On-and off-road through Bolam, Bishop Auckland, Middridge and Aycliffe again

Quick post before I forget.

Last Sunday (8th January) I rerode the longish local on- and off-road ride through Bolam, Bishop Auckland, Middridge and Aycliffe which I first did a while ago. It was a great ride again; muddy in places, but not massively so, untill I made the mistake of riding the bridleway around the old Fujitsu factory which has 14" deep puddles in places and was boggin'.

• Distance: 30ish miles


• Surface: Mixed on- and off-road


• Time: 3 hours 45 minutes (a good 30 minutes of which were probably the bit round Fujitsu...)


• Weather: Cool, but dry


• Bike: Inbred, with 2.1″ knobbly tyres

Cycling in Darlington in the Guardian

There was a long piece about cycling in Darlington in the Guardian yesterday. It's available in text-only form online: Making tracks . I'm getting a copy of the paper to see if there are any photos.

In some parts of Europe, a quarter of all journeys are made by bike. In Britain the figure is 2%. Can anything persuade us to leave our cars and get pedalling? Perhaps the unlikeliest of towns - Darlington - holds the key.

Darlington is no more than four miles wide on its longest axis (east-west) - you could cycle end to end in 15 minutes. From the outskirts to the inner pedestrian precinct could never be more than a couple of miles, but 80% of car trips are into the city centre. The transport unit's research shows that 34% of car journeys could, theoretically, be done by bike (short trips with no passengers or loads).

They've got an uphill struggle: I've been cycling to work for the last 11 months and people think I'm mad for doing so; since September, I've been cycling to Hurworth for work one afternoon per week and that's seen as insane - it's only 4.5 miles!

The tragic deaths of four cyclists in Wales last weekend has made people percieve cycling as even more dangerous, despite the fact you're statistically more likely to die playing bowls than while cycling.

Local road/off road New Years Day ride

Went for a local ride mixing up road, field-edge bridleways and gravel roads/farm tracks in preparation/"training" for the Hell o' The North century ride and its precursers that I'll be doing in over the summer. Apart from one trip to town and back, I've not ridden my bike for a month due to flu and Christmas holidays so I wasn't sure how well I'd handle it, especially the day after New Years...

I did a variation on a ride I did a while ago, just riding the beginning, then following a main road home. You can see a map at Gmaps pedometer (ignore the distance, it's actually 20 miles, I cocked up).

• Distance: 20ish miles


• Surface: Road, bridleway, gravel road


• Weather: Cold and dry, bit of a headwind at start


• Time: noonish, 2 hour 15 minutes


• Bike: Inbred, with 2.1" tyres


• Comments: Nice ride. Lots of icy puddles still.

Anyway, it was a nice two hours. There are a load of bridleways in the Bildershaw area, anyone ridden any of them?

The elevation feature in Gmaps looks cool; if only Google would get OS mapping.

Possible problems

I've forgotten to renew the hosting for mactually, and it runs out tomorrow. I'm going to pay this afternoon, but I may disappear briefly. Not that anyone would notice.

Blogs in education - linkdump

After attending the blogging in education course last Friday, I wanted to start dropping links and thoughts here as-and-when, so this post may grow and change. I'm really interested in starting to use blogs with my students (and having them blog) and wanted to gather together some useful links, opinions, thoughts, etc.

Five levels of using blogs in education
Blogs in Education - huge link-list
How you SHOULD use blogs in education
How NOT to use blogs in education

Sick

I've got flu. Real flu; not just man-flu. It started on Saturday. I've been off work for the last two days. I'm mainly shaking, sweating and almost falling over. I haven't shaked since Thursday or Friday; I'm not a pretty sight. I answered the phone at 6 o'clock, then had to lie down for half an hour to recover. Tonight I've eaten for the first time since a sausage sandwich on Saturday; but only 2 weetabix.

Blogging the blogging course

I'm currently on a course, learning about the use of blogging in education. We're currently being told about podcasting. I also discovered that the guy, Steve Thompson, leading the course works alongside my thesis supervisor from my MSc course, who has his own blog, notes in the margin.

Update: We're using B2Enterprise blogging tool, which I think has similar 'DNA' to Wordpress, which is what powers this blog.

Update 2: B2Enterprise has some issues with cookies, when used by loadsa people on a closed network like this; it's a local authority network, so it's very locked down.

Update 3: 2000 Feet - "This haiku collection is inspired by particular places and events along the course of the three main rivers in County Durham – the Tees, the Wear and the Derwent. Each of these has its source high up in the North Pennines, approximately 2000 feet above sea level."

Update 4: We're playing with a media uploader at the moment, to allow uploading and posting or images, sound, video, animations, etc. That's also not working too well in this ICT room...

Update 5: We're now playing with an online quiz called Community Challenge, which allows people to compete against other quiz teams online. Apparently Tony Blair took part in an online pub quiz using this and his team lost. Apparently, he was crap.

Update 6: We came joint first in the quiz. We rock.