I notice that many of my time-lapse sequences are of tracks away from car traffic and as a result is not totally representative of my cycling experience in Hull. Although I am doing many longer rides that take me out of the city, I frequently criss-cross the main urban centre to get to interviews.
Here is a time-lapse sequence from my cycle across town yesterday. I took photos every 2 seconds at 13.00 and again at 14.30.
Today I spent time at Costello Stadium with a group that provides opportunities for disabled people to experience cycling with their family and friends. I not only witnessed people thoroughly enjoying themselves but I took the chance to join in. I circled the park many times on a very sweet red tricycle with a basket on the back.
The group have a collection of bicycles that are easy to ride for people with different forms of mobility. Clients and carers told me not only how much fun it is but how the activity builds confidence, new skills and fitness levels. The smiles, laughter and shrieks of joy made it very clear how much cycling is enjoyed by everyone.
I then cycled from the stadium to Beverley Road where I interviewed a key member of the Beech Holme Tandem Club. Although, Rachel and I have been regular participants in the weekly tandem rides and we held a focus group with four backriders earlier this week, I thought it would be valuable to have even more focused time with an experienced backrider. And it was great. Talking about cycling is not always easy for people. But in some cases, such as this, it was filled with fabulous stories and rich history of the area.
This map kind of shows my movements today – however it only captures half the trip. Double it and add speed for a better representation – my goodbyes at the stadium took longer than expected and I had to race back into town for my next appointment. Like yesterday, the weather was perfect which meant I was kind of warm when I arrived.
I blogged earlier about Tenfoots and Courts. Here is a little montage of pictures from the courts running off Ella Street, in West Hull. Ella Street became a Conservation Area in 1994.
Ella Street’s series of “squares” and “avenues” give it a distinctive layout, based on the traditional court pattern but with particularly large amounts of garden and green space. There is a little network of paths and tenfoots linking the courts and avenues, with the paths leading to houses having a “cottage” character. Some of the paved communal areas, used as parking in other nearby roads, have been reclaimed for plants and people with tubs and trees providing communal space in which neighbours can socialise.
Ella Street is also the home of Ellafest, a street festival running every two years.
Given that we have such a mix of visual data (videos and photos) it’s going to be interesting to think more about how we interpret these and what use they are for sociological research. Kat and I have a paper accepted that I will be presenting at the Vital Signs conference in Manchester in September – here’s a link to the abstract and we will be putting the slides and audio up on the “outputs” page after the conference.
I took this time lapse video on the morning of Wednesday 16th June – it was recording pictures while I was cycling and walking to Ferensway/Freetown Way junction, and from around 0:34 there’s an extract showing the camera recording traffic movement at the junction. The time lapse makes the traffic movements look like a stately ballet, and the other sensory experiences (noise and smell, principally) are stripped out. (Even using video, the camera’s ability to record noise is still limited). It looks quite different to how it felt, standing by the side of the road trying to make sure I recorded all the cyclists passing (in half an hour, I counted 121 cyclists), although the wide angle lens captures the size of the junction well.
Today’s word is Tenfoot. A tenfoot is a paved alleyway running behind a row of terraced housing, ten feet wide. Sometimes, these are used to join cycle routes, e.g. near Princes Avenue.
They may also be used by cars and pedestrians, and children playing. As a kid one of our interviewees used to live next to the only twenty-foot tenfoot in Hull. There had been a fence between the two tenfoots, but it had come down. Everyone still called it a tenfoot. Another kid built a really good BMX ramp (this was in the 80s during the heyday of BMX riding) and kids from all over came to use it…
Another Hull tradition is the Court.
A court is a row of terraced houses that have a path running along the fronts of the houses rather than a road. It means that the front gardens are bigger than the yards that you get with terraced housing with a road in front (like those where I live). On Lonsdale Street (shown in the picture above) the court is quiet despite being near Anlaby Road.
Not directly related to cycling, but interesting features of the local environment that produce very small-scale motor traffic-free or traffic-lite spaces nonetheless.
Hull 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. Read more here.
