Dunwich Dynamo XIX

Besides the Latitude traffic on the A12, people in Suffolk ought to know there is a large cycling event on this weekend in Suffolk 16/17 July 2011 which isn’t officially organised and has very little publicity but it could see over 2000 cyclists leaving London on Saturday riding 120 miles through the night to Dunwich. 


This will be the 19^th ‘Dunwich Dynamo’ where people just turn up in Hackney and ride to the coast from 8pm onwards. I like to think this is because of our natural herd instinct and demonstrates how we are capable of mutual trust and support. One cycle club organises coaches and removal vans for the journey home but many riders catch a train or just turn around and cycle back.

Route map thanks to GPX file by @adrianfitch

View Dunwich Dynamo 2011 in a larger map

As the route mostly goes through rural Suffolk, it may be useful for people to be aware that there will be a lot of tired and wobbly cyclists on the roads late at night and early Sunday morning and that any courtesy and encouragement people can give them is welcome. 

Another cycle club sets up a feeding station in the village hall at Sible Hedingham where last year it served over 2000 bacon butties and over the years, other impromptu stalls have popped up in Suffolk offering cakes, soup and coffee etc. This is the kind of civic generosity that the Suffolk Bike Aid scheme knows exists. Though there has, at times, been harassment of cyclists from yobs, this has been successfully dealt with by the police.

This year at least one rider will attempt it on a Boris Bike raising money for homeless charities. Previously an ice cream cart and a penny-farthing have made it successfully. 

It’s quite impressive and somewhat eerie to see Dunwich Beach at dawn on Sunday littered with the bodies of exhausted cyclists. Although the Flora Tea Rooms on the beach opens at 4 am for them, the queue soon becomes a very long wait. Now local businesses are waking up to this friendly invasion; the nearby Ship Inn will be open early and the café/post office at Yoxford is offering a shuttle service to a full English and a head start to the train at Darsham.

This year's Dynamo will also be very poignant for many of the regulars as a principal actor Barry Mason died very recently while on holiday in Spain.

P.S. Now that it's all over, you can read/see/hear some of the riders' reports:

1. Dave Barter, Cycling Adventurer
2. Leicester Forester Cycling Club slideshow
3. David Rowe
4. The Bike Show podcast
5. Leo Tong (on a Boris Bike) The Guardian
6. Quest for Speed
7. Karl McCracken
8. Milk Bikes 
9. Near The Coast 
10. NTC Photobox of images
11. Emlyn Simpson
12. Machacas on Wheels
13. Alice Beneyto
14. Grethic

Next Dunwich Dynamo is the night of 30 June - 1 July 2012

Bike Fixtation

The model of offering the public free bicycle repair facilities keeps getting tweaked and improved. Readers of this blog have alerted us to Bike Fixtation.

Now in two locations in Minneapolis, USA, Bike Fixtation offers free tools and air with a stand of the type that is proliferating everywhere (well,  Cambridge MA and Fresno CA so far) as well as a vending machine that ideally is stocked with cyclist-useful items like patch kits, energy bars and so on.


This is wonderful but it is more complicated and quite an investment in floor space for the host over the Suffolk Bike Aid method and so demands traffic to justify it, but nevertheless, we hope it succeeds and we expect investors anticipating a return will drive their roll-out faster than our model.

Host Profile: The Wissett Plough

The Wisett Plough The Street Wissett Nr. Halesworth Suffolk IP19 0JE

Debbie & Nick Sumner purchased the Wissett Plough in April 2007, first serving drinks and food. In April 2009 they opened a village shop at the rear of the pub stocking basic items and locally produced products. Food is availabe every weekday from 12 noon to 2 pm and 6 pm to 9 pm. On Saturdays and Sundays they serve food all day from 12 noon till 9 pm. There is also a take-away service for fish and chips and burgers and sausages.


Menu favourites are home cooked ham, scampi and chips with a choice of garden or mushy peas and beef and pork dishes from the award-winning Sotherton Farm. Fish is delivered fresh from Lowestoft. Other food and fruit and vegetables are all sourced locally. A daily specials board varies according to what is in season. 


Freshly ground coffee, tea and hot chocolate available throughout the day. 


