Bicycle Track Diversion Finished?

On Sunday July 1st 2001, the new cyclists diversion around South Gloucestershire Councils shiny new ring road was apparently finished. But for some reason even though all the tarmac was down the path remained fenced off. The bloke in the pictures 1 and 2 is repairing the fences that obstruct the cycle track at the top of the hill!!! (Is he a slave of the Traffic Cones?). I had approached from the Bristol end and got this far without meeting any resistance. In picture 3 the big guy is turning some cyclists who had approached from the other direction back the way they came. Approaching from the bottom the only problem was lifting the bike over the barrier shown in pic. 4.

King Of The Hill?

Click on the thumbnails to enlarge.

1. Fixing The Barrier

2. Fixing The Barrier

3. Repel Cyclists

4. The Barrier At The Bottom Of the Hill

I never did find out why South Gloucestershire Council were so keen to continue to prevent cyclists from using the shorter route that they were apparently prepared to pay someone to defend these unnecessary fences on a beautiful Sunday afternoon when the cycle track is busiest. I'm sure it would have been cheaper and easier to simply remove the concrete barrier from the bottom of the hill.

Note:- The riders in picture 3 were all had sufficient power and a low enough gear to ride all the way up the hill without stopping. Perhaps they don't need my high tech bicycle gear calculator, perhaps they have already used it to optimise their gear ratios. Either way a good set of bolt croppers would have been more useful to them on this particular occasion!

Photography by Nigel 'Gear Ratio' Jones July 2001