Carlton Reid 58:19
Yeah, now that they’ve done well with that particular bicycle, so we could ramble on about airstreams electric bikes to the from the pandemic, we could, we could keep on going. But we can’t we have got to stop at some point. And this is the point we have to stop. It’s that point of the show, where David wouldn’t would use to say the tips but because I’m in charge, we don’t have tips. If people think we ought to have tips again, then absolutely. We’ll, we’ll bring it back.

David Bernstein 58:54
There are a lot of know. I love that part of the show, but that’s okay. It’s your show.

Carlton Reid 59:00
So what we normally do, when we don’t have tips is and tips we can have both of course, is we say where we can actually find each other on on on social media. So, Jim, where can we see you and your grumbling dog on social media, y’all

Jim Moss 59:19
two of them do have

Jim Moss 59:21
talks.

Jim Moss 59:23
One of them’s over in the corner. Easiest way to find me is just to Google recreation law, recreation dot law@gmail.com recreation dash law, calm as my website blog

Jim Moss 59:40
or actually you now Google “Jim Moss” I think I keep popping up.

Jim Moss 59:46
People are working on that getting rid of me.

Jim Moss 59:50
But yeah, and in all honesty, people.

Jim Moss 59:54
I only get contacted like once every, you know, once a year once every six months and no I enjoy comments from readers and a lot of them have have straightened me out and helped me out. And so please do not hesitate to get a hold of me if you have a question. And I’m not, you know, I mean, if it’s a short five minute labour question I answered because it’s quicker to email you then to bill you.

Jim Moss 1:00:18
It takes 20 minutes to do a bill.

Jim Moss 1:00:22
If you’ve got a question or a con, let us know. We like knowing what you like hearing so we can talk about we may not talk about it because you know, we’re, we’re here to talk. We’re gonna follow our script. Anywhere. We end up going but but yeah, get ahold of us recreation. dot law@gmail.com I’d love to hear from you. Really.

Carlton Reid 1:00:49
Okay, and the world’s VPN expert, David, where can we hear

David Bernstein 1:00:55
and I’m not going to tell you which VPN I use because they don’t sponsor the show. Um, yeah, I I think the best place to find me these days is on Instagram. I’m Fred cast on Instagram, but if you want to shoot me an email, my email address has not changed and all my How long has it been Carlton like 15 years of podcasting. Now the Fred cast@gmail.com ba Fred cast@gmail.com, Oregon on instinct Africa

Carlton Reid 1:01:20
ever, ever gonna bring that show back? David ever?

David Bernstein 1:01:24
It’s an excellent question. I have toyed with doing a slightly different show, which I’m not going to explain here someday I will do it the problem. Okay, the problem with the Fred cast is the amount of preparation time that it took. And then of course, you know, if let’s say I did an hour long Fred cast that was probably four hours of recording and editing and, and post producing time. And then to prepare for an hour long Fred cast took me some time, sometimes 678 hours and I just got to the point where It was just too much time.

David Bernstein 1:02:02
A day.

David Bernstein 1:02:04
Yeah, well, it was time that I took throughout the week. And so that took me away from my family and took me away from my job and all of my, my paying job. I miss it. I miss the the interaction with the listeners. I won’t lie, I miss the product tests, and the swag and stuff like that. But the show I’ve been I’ve sort of been noodling about for the last couple of years would not take that kind of preparation. It’s more of a of a one on one interview show. Someday I’ll do it and I would not get

Carlton Reid 1:02:37
your feed will still be there. You just pump in the same feed. So people have got it. You know, I really see how they probably haven’t deleted it. It’s just it’s still gonna come out.

David Bernstein 1:02:48
Yeah. And my thought would be that if I did this new show, I would put I would put the first few episodes into the feed with a little sort of a prelude to say, Hey, you know, podcast listeners. This is what I’m now doing. Blah, blah, blah. But for now, I just I got to focus on, on on business and family and air streams. Right

Carlton Reid 1:03:08
It just remind people that shade. David, that was the because it was such an Early Show. It was the biggest show. So the Fred cast at the time, and for no good number of years was the biggest bicycling. Yeah,

David Bernstein 1:03:22
podcast. Yeah, it had the most listeners. I got, especially during the tour. I got, I mean, the number of downloads per show was was astronomical for a cycling show. It’s interesting, though, around the same time, a number of other cycling podcasts. So there was there were a couple that were around before I started. And then there were a couple that started shortly thereafter. And there are a couple that are still around that are extremely successful, and that are well monetized good for them. So I think he’s

Carlton Reid 1:03:56
talking about David Haye, talking about

David Bernstein 1:03:59
so the two jobs are still around, and they’re still doing their thing. The velocast. Our friends are doing very well and they’re monetized and and and then, you know, there’s there’s some other people I mean, there’s a I go, I can see her face. I’m sorry, I can’t remember her name. She’s such a nice woman. outspoken podcast. We know her. She was at press camp. She’s great. She’s just such a nice person.

Carlton Reid 1:04:29
Thanks to my co host, David Bernstein, and attorney Jim Moss. Links for the stuff we talked about can be found on the-spokesman.com. The next episode could be another product unveil. Watch out for that on September the first and I mean, watch out because it should be another video. It’ll also be available on The audio, of course, but it’ll be on the YouTube channel that I’ve got, which I’ll embed on, of course, the-spokesman.com. Meanwhile, get out there and ride…