Sunday at Bill's Mother's: 26th May 2024
Gritty northerners (and Belgians, Germans, Scots and Swedes) on wheels. And why cities should be designed for children.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff3262a2d-5f66-4921-8be0-33145e5e96cd.heic)
Morning. (And apologies for the wrong date earlier in the first post. I’ve been working all night, and I need a coffee).
Two contrasting features today: about why and how Sheffield is planning to build a city for children, and why (and how) Heeley is an international centre for the growing (and slightly mad) sport of ultra bike packing. And yes, it’s Secret Seating quiz time again.
Thanks to all the new paying subscribers who’ve joined us this week. These posts arrive in your inbox (or Substack app) thanks to our wonderful paid up members, whose subscriptions are the only way to keep this social enterprise running.
A monthly subscription to help cover our costs is less than half the price of a Rishi Sunak wooden spoon, you might like to know.
1,000 km Of Meditation
The weather is not looking good, chuckles Angela Walker, referring to the rainstorms on Saturday night. Angela and her team are responsible for waving goodbye to over 130 brave souls cycling out from Heeley over the past few days to visit 10 checkpoints scattered across the hills, moors and mountains of northern England and southern Scotland.
Most of these locations appear to have been carefully selected for their random “What? Where? How on Earth do I get there?”qualities: a radar station on England’s second highest mountain, the forlorn arch of an eighteenth century lead mill near Durham, and the UK’s oldest suspension bridge rattling over the River Tweed, for example.
The All Points North challenge is for a very particular brand of gritty cycling people. Riders arrive in Heeley from across the UK and Europe, and then set out on a route they plan themselves to visit all ten checkpoints.
There are two categories: ‘Rookies’ can start anytime from Wednesday onwards and take the approximately 1,000 km route at their own pace, whereas the ‘72 Hours’ crew set off together on Friday evening aiming to get back to Heeley by 8pm on Monday. They have to carry all their kit, and be prepared to look after themselves in all weathers, but they all also carry GPS trackers so they can be monitored as they go.
Meanwhile, Angela and team spend the weekend ‘dot watching’ - that is, watching the dots on an online map corresponding to each rider as they meander around the countryside day and night. Try it yourself here. You find yourself watching two dots cross paths on a windswept mountain at midnight and wondering what those two wet riders find to say to each other.
I’ve covered the event a few times since it started, and riders shared some of their tactics. Charlotte Thompson told me how she dealt with scores of inquisitive sheep on a dark military firing range in Northumberland.
“I started scat singing,” she said. “Bee bap bap bap doo woop. I couldn’t just keep shouting at them, so I sang to keep them out of the road. And it worked.”
Sleeping is an issue. After the hardiest riders battled on through hallucinations and drooping eyelids to finish as quickly a possible in previous events, organisers now stipulate rest stops after 24 hours of riding. Bus shelters, hedges, a park and ride site bench next to a handy heating duct have all been used as beds.
Angela takes a personal interest too. “I’m like the mother hen, and they’re all my little chicks,” she laughs. Profits from entry fees go to support the Heeley Trust social enterprise, where Angela works at the Trust’s cycling projects including the A Different Gear community bike shop.
She’s a veteran of long distance cycling herself, and set up All Points North after riding in various multi-thousand kilometre events across Europe, and thinking, why not have one across the howling moors of northern England, starting in Heeley?
After five years, All Points North has achieved its aim, and is now established on the international ultra distance bike packing calendar, she says.
During the All Points North weekend, her phone is always on in case riders get into difficulties. They always ring in the middle of the night, she sighs, usually saying they’ve had enough and want to ‘scratch’ - in other words, stop cycling through the wind and rain and catch the train home instead.
“I usually say, well, why don’t you find somewhere to have a rest, and see how you feel in the morning? It often works, and they usually really thank me for it when they get back to Heeley.”
