A combination of both surprise and bemusement showed on the face of my friend when I popped around for a cuppa, having informed him about my 30-mile round trip on my Gazelle, from Greenwich to Kew Bridge and back.
“What? You’ve cycled in that attire?” he queried, with his eyes immediately falling on my khaki trousers, leather shoes and double-breasted winter coat. Suitable for the media lounge at a football match, the earlier destination of my outing, but not, according to him, not for cycling in the British capital. He found it remarkable that I barely sweated.
For me, it was just a joy ride, a ride that saved both time and money as well. In the four hours on the road I could see the cycling landscape in London in all its glory. The youngsters in Camberwell doing wheelies on their mountain bikes, the colourful pelotons of commuters on the Embankment, the tourists on their Santander or Lime bikes near Stamford Bridge, and mothers on their cargo bikes in Chiswick. London, inner London at least, is fast-becoming a cycle metropolis, although getting on your bike is not yet a way of life, as it is in Holland, but a more purposeful activity and mainly performed by men.
For a Dutchman it is exciting to see how London is changing. I love the annual Tweed Run in spring and the offer of cycle hire schemes. Every weekend I ride to football games, from Wembley to West Ham, and notice that bike facilities there have improved. Working with the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cycling and Walking, the Dutch embassy is doing great work to promote the ‘get on your bike’ philosophy.
In the early nineties, I first cycled on English soil. The journey went from Harwich to London, followed by a roundtrip via Canterbury, Hastings, Brighton, London and back to the ferry. I felt like the cycling equivalent of Dr Livingstone, exploring the cycleless home counties and the urban jungle of the capital. Motorists kept a distance from me, as if I was carrying a plague. After a puncture at Whitechapel I spent a couple of hours looking for a repair shop.
My English friend Peter thought I was certifiable. How things have changed. In 2003 I settled in Forest Hill, a dwelling on a steep road, and quickly bought a bike from a woman who had moved from cycle-friendly Oxford. There were more cyclists than ten years before, however the differences with Utrecht, my home town, were still considerable. In Holland the cyclists are the kings of the road; motorists are cautious, keeping in mind that they are usually liable in case of an accident.
In England I discovered, it was not allowed to take a passenger on a bike (‘a backie’) and venture into one-way streets. And back-pedal brakes were illegal, to my surprise.
“Inner London, is fast-becoming a cycle metropolis, although getting on your bike is not yet a way of life, as it is in Holland, but a more purposeful activity and mainly performed by men.”
Soon I had a couple of nearaccidents. The first happened when a black-cab passenger carelessly opened the door. It taught me to keep my distance from stationary cars, especially when going downhill — the ‘Dutch reach’ is still not widely practised. In Ladywell I hit the side of a car when a motorist turned left without looking in the side mirror. I started to realise that many motorists still thought that simply signalling means they have priority, which is of course not the case. And the most basic rule: never stand next to a van, coach or lorry while waiting for a red light.
Despite the close calls I began to enjoy cycling in London, especially since I started to use Strava back in 2017. I have clocked more than 53,000km since, in London, as well as Manchester, Liverpool and the south-east and never had, touch wood, serious problems on the road. What I have noticed, though, is a persistent animosity towards cyclists, fuelled by populist newspapers like The Daily Mail, The Sun and The Daily Telegraph.
One afternoon a plastic water bottle was thrown in my direction from the open window of a van, as I was quietly minding my cycling business along Shooters Hill Road, near Welling. After his premature death, I brought my dad’s Gazelle to Greenwich, where I had moved after living in Forest Hill for a couple of years. A very sturdy bike with a drum brake, which turned out to be a tad inconvenient when changing tyres.
The pride of the bicycle was the dynamo-powered lights. This old-fashioned and durable feature even caused some confusion. One evening I was waiting for a red light to turn green when a young bobby approached me. “Where’s your light?” he asked. “Wait until I start moving,” I replied. And he was astonished when the lamps started to brighten the darkness.
One contentious matter turned out to be my refusal to wear a helmet. Some school parents thought I was setting the wrong example for my son — even the local priest tried to change my mind, but has given up. In my opinion a helmet offers a false sense of security, but I must admit that the white ghost bikes at dangerous junction made me think twice. Over the years I twice hit the floor. First when I underestimated the depth of a puddle on Blackheath and the second crash involved hitting a park bench in a pitch dark Greenwich Park.
Also cycling to school is common in the Netherlands, but much less so here. When my son was at primary school we cycled in daily — he’d use the pavement, with me on the road next to him. None of the roads near the school were safe enough for him to cycle on. But the older he got, the more difficult this turned out to be, and pedestrians started to complain, even if the pavement was wide enough. It wasn’t hard to see why the bike racks the school, Invicta, had placed near its new building were underused. When he went to secondary school he started walking, like all his friends. Mission unaccomplished.