Tel: 01986 872201
e-mail: theplough.wissett@hotmail.co.uk 
www.thewissettplough.com

Host Profile: The Rumburgh Buck

Mill Rd, Rumburgh, Halesworth, Suffolk, IP19 0NT Tel:  01986 785257


The Rumburgh Buck is a 16th century village freehouse with a wealth of history. Approximately 3 miles west of Spexhall off the A144 between Halesworth and Bungay, and is a traditional pub serving excellent home-cooked food and superb ales in a very cosy atmosphere. Sympathetic and tasteful extensions and refurbishments have added a number of  interlinked areas around the historic core. This is one pub that has not forsaken the local community which it serves with folk evenings, quiz nights and other popular events. The Buck is listed in the Good  Beer Guides and is in CAMRA’s Regional Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors. It was also voted CAMRA’s Suffolk Pub of the Year 2007. It has been listed in the Good Beer Guide every year since 2004.


The bar is well stocked with a choice of local real ales from breweries such as Green Jack, Nethergate, Brandon, Grain and of course Adnams amongst others. Home cooked lunches and evening meals are served seven days a week from noon to -2 pm lunchtimes and 7-9 pm evenings.


The pub is home to many music sessions by groups such as Bodgers Mate, JY Kelly, Twisted Routes and Loose Marbles and once a month on the third sunday evening it holds an open music session called Rumfolk. The Buck is also very fortunate to be the home of Rumburgh Morris and The Old Glory Molly Dancers who both perform in the car park; Rumburgh Morris during the summer and Old Glory during the winter months.

Bristol Community Bike Workstations

Suffolk Bike Aid is very pleased to learn that long before us the city of Bristol set up a scheme a bit like our own which we weren't aware of before. However, if anyone wishes to compare the schemes, we would like to point out - as we have done elsewhere - how subtle differences can be crucial to this idea's effectiveness.

Their model appears to be that councils will provide something at public expense and administrate the allocation of it, with all the attendant costs, whereas Suffolk Bike Aid enables self-funded, inexpensive, independent and positively uncontrolled local provision.

In June 2008 Bristol was named the UK's first Cycling City with public investment of over £22 million to enable unprecedented levels of innovation, involvement and creativity in cycling.

Bristol and South Gloucestershire councils are leading on the Cycling City project, working with Bath & North East Somerset and North Somerset councils to promote cycling across the region.

The Cycling City project can provide portable workstations for use in communities across Bristol and they are inviting interested individuals and organisations to apply for them.

Applications from people living in communities where incomes are low and support for bike maintenance is poor are a priority.

The bike workstations contain a comprehensive set of bicycle tools, a bike stand and a track pump.

Naturally the council wants to ensure all this kit is well looked after and properly used.

They would also really like to see neighbourhood-based 'Bicycle Action Groups' who can champion cycling in their area and bring the bike workstations to community events or street parties.

On the other hand Suffolk Bike Aid anticipates that the inexpensive or practically free buy-in of our model means that businesses, small groups and kind individuals can provide Bike Aid stations immediately and so will declare themselves de-facto cycling champions of their building, street or village.


We don't mean to detract from Bristol's effort. It's a great idea to enable youth clubs or other groups to provide cycle maintenance or repair as an activity but for those who might compare Bike Aid to their scheme, we'd like to be fair to both sides to point out the differences as we don't see how that strategy can encourage cycling by reducing any reluctance to cycle because of the inconvenience of breakdowns although it has an important place in realising other outcomes.

Presently you can find the workstations in Bristol at:

Kingswood Foundation

Blenheim Scouts

Railway Path: Easton

Southmead Adventure Playground

The Bristol Bike Project

More info

Free's know-how

International bike blog Bike Radar reports that California State University Fresno has also recently installed two self-service bike repair stations on their campus. 


Judging from the pictures, these look identical to the Cambridge MA repair stations - but are painted a fetching red instead of zinc galvanised - so this is idea is evidently catching on, driven, I presume, by the bike stand's manufacturer.


Fresno's stations are located in front the University Student Union near the university dorms. These spots were chosen both for the security of being popular areas and because of the expected demand. If they're right, the university said it may install more stations in the future.


The school’s Alternative Transportation Fund paid for the program, according to Amy Armstrong, a public information officer with the California State University, Fresno Police Department.


“We plan on monitoring the use of the stations and expand the program if we see a high volume of use,” says Armstrong. “If this program increases the number of bikes on campus then it is definitely a success and worth the investment.”


Prior to the installation of the do-it-yourself repair stations, the only place on campus to repair a bicycle was in a shed in the plant operations agriculture yard. This shed was only open at times when a student was actually available to man it, so the two stations are already being seen as a bonus for students with bikes.


According to Bike Radar, these stations cost around $1000 each. 


Suffolk Bike Aid would like to inform anyone considering such a scheme in the UK that each of our Suffolk Bike Aid stations costs about £9, or $17 USD to purchase retail but zero cost if created by recycling old tools and a cardboard mailing tube.

