I went for a ride today. Unfortunately, i had to go past a local spot where people congregate to go for a walk up a hill. It's a country lane. There is a car park on it,but I guess either it iver-flowed or people didn't want the hassle of getting in and out. The end result was that there was a continuous line of parked cars on one side of the lane for about 150 meters all facing the opposite way to what I was going and on the other side of the road.
I was happily pedalling along this lane where the parked cars were, when I noticed a couple of cars enter the narrowed bit from the opposite directiom. my first thought was that it would have been better for them to have waited, but if they kept close to the parked cars, there should still be enough room for me to get through. I'm quite brave, so that sort of thing doesn't worry me.
Anyway, as the front one approached, I noticed that she was steering more and more to my side, so I started pointing to the left (my right). She wasn't going very fast and I had slowed down, so there was no danger. Her wheels were literally touching the verge on my side, so there was absolutely no room for me to get past. She started to slow right down, and when we were qite close I was able to shout to her to move over to the left. After stopping, I asked her what she was doing. She shouted back to me, "Don't you know that you have to leave space in case they open their doors".
I'm not going to say what happened next in case I incriminate myself, but I don't think she'll be doing that again.
The exact location is at 2:12 in this video, but this is not a video of the event. You can see the carpark on the other side of the road just after. Normally, I'd be going a lot faster, like in the video, but there are too many people around now and always cars jumping out from the car park, which makes it very dangerous. It's so busy now that the council have attempted to tame the chaos by making both roads the other side of the carpark one way coming towards me, but, luckily, they added a cycle lane to go the other way in the one to the right. I always hit at least 40 mph where that yellow bin is at 0:30 because it's a 30% hill - like going off the edge of a cliff. It's a great hill, you go for over a mile without pedalling.
I was happily pedalling along this lane where the parked cars were, when I noticed a couple of cars enter the narrowed bit from the opposite directiom. my first thought was that it would have been better for them to have waited, but if they kept close to the parked cars, there should still be enough room for me to get through. I'm quite brave, so that sort of thing doesn't worry me.
Anyway, as the front one approached, I noticed that she was steering more and more to my side, so I started pointing to the left (my right). She wasn't going very fast and I had slowed down, so there was no danger. Her wheels were literally touching the verge on my side, so there was absolutely no room for me to get past. She started to slow right down, and when we were qite close I was able to shout to her to move over to the left. After stopping, I asked her what she was doing. She shouted back to me, "Don't you know that you have to leave space in case they open their doors".
I'm not going to say what happened next in case I incriminate myself, but I don't think she'll be doing that again.
The exact location is at 2:12 in this video, but this is not a video of the event. You can see the carpark on the other side of the road just after. Normally, I'd be going a lot faster, like in the video, but there are too many people around now and always cars jumping out from the car park, which makes it very dangerous. It's so busy now that the council have attempted to tame the chaos by making both roads the other side of the carpark one way coming towards me, but, luckily, they added a cycle lane to go the other way in the one to the right. I always hit at least 40 mph where that yellow bin is at 0:30 because it's a 30% hill - like going off the edge of a cliff. It's a great hill, you go for over a mile without pedalling.
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