But there are exceptions: this year one of the younger rookie riders battled through the terrible weather on Wednesday and Thursday and then called to scratch after drying out in the sun on Friday. “He said he wanted to finish on a high, and not go through any more misery,” says Angela. “But he said he’ll finish it another year.”
Riders, not unexpectedly, say the event is ‘character building’: finishing a 1,000 km cycling challenge gets you out of your comfort zone, which is good for you, they say.
“I think it changes how you hold yourself, and builds confidence and assertiveness in other parts of your life,” said Charlotte Thompson after finishing in 7th place in 2021, ahead of most of the male riders.
“That resilience transcends the ride and helps me feel more confident in a boardroom or in a confrontational situation. And there’s a sense of focus you don’t get in normal life,” she said, after 52 hours of just riding, eating and thinking about where she was going. “It was like two days of meditation.”
There’s plenty more time this weekend for unexpected events for mother hen Angela Walker, but it’s already been quite an eventful year.
Scot Helen Bakie became yet another of Sheffield’s tram track victims on her way to Heeley last week. After falling on the tracks after arriving by train in Sheffield, she insisted on setting out with a ‘sore arm’ as she put it, until eventually, after arriving in Penrith, she called Angela to say the pain was probably getting a bit much.
“So she went to hospital, and they said she’d fractured her humorous,” says Angela. “She’d ridden over 300km with a broken arm.”
All those gritty cyclists out there would welcome your support via social media: Find them on their travels at: https://www.allpointsnorth.cc
Urban Playgrounds
Spotting an indicator species out in the wild, as I’ve covered before, tends to show how well a particular environment is doing for the creatures that might like to live there.
Children can be seen as an indicator species for cities, I learned this week,
“The position of children in a landscape shows the health of a place,” said Ali Campion from the Sustrans charity. “And children are important, because let’s not forget, there are loads of them.”
I joined dozens of local planners and transport advocates at the South Yorkshire Combined Authority Active Travel Ambition conference last week to hear from the head of the Department of Transport’s Active Travel England agency how the government (present and future it seems) want us to get about in future.
We know they’re aiming to make it easier for us to walk, cycle and wheel (get around on wheelchairs and the like) more often, and we heard on Wednesday that South Yorkshire has so far been allocated £1.48 billion in transport money, a good proportion of which could help us get on with enabling all that sustainable travelling over the next seven or so years.
Behind the scenes there are challenges to that figure: some elected members and planners from the councils in South Yorkshire may feel it’s still a good idea to build more huge road schemes that will get clogged up with traffic again in a few years time.
Our active travel commissioner Ed Clancy told us how he and his team will be looking differently at active travel, not least because the public of South Yorkshire have no real idea what the term means.
Rather than focusing on hard-core commuter journeys (he showed a slide of a smart man with a brief case on an expensive Brompton folding bicycle) they’ll be looking at all kinds of travel within and between the villages and towns of formerly industrial South Yorkshire.
There’ll be a priority on public health (in a region where there’s an 18 year difference in life expectancy across South Yorkshire), on reducing air pollution (that’s involved in a significant percentage of local deaths), and on children, who’ve been ignored for years. We should all remember the figure 290, he said, which is the number of children who are killed or seriously injured on South Yorkshire roads every year.
Then we heard some interesting detail from a panel of local schoolteachers, mothers and agencies doing their best for our families and children, like Sustrans and Modeshift Stars, who’ll be helping schools get organised for more school streets over coming years, where cars are excluded at school times in favour of children walking, running and wheeling to and from school.
Urban Playgrounds academic Tim Gill reminded everyone of the well-documented story of how the world of four Sheffield eight year olds closed in on them over the years: Great grandad George from central Sheffield was allowed to walk six miles on his own to fish in the River Rother in 1926. His son, Jack was allowed to walk a mile to play in the local woods in 1950. Jack’s daughter Vicky could go to the park and local swimming pool half a mile away when she was 8 in 1979. But her son, Ed, was only allowed to travel on his own to the end of his street when he was 8 in 2007.
