Honour the Brave

There's a Guardian blog entry whining that the Bristol rent-a-bike scheme is doomed, as the insightful journalist has come out from London to discover that the city is in fact hilly. Yes. That's one reason the city is more fun than London, the other being Bath Ales and Butcombe Brewery, on offer at pubs at the top, bottom and middle of those hills. A pub crawl up St Michael's Hill would not be the same if the road was flat.

It does make it harder to cycle round, but that is where people have a plan.

Bath Buildings, weekday evening. No cars in the ASL, yet rather than wait patiently, this woman decides to run Gloucester Road -2 lanes of car traffic, one bus-lane on the right of this picture, and cars on the left waiting to turn into Bath Buildings.

She lives, and was passed about 20 seconds later, her pushing her bike up Nugent Hill, before she'd even got past the one-way cars-can-contraflow stretch.

If she were fit, she could have waited, cycled across on green, and got up the hill without having to risk the passing cars, faster.

But think about it. By running the lights, then walking up the hill, she gets to get up the hill fairly quickly, without needing to be fit. Just brave. And for that, we honour her!