Saturday 19th June 10, CTC Rally AND 5th York World Naked Bike Ride

Up early as I had a busy day ahead... a full day of entertaining at the CTC Rally (the 'York Cycle Show') and then the Fifth York World Naked Bike Ride at 5pm.

So I left in good time, popping in to see Richard at Country Fresh as I haven't said hello to him for a few days, and then along Fulford Road to Hospital Fields Road and down to the Millennium Bridge.

I was pleased to find that the lovely Racecourse people had left Ebor Way open; the covered pathway with nice smooth concrete, which is ideal for teaching/learning unicycling. But before I got started, I visited the volunteer repair stall, which wasn't for repairing volunteers, but for voluntarily repairing bikes and the like.... so I gave them my unicycle which had a slow puncture, and they repaired it! For free! very kind of them... Then I visited the control tent and said hello, letting them know where I was planning to work. So, by 10.20, I was set up in Ebor Way and was soon busy with lots of children, a few teenagers and the occasional adult.

I worked solidly, without a break, until about 2.30 when, for some reason, the Racecourse management decided to shut the gates at the North end of Ebor Way, so that the flow of pedestrian and cycle traffic stopped, reducing the number of people using my services. But, at this time a young female unicyclist, R, whom I've met on several occasions, turned up and had several spins around on one of my unicycles, which was encouraging for other children her age and size (she's now 12) who were trying to learn by using the 3 sets of '4 wheel unicycles' and the one '2 wheel unicycle' thing (pedal go and fun wheels). However, this activity dried up, leaving me just with R, so I decided to decamp for the last hour onto the main field. But it was REALLY cold and much more windy here, and there were hardly any people wanting to try out stuff, so R and I just unicycled around a bit. The lumpy bumpy field wasn't as easy to unicycle around on, and at one stage I fell off and took the scab off my knee, which started to bleed again.... what a nuisance!

However, that last hour came to an end and at 4pm I was able to say bye to my little friend and cycle off into town to join the World Naked Bike Ride participants. I had brought with me a mask, requested by Melanie, 10 bamboos, for the flags, gaffer tape, for fixing bamboos, the megaphone, and my flagpole and flag. I got some of it set up and met up with Janie (ex Spencer Tunick, ex Manchester WNBR) and her son T, who has not ridden a bike very much, and curiously, was dressed as a mobile phone! Then I had to do some announcing, including Councillor Andrew Waller's message to the group, following his being contacted by a few members of the public unhappy with what we had planned to do. Some people are unhappy with public nudity, others about using Memorial Gardens as a starting point, citing 'disrespect'. So, to try to counter this view, I announced that the ride was dedicated to those who had been killed whilst cycling, especially those serving their country, the cyclist regiments and battalions.

Then Jesse Schust did a bit of an announcement; he's been looking after the UK WNBR for a few years and he's standing down, and I believe it is Tony who is going to keep those wheels turning. Then we moved to the start of the ride, which is a car park quite close to the River Ouse, behind a block of flats or apartments. Councillor Dave Taylor was being Dick Turpin for a while, and he launched the ride.

We'd discussed how the ride would be managed and I was asked to do the 'rear guard' and keep at the back of all the riders, so I kept this position all the way. It was a very slow ride, at walking pace for quite a bit of the way.... just as well for one participant who walked and jogged the whole way round with a skateboard under his arm, completely naked apart from shoes!

Our route went over the River Ouse, to the Minster, down Petergate to Church St and Parliament St, then wriggled round to Coppergate and Clifford St, round the oval road which goes past the Castle Museum, over to Tower Gardens, down river to Blue Bridge and onto Millennium Bridge. The other side of this we continued down river as far as the snicket which leads fairly steeply up to Terrys on Bishopthorpe Road. From here we went towards Bishopthorpe and crossed onto the start of the Route 66 cycle path to Selby, to the place where to occasionally used Racecourse Road crosses the cycle path, and where Ruby Milnes was tragically killed in 2008, when a lorry delivering portaloos to the Racecourse collided with her.

So this was the half way point, and we'd planned to have a 15 minute rest here, but it was REALLY cold and windy, so we had a brief stop of about 5 minutes. I did an announcement about the serious message of the ride; our vulnerability as cyclists, and I mentioned Ruby. We had a one minute's silence. After which people were keen to keep going!

I counted the participants here, and there were 97, and two had left the ride at the Millennium Bridge, so the number as far as I'm concerned was 100 on this ride. My CTC Rally friend R turned up here and so I said goodbye to her again. Our route back was along Albermarle Road, The Mount, Blossom St, Micklegate, Coney St and into Museum Gardens where people dismounted to get to the area where we got back into ordinary mode. There was a bit of discussion about the police presence. They had been understaffed due to other things going on, so we had mainly 'PCSOs', and their role was supposed to be 'observers'. However, when a couple of our stewards 'corked' a junction (stopping traffic to allow the riders to go through all in one block, for safety reasons) the PCSOs intervened and tried to prevent our people doing this. But later in the ride, the police behaved more sensibly and on one occasion corked a junction themselves, on The Mount, and then on Mickelgate, told us to stay as a block and ignore the lights which were changing, and if we'd obeyed them we would have been split as a group. We did get split a couple of times and this did not enhance safety. Ideally we need to be treated as a procession or convoy and kept as a group, and my guess is that next year, we'll try to sort this out beforehand.

So, it was a successful event with no accidents or incidents to speak of, no aggression from motorists and I heard no negative comments from members of the public. I was really impressed by Janie and especially her son who are both pretty novice cyclsts and for them, it was a tough ride.