You need good places to play, and the opportunity to get to them, said Tim Gill, if you want a city fit for children. Having both makes kids healthier and happier, and improves a city for everyone else too. A phrase that kept coming up was “if it works for children it works for everyone.”
Up to now, this idea has been an outlier in transport planning: roads get built to help busy commuters get to their busy jobs as quickly as possible. So children stay inside, or get ferried to play centres, and you rarely see them out in the wild.
But it seems Covid and air pollution and congestion and practical efficiency are all leading planners and politicians in a new direction.
Journeys by families, kids and people needing to get on with everyday life should be planned for too, not just commuter trips for workers and business folk. Lower speed limits, streets for playing and communal garages for motor vehicles at the edges of settlements are all being set up in other parts of the world, and could be here too,
West Yorkshire planner Helen Forman said the two Yorkshire mayors were both adopting a ‘child first’ policy, and when I asked Tim Gill how South Yorkshire was shaping up, he quietly told me the approach here seemed to be well ahead of others across the Pennines and down south.
“The next few years will be very interesting,” Helen Forman said.
Conference organiser Nicola Marshall, South Yorkshire’s active travel programme director, was rushing about herding speakers after the morning of child friendly planning presentations. Are we going to see this kind of thing here, I asked her?
“Yes,” she said, clear enough for a child to understand.
Secret Seating (5)
The latest instalment of our ever popular quiz is above, this time supplied by reader and member of our social enterprise team John Wardle, who says: “It’s well hidden by ivy clad walls so it must have been there a while.”
He adds despite its seclusion, this is still a popular sandwich or relaxing spot for walkers, locals and families. As usual, if you know where our secret seat sits, let us all know in the comments - and thanks to John for his contribution. (And for hiding a clue with his coat).
Selected What’s On Out There (from Sun 26th May)
See our full listings service here. And please share with your outdoorsy mates too. I try and update the bustling What’s Out There post every few days so you can always find good stuff to get up to. If you appreciate all my work on this, please subscribe!
Mon 27th - Fri 31st - Daily health walks in parks and green spaces from Step Out Sheffield, 10 am start
Mon 27th - SRWT Volunteer Work Day - Kilnhurst (Rotherham)
Tues 28th - Graves Park Digging Deeper for All - Woodland Heritage walk
Weds 29th - Land (Liz Hanks + Matthew Conduit) at Graves Art Gallery (£12)
Thurs 30th - Green City Action Grimesthorpe community allotment volunteer days
Sat 1st Jun - Ranger Led Conservation Morning, Wardsend Cemetery
Sat 1st - Wadsley & Loxley Commoners Muck In Morning
Sun 2nd - Plants Tour of Sheffield General Cemetery with Gerry Firkins (£5)
I’ve learned a lot after meeting loads of experts in various out there fields while researching the 159 posts in our archive. For example, I’m now seeing the incredible Ivy-leaved Toadflax (above) on walls and riverbanks across the city, where its tangles of wiry stems demonstrate the plant’s uncanny ability to seek light or shade, depending on what its after at the time.
Full members have access to all those posts (including The Perks of Being a Wallflower, starring the Ivy-leaved Toadflax), along with the kudos of being a proper part of this social enterprise for the Outdoor City. Sign up as a full paying subscriber below if you’re ready to join us.
The secret seat is a fine spot, in Fulwood, on Harrison Lane just past the junction with David Lane.
I don’t know if the splendid Active Travel people are aware, but there’s a social enterprise called Slow Ways, which was set up during lockdown. It aims to describe walkable links between all the towns and cities in the country, with reviews and surveys done by volunteers as to how good they are - some are not good! - and whether they are wheelable. Many can be cycled too, but that’s not the aim.
We tested one recently with my daughter and 4 month old granddaughter, so we were using a pushchair. Not all the paths are super-beautiful, but almost all are doable. My sister (approaching 70) has walked about 2,000 miles, and is really hooked!
There is an app, and the website is https://beta.slowways.org/. New reviewers are always welcome, or you can just do the walks 😊