Festivals and Friends
Two things are usually true of the annual Kidical Mass ride at the Reading Cycle Festival:
1. It’s fairly well attended.
2. We get wet.
On the second point, in the run up to the day, it didn’t look good at all. Increasing thunderstorm forecasts led us to wonder if we would even be able to run a ride at all!
However, the weather on the day (for the ride at least!) was perfect and we had about 60 riders out and having fun on bikes. Many thanks to the marshals who gave up their time to make the ride possible – as ever, we couldn’t do it without you.
Our rides serve a serious purpose as well as being fun. We want to try to highlight the need for safe cycling infrastructure younger riders can use, and are building relationships with Councillors and officers which helps with this.
Recently a mistake was made and the crossing in front of the hospital was ‘upgraded’ from a cyclist-and-pedestrian crossing to a pedestrian-only crossing. We raised this with Cllr Rowland, and the signage was fixed within days.
After the ride earlier in the year from the University of Reading Community Festival, we highlighted when turning from the university site onto the bike lane on Shinfield Road, the profile of the curb presented a hazard for many of our younger riders. The Council has now reprofiled this.
After the ride we enjoyed the rest of the festival, catching up with friends from Reading Bike Hub, Avanti, RCC and AW Cycles.
Our boys loved watching the stunt rider display and riding Avanti’s ramps course, even when the rain came down later – it’s great seeing how their confidence has come on from last year.
Visit https://kidicalmassreading.co.uk for details of future rides, including Christmas rides in Reading and Wokingham on 7 December.
We hope to see you there!
Hilary Smart
