Some shared use paths

I said last week that it was becoming rare to find things around here that I can add to the map while cycling. I was wrong.

Now that I've looked a bit harder there is quite a lot that I can add from a cycle. It's the ITO OSM analysis that opened my eyes to how much could still be done on the bike. I thought we were doing better around here, but my local authority area currently ranks as 74% coverage. That's better than about half of the local authorities analysed by ITO, but not as good as the other half.

Close to home there are a few minor inconsistencies, but on the whole things aren't too bad. There are more areas that need attention on the edge of Windsor and Ascot. Either is a nice distance away for a gentle couple of hours ride on a Sunday afternoon. So I extracted the ITO report, printed it off, left it on the printer (oops) and set off.

I headed first for Winkfield, where I knew there were a few gaps. Realising that I'd left the ITO report at home didn't exactly make things easy. So after a bit of a ride around, I set off for the centre of Windsor.

I don't often ride into Windsor from that side, but whenever I do it strikes me as being a bit of a strange ride. The first part looks like it should be quite a good road, but in reality it's not great. It's wide enough to encourage fast driving, but narrow enough to force cars to overtake very closely. After Legoland the road narrows, and drivers are faced with a slow crawl towards the town centre. Cyclists, though, gain access to a shared-use cycle path. My nasty side enjoys gliding past a queue of cars that have been rocketing past me earlier.

As I passed the queue of cars it dawned on me that I'd noticed a few shared-use cycle paths that don't appear on the map. So I traced the ones I found as I crossed Windsor. When I got home I found I was right. None of the ones I traced had already been added. They have now.

And for another day there is still a list on the printer of the inconsistencies that ITO have identified (if nobody else gets there first).