The Iron Lady's Legacy

Don't worry, I'm not going to get all political on you and explain the myriad ways in which Baroness Thatcher did or did not impact cycling in this country during her not insignificant career.  I am, however, going to explain the not insignificant impact she's had on my day. (As an aside, I've just realised that, coincidentally, I've written those two sentences just like John Major would have in Private Eye's "The Secret Diary of John Major Aged 47 and Three Quarters".)

This morning, I needed to cycle.  The shoulder of doom was feeling much better, if not perfect, and the weather was greyer than expected, but still passable.  It was to be my first outing since my accident (not counting cycling home on a slightly rickety bike that night) and I woke up this morning with The Fear.  On a rational level, it is abundantly clear that the mere fact of having fallen off my bicycle last week is not going to have affected my overall knowledge of how to ride a bicycle.  In my irrational state this morning, I was convinced I wouldn't have a clue what to do and even more convinced that I would simply fall off again.

As we walked up to the end of our street to commence the journey, I could see the traffic was particularly heavy.  Not a good start.  I also had no idea whether, following the tinkering we'd done at the weekend, my gears would work at all.  Or what gear I was actually in, regardless of what the dials were showing me.  I took a giant leap of faith and set off in a gap in the traffic.  All was going well until I tried to change up to third on my front ring.  The grinding sound was horrendous but, all of a sudden, some magic happened and I found the gear - and in third I stayed for the rest of the journey.

Following this major breakthrough, I had another.  I've been having difficulty cycling up the long, not very steep hill to get into the park.  I've just not had the puff to get up it.  I think it's partly a lack of cycling fitness, partly because I'm not sufficiently warmed up by the time I get there and partly because my saddle was too low, making it much more effort to pedal.  The saddle got altered last week, which helped generally, but this morning I managed to cycle up that hill without having to stop just inside the park to catch my breath.  It felt great.

Shortly after leaving the park, we had to pass That Place: the place where I fell off on Friday.  In the dry daylight, it looked so insignificant that I couldn't believe I'd actually fallen off there, of all places.  As we came up to Newington Green, the traffic started to get really bad and we'd been stuck behind a number 341 bus for quite a while.  We managed to get past the bus and had a stroke of luck when a dumper truck driver kindly let us go through in front of him to get in the right hand lane.  As we came out of Shoreditch Park and went down towards Old Street, it started to drizzle, which was miserable.

When we hit Old Street the traffic was so bad that we had to dismount to get across the road.  The cars were stopped across the mixed pedestrian and cycle crossing (along with a chap with his daughter in a pushchair who decided to stop in the middle of the crossing to chat to his mate coming the other way - not ideal).  It seems that some clever bod at the traffic control centre has actually planned the light sequences in this corner of London quite well.  Normally when we cross over that road and carry on on a different road, there are no cars coming as we come off the crossing and onto the other road.  Today, because of having to dismount and weave through the cars on the crossing, I didn't get across until the red man was standing in his light box again and, lo and behold, there were loads of cars coming up the street I was trying to get onto - the lights must have changed somewhere at the other end of the street; someone likes cyclists.

Soon after I left James at his office, I got my first view of the traffic in the City itself.  I carried on down the deserted street I was on, but soon realised that there was no point in carrying on by bike, as it would be much quicker (and safer) to walk, so I got off and walked the rest of the way to the office, and still made it in reasonable time.

The reason for all this traffic?  Lady Thatcher's funeral meant that lots of the main (and not so main) roads in the City were closed this morning.  Clearly a lot of drivers hadn't bothered to check whether there would be an impact on driving.  I had, and I knew I'd probably have to walk from London Wall (two minutes maximum) if the police weren't letting cyclists through, but I (stupidly) hadn't reckoned on no-one else checking.  At least the roads will be back to normal on the way home.