Wey to go

There are a few good canals within reach of home for me and the bike: the Grand Union, which I've followed up through Rickmansworth; and the Kennet and Avon which I've followed beyond Reading. On this week's long outing I followed an earlier one: the Wey Navigation which runs from the Thames at Weybridge, to Guildford.

I had reached Weybridge along the Thames path, and I returned home from Guildford with a dash up the A322; trying (unsuccessfully) to get home in time for dinner.

I'm fairly clear now about my preferred route to Weybridge. There was a slight glitch in Staines today because they had closed off the Thames path for some reason, so a bunch of us on bikes diverted through the town centre. Apart from that all was straightforward to the ferry at Shepperton, then the fun of taking the bike across the river to Weybridge.

From the ferry I had to hunt out the point where the Wey Navigation leaves the Thames and heads off for Guildford. It didn't look entirely clear on the map, but in practice it wasn't difficult to find.

The navigation is a very early canal, that now belongs to the National Trust. It was built in 1650, and runs from Weybridge to Guildford. An extension to Godalming was added about a hundred years later.

The towpath is quite narrow, and bumpy, and today it was quite busy, so progress was a bit slow. They allow bikes, but I'm not sure they actively encourage them, because of the number of walkers. I would recommend it - though it's probably a better ride on a mountain bike than a road bike. My hybrid and I coped, but neither of us was really designed for this.

Today was a beautiful, day, and its a lovely ride. There is the occasional point of interest, including a view of a ruined priory; this old mill converted into flats; and some fancy graffiti under the motorway.

The only trouble with the route is that I ended up in Guildford. Not that I have anything against Guildford - it seems a very pleasant town, with quite an impressive high street. The trouble is that I don't know a decent route home from there. Today I just belted up the A322, which is a very indifferent experience. Perhaps I'll figure out something better in future.

By the time I got home I had covered 64 miles. That brings my Eddington number up to 40; and this bike and I have covered over 5,000 miles together. From today, I'll try to forget the return journey, and remember the navigation.

Planet Hannan

Reality check. We used the NHS yesterday - my father-in-law had an operation on his eye that seems to have been successful.

Just in case there is anyone from the US who reads this and knows of Mr Hannan, then I can assure you that this is a massive distortion of how the NHS works. We have our fair share of plonkers over here, and somebody must have voted for this one, but few people in the UK would take his views on the health system seriously. I think most reasonable people would be shocked that a representative of a mainstream political party is spouting such rubbish. I suspect his own colleagues find him an embarassment, and I certainly hope they do.

The UK system is not perfect, by any means, and we all love to grumble about it, but I think the general consensus across mainstream political opinion is that for patients the NHS does a pretty good job on the whole, and a wonderful job on occassions. For the tax-payer it is about as cost-effective as a modern health system can be; but above all, we are proud to have a system that is accessible to everyone.

Most of us would like to see improved NHS performance in some areas, though we don't necessarily agree on which. But as far as I am aware nobody is arguing that we should move to a system more like the current one in the US - that seems to be far more costly than the UK system, yet still excludes so many.

Choropleth

Fancy not knowing what choropleth means!

And now it seems I was doing it without realising, according to this generous link from the experts.

More, as usual, on Wikipedia

Rush hour fun

Last night I foolishly went for a ride at around 5:30 pm, just as all the roads filled with frustrated commuters on their way home.

About a mile from home I had to turn right from a side road onto a busy main road. Sod's law dictated that every time there was a gap in the traffic heading east there was no gap in the traffic heading west. And vice versa. So it was quite long wait.

Several minutes went by.

It was mildly irritiating, but more than the driver behind me could handle. He switched into the left lane, as though he had changed his mind and decided to turn left instead of right.

Unfortunately, it turned out that he had actually decided that he could make a right turn more quickly if he pulled alongside my left side, waited for the same gap in the traffic that I was waiting for, then defied the laws of physics, and beat me across two lanes of a busy road in a rusty old hatchback.

But I didn't know that. When, eventually, a gap arrived, I pulled out as normal, while he screeched off trying to beat me into the opposite lane. Then he realised that I hadn't bottled out, and was now riding straight across his path. So he had no choice but come to an abrupt stop.

Within seconds the next stream of traffic arrived behind him. I am still a bit wider than a bike, but not that much, and by then I was tucked neatly into the lane, as planned, and there would have been plenty room for the next wave of cars to pass me. Unfortunately he was still positioned diagonally across the lane, fumbling to get going again. Much honking of horns.

Over the next few miles I was overtaken three times on fairly narrow roads, by drivers who couldn't be expected to drive below the speed limit, so had to use the opposite lane to get past me. It was still busy, so they cut things a bit fine in front of oncoming cars, and caused more honking of horns.

