Belfast isn’t the best for cycling infrastructure. It get’s alot wrong, but it also get’s alot right. Lets have a look at what works and what doesnt…
Okay, good morning everyone. So very much inspired by Anna Hulligan, BBC journalist in the Hague who used to cycle everywhere on her electric cargo bike and present the weather in the news and all sorts of stuff. So I love seeing that and this has very much inspired me to kind of talk about Belfast and cycling. And baby Llaya is on the back. So this is our child minding run. So we take this route every every Wednesday and Thursday unless it’s absolutely lashing down in which case we jump in the car. Now we’re on the wiggle way. This is lovely little junction. Not junction, a lovely cycle path. So this is our like cycle highway into town. We kind of use this road daily. Um, and it’s amazing. It’s absolutely fantastic. So, I’d love over the next we while I’ll try and document um the cycle risk that the city has because as I said, I think it unfairly is complained about a lot that the infrastructure here isn’t good. But having recently, well, 3 years ago, had a baby, I’ve learned a lot more about what routes to take with the baby on the back that are safe in terms of trying to avoid busy roads. And it’s you can’t always do it. Sometimes you have to take those busy junctions or bits of carriageway or a roads or B roads. I often find for a lot of the cycle routes that we have, you will um it’ll only maybe take 5 or 10 minutes longer compared to the main road. So, and quite often you end up at your destination feeling a lot more fresh and less sweaty. And off we go. So this is the only part bit of road on this particular journey down to the chalinders that we cycle on. And then we’re going to cut left onto the Cumber Greenway. And there we go. After years of being pretty negative about the cycling infrastructure in Belfast, I’ve kind of switched over the years since we had the baby to try and be a bit more positive, which is not always easy in Belfast. So, this is a nice cycle. This is generally quite relaxing, unless you have any issues with dogs off leads or bizarrely other cyclists. So, baby’s on the back chatting away. So, we’ve had Laya on the back of a bike since I think before 18 months old. So, we were on a previously just manual bike with a rack and then a child seat. Yeah, I think we’re about sort of 2,100 miles since last September. So, which I think is quite impressive. I never would have cycled 2, 100 miles on my old bike. So, I think that’s a marked improvement. So, coming to the Beersbridgeidge Road, I wish this junction would be like the Dutch junctions in that the cycle path would continue and there’s permanent red lights until the cars come, then they get the green light, but it’s other way around, so you got to stop. So cruising down towards near road again. Lovely bit of greenway. This is such a class little route into town. But one of the reasons for getting the ebike was this route in reverse is 75% uphill or maybe 70% but it’s it’s a lot. One of my annoyances in this route is the cycle path through the middle of a car park. So, what happens sometimes, you’re cycling down the middle, cycling down the middle as you should, come around this corner, and then there’s a car driving towards you in the cycle. So, I’m going to scoot into this bit and we’re on the foot path, but this is part of the National Cycle Network. There’s a tiny little blue sign on the signpost indicating that. Not that you would ever notice. Then we’re going to cross one of the most horrible junctions I think in East Belfast, apart from the Noctural Carriageway, Bologan Road Junction. We’ll see if anybody jumps the lights. I know it’s quiet today. One of the joys of cycling with a kid in the back, you kind of have to take things a bit slower, but also we have to obey, I always do, all the traffic signs. So we press the button and Loa, what color is this? Red. This is red. And what color do we walk? We go on. Green. Green. Nice. Car drivers are not stopping in the advance box. And off we go. So cruising along. Be a bit busy. Just a we to let pedestrians know over here. Lai, you ready to see Alan? Yeah. Are you ready? Can you point to him? So, see square. Looking good. I found the beavers. And we passed the beavers. And there’s Alan. I found the beaver. And we found the beavers as well. Very good. So, yeah. Did you find them? Yeah, I did. Oh, good job, baby. So, coming along one of the newer parts of the cons. So this path follows from CS Lewis Square the whole way along the Conswater River to Victoria Park and finishes at Victoria Park. So I think there are plans in the future to connect the Victoria Park section up with the George Best to the airport. So cycling down and we’re coming on to the oh god I forget the name of the street. What’s it called? Oh, I completely forgot I lived here for 10 years. Wow, that’s it’s crazy how fast you forget things. So, this is an absolutely beautiful cycle. Laya is three and um we’re kind of looking into child care or not childcare, nursery spaces and primary school soon. So this sort of weekly joy will come to an end soon. Okay. And that is us coming to the end of this part of the Queenlay. So just taking our time, dropping off the curb nice and slow. And then where are we? Yeah. So, I ride a Photo T2 2024 model which is glass bike for the money. So, it’s about 40 kilos in weight, rear hubbed motor. It can carry much much more than that. So, I use this bike for work. Um, I like it holds most of what I need, like 90% of jobs I can get to in this if I’m in Belfast and then obviously converts to, carrying babies, carrying stuff to the skip. We did a a grocery run from little last night, so did the weekly shop. um did the weekly shop and fitted everything in. No bother. And then I wear this helmet. This is maybe a seems a bit overkill, but I have really bad um tenderness from playing too much music and bands when I was younger. And I kind of find this helmet sort of helps block out the wind noise and also good for good for blocking flies