Who Needs a Sleigh?
Neither flood nor frost was going to stop Santa from keeping the most important event in his calendar (apart from Christmas Eve, of course) – the annual Kidical Mass Reading Christmas ride.
My father-in-law usually comes along to our rides to cycle with our five-year-old since my partner leads the ride and I am our back marker. However, the boys’ grandfather couldn’t make it until the end of the ride (he just missed Father Christmas). Our son therefore got to ride on the triplet with Dad and Father Christmas.
Though flood wasn’t going to stop Santa, it had a pretty good go. After days of heavy rain much of King’s Meadow was more than a foot underwater.
Even more than usual we didn’t want to run the risk of a kid falling in, so we changed our plan and routed the ride (which started at Thames Lido) away from the river and through the centre of town to Forbury Gardens where Santa handed out presents including bike lights.
Thanks to Reading Borough Council for their support of this project, which also enabled us to distribute lights to some secondary school students.
We got lots of smiles and waves from people out doing their Christmas shopping in the very festive town centre (made all the more festive, of course, by the jingling of bike bells).
Watching for flooding on the route has become something of a feature of planning Kidical Mass rides, especially as much of our child-friendly cycling infrastructure in Reading is river-adjacent.
We will keep pushing for the day when the cycling network in Reading is more resilient to heavy rain and ice. If you’d like to add your voice to ours then do come and join one of our rides – see kidicalmassreading.co.uk for details.
Hilary Smart