Four drivers have probably got home cursing a cyclist that held up their journey, and four other drivers have got home cursing a driver that got in their way.

None of this is particularly dangerous or frightening. But it did leave me thinking that I need to find a route for that time of day where I don't come across quite so many people with an odd perspective on life and priorities.

More on OSM coverage

I've been doing more work on trying to estimate the level of OSM coverage in different parts of the UK by comparing the length of roads in the database with statistics for each local authority published by the Department for Transport. Since my first attempt there have been several improvements. Not least in the number of local authority boundaries for England that are available in the OSM database. It's now pretty much a complete set for the upper-tier authorities in England. Some district councils are still missing, but I can't use those anyway because the DfT statistics don't go down to that level. On top of that, my analysis is now more robust. I've fixed a problem with the map projection that I was using previously, and the way I classify different types of road is more systematic.

The map shows the data I currently have, and the detailed numbers are here.

The top ranking authorities (and km of roads on OSM as % of DfT road length) are:

1. London Borough of Lambeth (106%)
   
2. London Borough of Greenwich (106%)
   
3. London Borough of Barking and Dagenham (106%)
   
4. London Borough of Kingston upon Thames (105%)
   
5. London Borough of Bexley (105%)
   
6. Isle of Wight Council (105%)
   
7. London Borough of Bromley (104%)
   
8. Birmingham City Council (103%)
   
9. Reading Borough Council (102%)
   
10. Portsmouth City Council (101%)

There's a more detailed map of London here.

The bottom ranking authorities are:

• Middlesbrough Borough Council (41%)
  
• Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council (40%)
  
• Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council (40%)
  
• Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council (39%)
  
• Sunderland City Council (38%)
  
• South Tyneside Council (37%)
  
• Luton Borough Council (35%)
  
• Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council (32%)
  
• Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council (28%)
  
• North East Lincolnshire Council (24%)
  

Several people have asked about the proportion of named roads, and I have had an attempt at mapping that here. Individual figures are in the data sheet.

The other figure that may be of interest is the proportion of roads that have been plotted, but not completely tagged. These roads are not included in my totals, because I can't tell what type they are. Broadly speaking they are marked as "highway" but with a type of "road" or "fixme". There are also a few that have been mis-tagged, for example as "highway:some street name" or with a combination of conflicting highway types. But these are a very small proportion of the total. Most are tagged "highway:road" which is normally intended to mean "I know this road is here, but I have not yet decided what type it is". The overall proportion of these is quite low, but it is surprisingly high in some areas - notably Luton, and Northumberland for example, where almost a third of roads in the database are not fully tagged with a recognisable type. Lincolnshire, Suffolk, Somerset, Trafford, Norfolk and Wiltshire also show a high proportion (>10%) of roads that I can't classify. The proportion for each authority is shown in the data as "Percent other".

So my advice is to cancel that holiday in Torquay - it is 98% covered already. Head for Cleethorpes instead, where more than 75% of the roads still have to be added. Other fine places where it should be easy to find unmapped roads are Luton, Middlesbrough, S. Tyneside, Stoke-on-Trent and Sunderland.

99

The mileage numbers haven't been looking too clever over the last couple of weeks. For one reason and another, I've dipped from being comfortably ahead of schedule for the year to being just on plan.

The weather forecast said it would be quite warm today, but I decided that for the sake of the numbers it was time for a decent stretch.

So off I went to Oxford, covering quite a lot of new ground (for me) via Henley and Watlington. The first part is a fairly hilly route up into Oxfordshire, but it looks as though there's quite a lot of potential around there in future for interesting loops around Christmas Common, or Wallingford. From Watlington to Oxford is flatter, but less interesting.

After a quick cycle round Oxford city centre I headed south along Sustrans route 5, and caught the train home from Didcot.

As forecast the weather was warm. As always Oxford was busy. As normal for a summer Sunday there were quite a few walkers and cyclists out and about. As usual it was fun to explore new routes. And I got home as tired as I would expect after 50 miles or so.

But there was one big surprise. I bought myself a 99 in Abingdon, and it only cost £1. I'm sure that the last time I had a 99 it cost about £2. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with the one I had today. It was a perfectly normal size (and very welcome on a hot ride). How do they do it? And why, if they can price at that kind of level, don't they go one step further and charge 99p?

Bicycle window

After several attempts I finally got to see the famous bicycle window in St Giles church, Stoke Poges this afternoon.

The stained glass dates from 1643, and the image appears to show a naked cyclist on a "hobby horse" blowing a trumpet.

As....

a) the "hobby horse" was not invented until the nineteenth century
b) The Naked Bike Ride idea didn't emerge until 2004

...there is presumably some other explanation for what is going on here.