I have spotted other models of 'free' bike repair stations on the web. This model (left) is found in Florida, USA.


However, a feature none of these stations appear to have is the provision of puncture repair tools and patches and glue. I find that omission surprising, considering these stands are supposed to be inspired by a scheme started on the MIT campus. Have America's brightest minds forgotten something?


These stations are ideal for a quick tune-up before or after a ride but they aren't going to get you out of trouble from the most common component failure on a bicycle; the vulnerability of the tyres to sharp objects like tacks, glass and cactus spines. Ideally, these stands would be outside a public place that could supply puncture kits, either for sale or pro-bono, on the Bike Aid model.


My issue with all the security measures built into these stands is that they are counter-productive to the ethos Suffolk Bike Aid aims to promote. If you say to someone "hey, this stuff is valuable" by chaining up something relatively trivial as a spanner, some people will feel challenged to steal it. 


Self-serve stations like this also don't give people a chance to interact; where human contract creates implicit trust, as well making it easier to identify any thief. Such opportunity for that human contact will lead to conversations and sharing of information, which then builds social capital. £1000 (as any price in dollars costs the same number of pounds in the UK) would buy a lot of spanners that the occasional jerk might pocket from a  Suffolk Bike Aid kit. But if those spanners were branded with a promotional message from a sponsor, the taking of them might even be encouraged.


Some entrepreneurs have tried to 'monetize' this evident demand for bike repair stations. 


A patent for a bike station and inner tube vending machine was filed with the US Patent Office in 2003 by one Richard Cofflet of Colorado. No evidence is found yet if one has actually got to market.

Free Bike Repair Stations in Cambridge.... USA

Wired, the journal of high-tech innovation, reports that free bike repair stations have been installed by the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts.


Cambridge Transportation Program Manager Cara Seiderman said  “It’s a way of supporting and making it easier for people to bike".


The stands provide tire gauges and pumps, Allen wrenches and a few other tools that enable cyclists to adjust seats or handlebars.


Each station cost the city about $1,000 and Seiderman said the city got the idea from MIT which has already installed repair stations around its campus. No word on whether you get a puncture repair kit which is the most common problem cyclists encounter. If they remember to bring theirs, they usually remember to bring a few tools as well. According to a city press release, these stands are for fixing a low tire, a loose chain, or a wiggly handlebar.


I wonder why the city didn't consider the no-cost provision model of Suffolk Bike Aid rather than going to the expense and trouble to install fixed facilities but I thoroughly applaud this innovation. Perhaps the bike-friendly UK namesake will do so too? 


You can find the 'Fixit' stands on Google maps


View Bike FixIt Stand Locations in a larger map

Host Profile: Sotherton Farm Beef

Just outside Halesworth on the route of the Halesworth Wheel and just before Strawberry Lane, the turning for Westhall, is Sotherton Farm, famous with locals and foodies for its home-made pies and beef.

The Sotherton herd consists of traditional beef breeds; the Simmental and Angus cattle graze on rich water meadow glass on the banks of the River Blyth. A well fed and contented herd ensures a wonderful flavour.

The farm shop offers high quality pork and beef matured for 28 days and butchered on-site as well as great value meat, hams, pies, bacon and salt beef from animals born and raised on the farm.

One of the farm workers is a keen cyclist himself who has been known to cycle to work from Bradwell near Yarmouth!

The Bike Aid Kit is kept at the shop. Opening hours: Monday - Saturday 9am - 5pm

Sotherton Farm Beef
White House Farm
Sotherton, Halesworth, Suffolk IP19 8NW
01986 873123
sothertonfarm.co.uk‎

Host Profile: Racehorse, Westhall

Westhall is one of Suffolk's very special places. The dipping, twisting and confusing single track road to the village frequently deceives car tourists; diverting them through a crack in the space/time continuum onto Brampton or Beccles unawares. A myriad of quiet lanes surrounding this 'mystery spot' are popular with walkers and cyclists.

Village life is very active and hasn't yet reached the tipping-point caused by second-homes. The villager's pantomime and other festivities are legend.

Cyclists and walkers can easily reach Westhall by rail from Brampton Station on the East Suffolk Line and Sustrans National Cycle Route One passes nearby offering a couple of miles car-free cycling to Halesworth across a former WW2 airfield. Look out for the dragon house and some other treats only those who venture there can discover.

The Racehorse
Westhall, Nr Halesworth,
Suffolk IP19 8RQ 01502 575706 www.racehorsewesthall.co.uk


Photo by Peggy Cannell http://www.flickr.com/photos/suffolkgal/4138698990/