I cycled back with Michael Nugent, our volunteer CRU... cycling response unit, a self employed ambulance bike rider from Essex who is a keen naturist, and I'd offered to give him somewhere to kip for the night. He'd parked outside our house and cycled in with Jesse, whom he'd given a lift to, and he had a wander down the garden, I picked some spinach and Gill added this to some noodles and other veg which we both enjoyed. After this he said hello to the children and then we had an hour in the Beeswing down the road, good chats.

A few more chats and laughs when we got back, and jolly conversations with Gill, but then he was tired and as he had to get up and go at some ridiculous hour, he went to sleep on the futon in the front room.

I wrote my blog. Which I hope gives you a flavour of an unforgettable day. But only if you were out in it would you know how cold it was!

Friday 18th June 10

Quite a busy day, did a load of pruning and planting potatoes, working with Gilly.

Had a phone conversation with Tony about a message to the organisers of the York World Naked Bike Ride, and then dealt with replying to that...

After lunch I cycled down to town to get my dynamo/front light connection sorted out... the wire had come out again, but Ash was his usual wonderful self and made it work again. I had time to pop in to Nationwide to get a cheque out for the CarFree Conference fee, and I was annoyed to see that one of my accounts has had the terms changed, so that I won't be able to take a cheque out unless I pay a £10 fee, which is very annoying. It means that I will have to go in and move my savings from the Cashbuilder account to another... a complete bally nuisance.

Then I delivered the cheque to Ivana at St Nicks, as she's looking after that side of the conference. Found a couple of logs, picked up a sack of compostables from Freshways, and home just in time to go and pick up our youngest from school. It was 'lolly Friday' so he had a lolly and we walked most of the way home together.

When I got back, Gill and our eldest went out to town on the bus to pick up a new pair of specs and were back in just over an hour. I had a quick tea and at 6pm, Tony rang and arranged to meet me at the Racecourse to give out WNBR leaflets to the CTC Rally attendees.

I got there at 6.20 and immediately started giving out our leaflet to people arriving at the site for their weekend's camping or caravaning, and there was a lot of enthusiasm for the ride. Tony arrived from Selby on his racing bike and he also gave out leaflets, and went round the campsite too.

I came back via a freshly felled tree and got in at 9pm. Lots of pretty frantic emailing and facebooking stuff... oh, and washing up, blog and interspersed family stuff! Busy busy busy...

Sunday 24th June 07

A second day at the CTC Rally, I decided to go to the Minster and join the mass cycle from the Minster to the Racecourse, which left at 9.45 after the service for cyclists. There were loads, a throng of different cycles, all sorts, and coulouful too. I enjoyed the ride and when we got to the entrance to the Rally, I got to the front and stopped by the side of the road, and counted them in... there were 600 machines, perhaps 700 people as there were plenty of tandems and multis.
What a sight!

I very soon got going with my workshops and was busy with lots of children and adults wanting to learn the art of unicycling. By 12 I was tired and stopped for lunch, I ate in the cafe marquee and it tipped down. I did more work from about 12.45 til 3.30 when I was truly worn out, so I popped into the mobile police station as they wanted me to give a statement about the stolen unicycle yesterday.

I went to get paid and collected a large bag of coffee grounds from two coffee cars, as I'd asked them to collect it up for my composting. A good day, very social with dozens of people I know stopping by to say hi which was very nice.

On the way home I popped in to see Y but she wasn't in, so I came home via the Hes Rd Veg Emporium and brought back a box full of onion skins and yellowing broccoli...

When I got back, Gill looked like she'd had an argument with a bus... infact she had, when coming back from Pocklington, a lovely day out with the boys, she'd missed her step getting on to the bus and fallen on her nose, scraping all the skin off it and damaging her glasses. There was lots of blood, the boys were very upset but kept it together and when they got back, Gill went next door to our neighbour who is a nurse to have the big flap of skin which was hanging off snipped off. Her face is a mess, but it's only superficial and nothing's severely damaged.

Saturday 23rd June 07

Woken by torrential rain... and I'm working today at the Cyclist's Touring Club Cycle Rally on the Knavesmire this weekend, so I'm expecting to work in the undercover area with 'hard-standing', because what I do doesn't work on wet grass, so I've already decided where I'll be working.


I got to the site after 10am and set up in the covered dry area, after telling the organisers where I was. I had a busy day, lots of 'punters' to try out the four-wheel-unicycle (pedal-go) and the two-wheel-unicycle (fun wheels) and quite a few had a try at the genuine one wheeler. My brother in law Mike showed up, as he has been a keen cyclist, although hasn't done much over the past couple of years.

At lunchtime Gill and the boys turned up, so I closed the show, locked up my bike and bungeed on my unicycles on top of my trailer, which is how they are transported. Had a good wander around with the family and ate lunch. Enjoyed watching bicycle polo!

Got back to my pitch to find someone had unbungeed my unicycles and removed one of them, the largest of the 3 smaller ones, which is about the right size for large children or adults. I couldn't report this as stolen as I immediately had customers, so I just got on with my work. However a cycling policeman came past and I had a word with him, and he told me that there was a police station on site, and I should report it stolen there. I had a busy afternoon, but at 4pm I packed it in and went to report it to the police and the organisers.

What a bummer, I'm more annoyed that I won't be able to do my full range of workshops without it than the hassle of replacing it.

On the way home I popped into the rail station to get train tickets for my trip to the Big Green Gathering, and came home via the veg shop for a pick up of the usual biodegradables, 2 sacks worth.

Gill made tea, a good rice and veg dish, which was lovely. I did a stint in the garden afterwards, and planted some beans and yams, as well as loading up a dalek composter with 3 sacks worth.

Enjoyed Glastonbury on the telly...