Aside 33

Why not collect the set!

Cycling Hell is London

Warning: excessively large amounts of swearing is to be expected. This is the antidote to filling the daily record with inordinate amounts of tedious cycling stories.
Pick a place in London that you know from this list. It's everywhere I've had near death experiences.

Charing Cross Road, Clapham High Street, Trafalgar Square, Vauxhall Bridge area

Charing Cross Road

13.1.99
Green light, going past the entrance into Leicester Square, bloke in a van started going in to the entrance while only about a third of the way along me, pushing me either off my bike or into the square. I had to shout to him to stop so I could go past him, and then he started giving me jip. I told him to go fuck himself. Wanker.

Clapham High Street

14.1.99
Stupid pedestrian fuckers - two of them, I'm about a foot away, they're talking, and they walk straight out in front of me. I have to swerve right, slap-bang in to the path of a car that is illegally driving in the bus lane behind me. ARGH. I had to shoot out of the way, and you know what? They didn't say sorry or anything.

Trafalgar Square

14.1.99
Who the hell designed it, that's what I want to know. If you want to go straight across, up Charing Cross Road from the Mall, you have to negotiate this bizarre "cycling in the farthest right lane" situation, via which you have to travel over about 6 lanes of traffic, all moving towards you, in order to get over to the spcial buses/taxis and bikes only route across the square. Normally, you can cycle on the inside of a black cab and let him protect you, but The Mall is semi-closed at the moment, so there's a total traffic confusion round there. Leaving me, this morning, having to some how find the energy to power over this enormous expanse of road, since there are cars and bloody double decker buses actually physically nearly on top of me. Man! It was scary.

Vauxhall Bridge area

14.1.99
This I find difficult to believe. The bridge you have to go under on your way towards Vauxhall Bridge from the south side, I'm cycling along the right lane for me to turn right on to the approach to Vauxhall Bridge. There's a bus lane to my left, and a double decker bus overtook me, but not enough, then tried to cut in in front of me to go in to the bus lane, then stopped in the middle of the two lanes, expecting me to carry on past him! I was sitting on the bike calling to him to get out of my way, the stupid twat, and eventually he did, letting me get back in to my lane. But that's not the end of it. I was ahead of him, and I could hear him tooting his horn, and while I was sitting at the traffic lights waiting to go right, he came up, still tooting his horn and yelling at me out of his window! Like - fuck right off, you stupid arsehole! Bloody hell, who do you think fucked up here, you or me?! Drivers, they think they can get away with calling female cyclists anything, after they cut you up.