A Discount at the Brothel !!

I think that most of the advantages of riding a bike are well known-but here is one that is probably not so well publicised.

I have just read in a magazine that the Maison d'Envie brothel in Berlin is offering a discount of 5 euros to all customers who arrive on a bike. This discount is from their standard charge of 70 euros.

Thomas Goetz-the proprietor says ''It's good for business, it's good for the environment and it's also good for the girls''.

I don't quite understand his last point about it being good for the girls unless he means that due to their exertions on the bike most of the customers now just fall asleep!

Well done Andy.....

I was pleased to see that the ASDA C.E.O. Andy Bond finished his LEJOG in the ten days that he had set in which to complete the ride.

The purpose of the ride was twofold- first the aim of the ride was to raise money through the Asda Pedal Power campaign for 'Bike Club'-this is the new project set up by the CTC and two youth charities to help more children and young people to experience the benefits of cycling.
Pedal Power has managed to raise in excess of £1.2 million which is a terrific achievement.

The other purpose of the ride was to advertise the fact that Asda are now selling bikes. These are being sold on a 'not for profit' basis.
These bikes come in a box and customers have to assemble it themselves and they are branded as British Eagle Bikes. The adult bikes sell for £70.00 and the childrens version is £50.00

What make of bike did Andy Bond use for his ride-was it a 'British Eagle' ?
NO..... Andy chose to ride a 'Giant' road bike.

Says it all really......!!

Backpackers Club (Dorset Group) Weekend meet.

I really enjoyed this weekend-it was just great to get out and spend a couple of nights in a tent again. Since the accident I think that I have suffered withdrawal symptoms due to not being in the outdoors often enough.

The walking on the Saturday I found tough and it showed me how much further I have to go before I regain my normal level of fitness- even the camping itself had its difficulties but these I managed to overcome.

We had a poor turn out for a club group meet with only seven of us attending- Tony Wilson had travelled from Nottingham and he arrived with Lynette. Graham Faithfull attended with his six year old son Caleb and Mike and Chris McEnnerney arrived just as it had got dark on the Friday evening. Interestingly two people who had e-mailed me for details regarding the site/pub/walk distance etc..etc... failed to show. One of them did e-mail me again to let me know that they would not be attending after all- but not until I had already set out for the site so I didn't get the message until my return home.
But hey-who cares! I arrange these meets for club members but I would enjoy it even if no one was to show up. It will probably happen one day-I will arrange a weekend meet and I will be the only one there- not much different to a solo backpack really.

Now the next thing I must do is to sort out the purchase of one of those Neo Air Thermarest mattresses................!!

Something else to buy!

One of the good things about these Backpackers Club weekend meets is catching up with friends and chatting about new kit. Mike showed me his recent purchase- a thermarest neo air mattress. I had not seen one before and it seems a big leap forward from my old standard thermarest. Lighter- packs smaller and more comfort. Mike let me use his for anafternoon doze and it was great- i now want one ! The picture shows the neo air next to my standard thermarest prior to my doze. Colour is a bit bright (yellow) which is its only fault- unless you like bright yellow .

Dorset group static camping weekend.

This is the first time that i have been camping since my cycling accident. I am spending time at the Sisters Grimm camp site with other members of the Backpackers Club. I have already had an argument with one of the Sisters over the rip off price of ten pounds a night for a single backpacker. She eventually reduced it to eight pounds which is still too high for the facilities here but it is a nice spot to camp. Lets hope the weather stays kind to us.

NO PENALTY.

Regular visitors to this blog will be aware that amongst my pet hates are cyclists who feel that it is ok to cycle along pavements when there are perfectly good roads that we can all cycle on.....So it was of some interest to me today when I saw two police officers with a radar gun measuring the speed of vehicles travelling along a straight and wide residential road close to my home.

What I had noticed was a cyclist (male/about 20yrs old/mountain bike) riding his bike towards the officers along the opposite pavement. He hadn't noticed them as they were partially obscured from his view by a parked van.

I wondered if he would be stopped or ignored by the officers so I decided to watch for a bit. As he got closer to where the police were standing one of them spotted him and crossed the road and stopped him. The officer appeared to explain to him the error of his ways and after telling him to ride on the road allowed him to carry on his way.

In my view that is the problem -NO PENALTY. Riding along the pavement IS an offence for which a penalty CAN be issued but penalties don't seem to be given out all that often.
A couple of months ago cyclists were being stopped for breaking the 10mph speed limit along the promenade-again no penalties issued- just a warning.

Now this is interesting because I believe that until cyclists start getting fined for these offences thay will continue to stick two fingers up at the law and carry on cycling on the pavements-jumping red lights etc etc..
Is it any wonder that vehicle drivers seem to get uptight about cyclists when there doesn't appear to be any fairness in the application of the law.

Tourist Season

John Hee was certainly right with the advice he gave me in the comments section of my last posting regarding staying out of Bournemouth over the few days of the Air show. I made a point of only going out today and that was inland to the countryside in the Shaftesbury area and very pleasant it was to. Green fields and fresh air as well as lots of peace and quiet-Wonderful.

Yesterday was very different as I stayed at home. One of the drawbacks of living just a five minute walk from the beach is that during the summer all the local roads get choked up with parked cars and yesterday they started parking up from about 0900hrs. When all the road space was used up they then started trying to jam their wheeled tin boxes in to every nook and cranny. Two 'moron' drivers in their panic to find a place to park before the airplanes started whizzing overhead decided that my drop kerb didn't exist. They saw nothing wrong in parking across it- I mean lets face it the people that lived there would not want to use their drive would they? So securely sealed in anyway I was then subjected to an afternoon of planes whizzing overhead and all the noise that goes with it. Not so bad for just the one day in isolation (and we do have a superb viewpoint for it here) but I had already had it for the Thursday and Friday hence my trip inland today in search of peace and quiet and away from tourist overload.

I kept thinking of the words of George Carlin regarding tourists:

''Why is it called the tourist season if we can't shoot at them?''