on the greenway. And then we’ve also got our sun visor as well, which is pretty handy. But uh it’s also quite warm, which is not ideal in Belfast at the minute, but this lovely weather, well, warmer weather won’t last. And then be grateful of that sort of extra warmth. Okay, popped that in order bit. So, cruising back up the greenway again. What I love about the ebike is uh on a hill like this. Anyway, You can just cruise up at that lovely 15.5 mph or 25k as if you’re on a flat. A lot of people say ebike. Oh, that’s cheating. That’s cheating. But um reference to the mileage that I’ve done on this, you know, that’s this bike, this one specifically. has enabled us to put 2,000 less miles on the car. So, I’m okay for that. Just a we ding cuz we’re busy. There we go. And there cyclists and pedestrians. I know we don’t have to ding, but kind of find it’s just a courtesy thing. Sometimes you can make people jump, especially people with headphones on, but can’t do much about those guys. So, in this bike, you know, that’s 2,000 less miles in the car. And for our particular car, you know, you get about 500 miles at fill, which is about 60. So, say 2,000 mi, 500 mi per tank, £60 a tank. So, it’s like 240 250 worth of petrol. So, plus your wear and tear. And the electric for this bike costs nothing. Like I think I have a little smart meter on the plug at home and I think it’s about 10p in electric to fill it from empty which is basically nothing. So back along the greenway again. Oh, put the visor down. There’s lots of flies in this little stretch. So cruising along. So 15 15.5. This is a lovely route at nighttime as well cuz the lights are all lit up red and it creates this lovely atmosphere. So got some dog walkers coming up. Just a wee bit of a ding, but they’re still in lead, so that’s all good. So, it’s about 17° at the minute, which is just such a lovely temperature for cycling. I’m going to miss the the days where I can just cycle down into town in a in a sports t-shirt. Won’t be long and we’ll have to put the the layers back on again. So then this is this is the one we tiny bit of road. So I usually flip the lights for the button. So those lights are instant. So as soon as you press them, they go red for car traffic, which is pretty good. So heading down the Sandong Road and then going to turn right on the Clara Road. Oh, he’s looking over your shoulder. drivers on. Get off your phone. People will come down from the left turning right and then just cut straight across, but it can often mean cutting me off, which can be a bit scary sometimes. So, down through the old clar estate. So, I don’t know how long this little shortcut’s going to be open for. These flats are scheduled for demolition. Well, they’ve been scheduled for demolition for a while. But this is a handy little kind of cut through from the Collins Water from the Commer Greenway to the Cons Greenway at Wiggle Way that cuts out the bonfire sections. So we have two big massive bonfires on the Cons water greenway which kind of just yeah kind of best avoided usually for the trash that was left in the trails. Don’t have to deal punctures ding. [Music] This is a blind corner. So, I always kind of honk and ding whenever I’m coming around there cuz you’ll have people pedestrians on the wrong side. But this path, I can’t really overstate how much this has enabled enabled us, me and my wife, to get out on the bikes to active travel more. And what I’ve kind of found has started to happen over the year is that because we’ve been using this route so much for getting our daughter up and down to Chelming, it sort of started to lead on to cycling as a you know cycling wider throughout the city. So it kind of changes your mindset in that, oh well, if I can get from our house to the child minder on the bike, where else can we get to on the bike? So you sort of start to explore. Gives you a bit more confidence to kind of get out on the roads and try and find other other junctions, other junctions, other routes. And the coast is clear. You roll on through. So busy junction even on a school day or even on a school holiday. So just clear off we go. So let’s let’s just wait for this traffic signal. Actually, no. We’ll go we’ll go up the Glen Road. So a bit of a different route home. do a bit of road cycling. This is a we bit of a not a shortcut, but just if you don’t want to go along the carriageway. It’s a bit quieter. We can cycle up this little route. So again, the thing that I find with the electric bikes, I love that I can fly up here at 15 mph is on a regular bike, you would be 5 to six. And whilst it’s a far stretch from a car that can do 30, this road has speed bumps and I find that keeps the cars sort of around 20 anyway while I’m doing 15. So, it kind of means that the cars don’t really have much of an excuse to overtake unless they’re in super rush. I’m going to take that back to work again later. So, I always trying to strive for those car-free days. Car free days are the best. Carfree weekends are the best. doesn’t always happen. But so regards, I was talking with the ear plugs earlier, so I can hear everything. I can hear the cars. You can still hear a bit of wind. I can hear people talking, but it just cuts out that kind of top end, which can be a bit rough in your ears. So, crucing through the junction and up the church road. So, this is a nice steep one. And again, not much traffic today. So, I’m going to take a little shortcut in two seconds. and I have your head on a spit I think cycling around Belfast. There’s not the cycling culture here and I’ve seen in other European cities and I find [Applause] drivers attitude to people on bikes can sometimes be not the best. So, I kind of end up having to look around an awful lot, just making sure nobody’s going to do an overtake if I’m turning. So, thanks for joining me today. We’re in this childminding drop off run. That’s about usually about 40 45 minutes. It’s usually about 8 miles. Forgot to track it today. And then back home for a bit of work. Get prepped for work later. And then off we go again.