The welfare of children was the reason the Netherlands changed from four to two wheels. Dutch cycling was revolutionised after the Stop de Kindermoord movement developed in the 1970s, so much key infrastructure has been embedded for 50-plus years. Whereas, despite LCC’s efforts since the late 1970s, it seems British policymakers have only been taking cycling seriously for the last couple of decades. Interestingly, it’s clear that the recent surge of e-bikes is also helping to remove the much repeated argument that the British landscape, with all its hills, is unsuitable for a biking revolution. In Holland there are hardly any hills, but the strong winds offer a similar challenge.
There shouldn’t, in principle, be a huge difference between cycling in Dutch cities and in London. Being both assertive and polite has always been my principle. Just accept that everyone makes mistakes, or bends the rules of the Highway Code, motorists, cyclists and pedestrians. But sometimes I feel the London streets are a battlefield about rights, between two and four wheels, which maybe reflects the competitive and rightsbased nature of British society.
The general ‘pace of life’ in London differs from the laid-back attitudes in capitals like Berlin, Copenhagen and Amsterdam. A few high-profile politicians such as Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson have done their bit to try to ‘normalise’ cycling, make it less of a sport. And I applaud councils like Camden, Hounslow and Waltham Forest who are delivering lots of safe cycle routes. One telling difference between the North Sea neighbours is linguistic.
In Dutch there are two words for cycling: fietsen and wielrennen. The first is cycling in everyday clothes, at normal speed on utilitarian bikes; the latter is racing. In the English language, and culture, there doesn’t seem to be a difference between the two. Another quirk between Dutch and English cities involves the importance of a zebra crossing. Stopping for pedestrians at such crossings comes naturally for an Englishman and I quickly adapted to this habit.
“I have noticed that more and more Dutch friends want to cycle in London during their stays. My advice is always to use common sense and cycle like a Londoner, not like a Hollander!”
But when I slow m yspeed for a pedestrian who is about to make such a crossing in a Dutch city, I run the risk of causing an accident with impatient cyclists behind, or to be at the receiving end of a mouthful. The Dutch are direct, in traffic too. London has one more advantage: there are less rude, boorish and mendacious scooter drivers than in Dutch cities.
A very welcome development in the UK capital are the major cycleways, all leading to the centre. Some of them are nearly as wide as the road, like the stretch on C4 between Deptford and Surrey Quays. The ‘floating bus stops’ likewise are a nobrainer, though for some reason, unlike in Holland, they are deemed to be unsafe by critics. A far bigger concern, across the UK, are the potholes in the roads; these are hideous for cyclists, especially in the darker hours.
Progress has been impressive, but there remains a lot more to be done to make the roads truly cycle-friendly. For example, the City of London has done a great job making previously lethal junctions like Bank safer, but at Bishopsgate cyclists are quite literally thrown in front of the red buses thanks to changes made during the pandemic, like widening the pavements. Another example of this dangerous development is Waterloo Road, next to the station. The oft-stated claim that there is no space for cycle lanes in old cities is false. The Dutch learnt that it is not about the amount of space, but how it is being used.
The bridges across the Thames are a classic example of ‘hit and miss’ infrastructure as well. While the bridges of Westminster, Southwark and Blackfriars are superb for cyclists, Vauxhall and especially the north side of Tower Bridge are hazardous at busy times. And crossing the river east of Tower Bridge involves either the DLR, the Woolwich Ferry, a shuttle service at Dartford Bridge, or using one of the two foot tunnels. There was an excellent opportunity to address this by creating a cycle lane in the new Silvertown Tunnel, but that was deemed to be too expensive — a lost chance that unfortunately shows cycling is still often seen as an optional extra.
The same seems to be the case for bike theft. Not even 2% of the thefts are being solved by the police — a percentage that isn’t much higher in the Dutch cycling paradise.
The real cycling danger in my experience lies outside London, in counties like Kent, Surrey and Sussex where I sometimes venture. Cycling on country roads is dangerous simply because of speeding cars.
Having said all this, I have noticed that more and more Dutch friends want to cycle in London during their stays. My advice is always to use common sense and cycle like a Londoner, not like a Hollander. Don’t wear headphones, don’t take phone calls, use your arms to signal (especially at roundabouts), be assertive, have eye contact with lorry drivers at junctions, don’t daydream, don’t carry an umbrella and don’t overtake buses that are about to eave. And avoid Holland ParkRoad, one of the worst places to ride in town. Despite its name.
This article was originally published in London Cyclist autumn 2024, London Cycling Campaign’s exclusive member’s magazine. Join as a member today for quarterly copies of London Cyclist delivered to your door, free legal advice, discounts in independent bike shops across London, and much more…
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