It was nice to see good turnout for the As, despite the weather warnings.
A couple of matters I'd like to bring up.
Firstly, a client of the Day Centre had difficultly manoeuvring his mobility scooter up the entrance ramp due to bikes secured to the railings. I appreciate it's handy to lock bikes to the rails, but this shouldn't prejudice essential access. I've contacted the Day Centre Manager to apologise for the inconvenience caused, and hopefully we'll try to secure a better arrangement in the future.
Secondly, as Hans's report indicates, we had a frustrating run home from Little Kingshill due largely to the absence of a corner marker at a very busy, critical, 4 exit roundabout. A puncture soon after compounded the difficulty, resulting in an already much-delayed return being extended way beyond normal timings.
So I would like to remind Wayfarers about Ride Guidelines - found on the CTC South West London Information Hub, particularly the guidelines found in Ride Leader / Back Marker Guidelines. As it says, corner markers should to mark the turn 'until they are confident they have seen the back marker'.
It is also good practice for all of us to swap mobile numbers, not just back marker and leader. Using live location on Whats App may also help to pinpoint anyone stranded and enable quicker regrouping. To be explored!
4 comments:
Agreed Ged.
And we could take a lesson from the B's whose leaders normally provide the back marker with a GPX or detailed route guide; we should at least do this for the faster & longer rides which take people out of the areas they are familiar with. On Wednesday I was fortunate because Brian knew the route home for some of us split from the main party.
A route for the Garmin is a great idea! I certainly never want to have to cycle down the A30 in rush hour ever again!
Where available, perhaps ride leaders could publish the link to the route in the blog post about the ride a couple of days beforehand?
Agree with Ged's comments and the above though not a fan of making Whatsapp a requirement. Better to focus on the fundamentals of the ride guidelines, phone numbers and sharing the route. It's always good to have more than one person with the route as Wednesday also showed and agree with Dave that this is especially true in unfamiliar areas.
Possibly an improvement to the quoted group riding guidelines would be "the corner marker should wait until they are confident *the back marker has seen them*" rather than the other way round...
Post a Comment