Cycling in and around Birmingham England

Urban audax?

I've worked for South Birmingham PCT for 9 years and have always wanted to do a day ride that involved visiting every GP Practice in the area - we have 63 but some share buildings. Today I did a trial run - the real thing with a colleague is on Tuesday. First problem was planning an optimum route. We tried the software used to reduce mileage for patient transport runs and then a Beacon friend kindly prepared a more refined route. Ended up doing 60 miles (Brevet Populaire in Audax speak). Started at 10 and finished at 5.30 with only stop being lunch at Moseley Hall Hospital. Tough going compared to a trip out into the country not helped by wind and rain. All the dodging about is also not like doing a familiar commute in one direction on optimised roads/path/canal. Does give you a feel for the area (suburban variations!) but traffic is heavy all day, close and quite irritable (not with me but with each other) potholes and roads degenerating to off road standard ghastly and also slippery on my 23c tyres. GP practices are not well signed posted, I passed 3 by mistake and one had a sign which pointed to the now boarded up old building rather than the new one and sent you into a one-way system that seemed to have no outlet - not a problem on a bike. A few had prominent bike parking but most didn't. Now Moseley Hall has a cathedral of a bike shed right in front of the historic Hall with a hard to lift cantilevered door - dont know how they got permission.

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Permalink Reply by Simon on March 31, 2011 at 8:41

For no other reason than to see if it could be done I tried to design myself an acceptable (based on audax guidelines) Brevet Pop around Brum, using quieter roads and cyclse paths where possible. Bloody hard work - sure you can get a nice route that takes in a good number of the "must see" places in the city, but the number of Info Controls needed to remove the possibility of taking short cuts down main roads was silly.

My second attempt was a bit better but covered less of the city...used the canal between Wovles and the city centre and then Rt5 down to Clent, with a liesurely return via Kinver, Pattingham, etc so not so urban.

Third attempt was Sutton Park, N.Brum Route, city centre, out on Rt5, ten back across the south of the city....works but doesn't show the city off very well.

Next attempt is to link up all of the city's council run historic sites - Aston Hall, Jewely Quarter, Soho House, Blakesly, etc etc. for a tour of Brum's history, but due to govt cuts this is now a bit expensive as you have to pay to get into them from this year.

Linking the GP practices sounds like quite an undertaking...I'm surprised that you managed them all in so few miles!

Regarding your Treasure Hunt, Pete, I've run a couple of these on the edge of N.Brum - sort of cross between a trad CTC hunt and an on road Trail Quest, the riders seemed to enjoy them, and if you give them more 'controls' than they can physically visit in the time allowed then it's not the fastest riders that win, but those who are better at route planning - thus everyone gets a chance of some glory! In mine, as well as collecting things they also had to answer some questions about some locations - the vicar of one church was very confused as to why loads of cyclists were running around the grave yard reading all of the headstones!

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Permalink Reply by john bennett on April 5, 2011 at 8:35

Dave

I hope that you made appointments at all these very busy gps. Doubt if they have time now that they are heavily into management. get some pictures for the media.

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Permalink Reply by Dave Cox on April 5, 2011 at 19:26

Well I can now do a very boring slide show of Dave Cox and Bike Friday outside every practice in South Birmingham. Took Friday because it is suprisingly tiring at my age getting off and on a bike with a cross bar and a saddlebag. We did in in 8 hours, nicer weather today. It would have taken a lot longer if appointments had been involved. We spent at least 3 hours not riding even though by the end super domestique Joe (who was sheltering me from the wind by the afternoon retreat into a westerly from Acocks Green) was taking photos from his bike and I was noting time, mileage and bike parking facilities at record speed. Average riding speed was just under 10mph. I've visited before and attended practice meetings but apart from saying hello at a couple of excellent new practice buildings and chatting to Adam a cycling doctor who is doing a sponsored end to end in May we tried to keep moving. Not a ride I'll do again but good to have achieved an ambition before I finally retire to just enjoy the lanes.

john bennett said:

Dave

I hope that you made appointments at all these very busy gps. Doubt if they have time now that they are heavily into management. get some pictures for the media.