Kat and I went on a ride on Wednesday 12th May with the Beech Holme tandem club. The ride was circular, starting from HERIB on the Beverley Road, heading up North to Arnold and part way back turning East to come back into the city on the Holderness Road.

As we cycled out of North Bransholme and left the Hull urban area the sun was starting to set. Looking forwards you could see the agricultural landscape and behind us were the lights of Hull.

The map below shows the route we took with a few pics to illustrate.

We didn’t leave the Bay Horse in Arnold until around 10:15 (having arrived there around 9pm) and by then it was properly dark – and quite cold. This time I was on the front of the tandem and apparently I wiggle my shoulders, which affects balance! If you’re new to tandem riding, it’s also hard to remember to alert the back rider before you do anything surprising.

Along the lanes people can ride two abreast, with the lanes quiet and the minibus tailing us to keep us safe from the rear. It is a very sociable ride as riders can talk to their tandem partner or to other pairs. The rhythms of tandem riding differ from the rhythms of solo riding – like balance, they must be negotiated between rear and front riders. For the skilled, like many of the front and rear riders present that evening, this is part of the unspoken pleasure of riding tandem – for the less skilled, like me, it is rather more conscious!

Here we are gathering together cycling places and cycling resources in Hull. More will be added! At the moment we have bike shops and several bike clubs, and we are using a background cycle map from OpenStreetMap, which shows some signed cycle routes. If you want to suggest a cycling place in Hull please email us.

We notice that some residential areas seem to have better access to bike shops than others. Are there additional bike shops or bike repair schemes that we aren’t aware of in those areas?

We designed these cards for fieldwork in Hull. The first is an intro to the project and invitation to participate. We handed them to cyclists, left them in bike shops and attached them to parked bikes throughout the city. The second was designed for use at the Lord Mayor’s parade on Saturday 15th May. We shared a stall with the Hull City Council (HCC) Sustainable Travel Officer located in front of a well-signed transport bus.

We asked local cyclists what they liked and disliked about cycling in Hull and if they wanted to participate further in the study. The response was terrific. We ran out of cards. (It helped, of course, that HCC was giving away a range of cycling vests, trouser guards and maps).

Many thanks to Allan Davidson for letting us join in HCC activities, enthusiastically explaining our project to interested cyclists and encouraging them to participate in the study.

This year, for the first time, the bicycle took a key role in the annual Lord Mayor’s Parade through the city streets of Hull. In the past a flotilla of lorries and HGV’s transported displays and people. This year, in resonse to the economy, a focus on ‘health and wellbeing’ the parade adopted took a shorter, quieter and decidedly more eco-friendly form. I’d like to think the human powered theme was also in recognition of the role pedal power and waking play in everyday lives of Hull citizens.

Participants in the parade took to the streets on foot, skates and bikes. They included East Park Cycle scheme kids, The Police, the local radio station and the 5th Hull Boys Brigade amongst others.

Despite being the headline event, the parade took only a small portion of the busy day. From 9am to 5pm, crowds milled through two large areas of stalls and events in Queens Gardens. Taking up the offer to join the Hull City Council’s Sustainable Transport Officer and the HCC bus, we were able to distribute research postcards and talk to hundreds of people. And despite the rain showers during the week, it was dry and even a little sunny during the day.

The Beech Holme Tandem Club have 15 working tandems in their bike shed and over 45 non-working ones in the basement. We were incredibly fortunate to gain a glimpse at the collection prior to them going to auction. It was a veritable cornucopia of tandem history. Bikes, parts and even magazines dated back a century and in some cases even further. I was saddened to know that this magificent collection would be splintered via the sale however what is critical to the club is the ride, not the heritage of the collection. The more working bikes they have on the road, the more visually impaired people can join the club and experience the freedom and delight of cycling. Therefore, the monies raised by the selling of this vast collection will be incredibly well spent. The auction will be held at Gilbert Baitson’s on 9th June.

Rachel and I are spending a week in Hull from Monday 10th to Sunday 16th May and I’m planning on cycling there from London. The idea is that I might gain insights into cycling in Hull by arriving by bike, rather than arriving by train and then cycling around. I aim to cycle to all our fieldsites and I hope that in documenting these experiences (fieldnotes, photos, GPS, film etc), I will find new ways to connect them together.

Another aspect of this journey is my choice of accommodation along the way. I plan to stay with cycle tourers contacted via Warmshowers.com, a website that helps facilitate hospitality for cycle tourers. Although it is not a great name, it is a terrific community. Previous experience of doing this has been rewarding in terms of garnering local knowledge, cycling stories and new friends.

The plan:
Journey length: 230 miles
Miles per day: 70-80 miles
Duration: 3 days
Stopovers: Bedford, Newark-On-Trent, Beverley

I visited Hull in February 2010 to have a look – or rather cycle – round. This was the first time I’d been to Hull. Lots of interesting stuff, including traffic calming measures (e.g. 20mph zones, conversion of car lanes into cycle lanes), the drains/ex rail trails, the mix of buildings and the possibilities for cycling along (some of) the waterfront, where the fishing and shipbuilding industries used to operate.

This is a map of a route I took on the second day that I was there. I cycled up to Beverley along the main road and recorded my journey back to Hull. Having already seen some of the more central areas I then decided to explore other parts of Hull including “Europe’s largest council estate” (Bransholme). I also wanted to see more of the drains some of which offer formal and informal cycling paths.

Perhaps the best bit was discovering a heath between Cottingham and Orchard Park Estate, complete with ponies. I got a bit lost at this point but there were some dramatic views over the heath to the Orchard Park tower blocks.

ull was chosen because it is a high-cycling city that is often overlooked. People not from Hull don’t necessarily associate it with cycling. Yet Hull was known during the inter-war period as the UK’s “Cycling City” with large numbers of bike shops. It still has high cycling levels comparable to those of York.

Hull has an interesting policy history – in the mid 90s onwards it implemented traffic calming measures including many 20mph zones. During this period the Hull Cycling Campaign (HCC) lobbied for measures to support cycling.

Cycling in Hull is a varied experience – ranging from 20mph streets to busy A routes (with different types of cycling infrastructure), and including shared space routes along the drains or former railway paths. Hull has a range of cycling-related clubs including the Tandem Club formed in the 1950s.