Making a noise around the city streets.

The weekend brings out the cyclists. I mean the serious cyclists: narrow-wheel, ultra light-weight bicycles, helmets that match their very professional cycling gear - all the correct kit. Many of them sport the yellow jersey: every one a Tour leader in his head! The more modest wear the colours of other Tour teams such as Movistar. Some wear the gear for a local cycling club. 

But all of them cycle ON the road! 

I sympathise with the problems of cycling on the road. In fact, I don't know that I would want to cycle on Vigo's main thoroughfares at busy times of day. I have seen how badly people drive around here. I don't even want to drive a car on these roads. And here is a link to an article about the difficulty of cycling on the road.  I suspect that the writer is American and that her comments refer to conditions in the USA but much of what she says applies certainly to the UK and probably to Spain as well. 

While road cycling remains an almost totally tiny minority activity, there will continue to be problems. In countries where large numbers of the population cycle to work every day, and presumably where those numerous cyclists follow the highway code and don't jump red lights or disregard other road-use stipulations, they don't seem to have as many problems. The solution, however, is NOT to cycle on the pavement. Which is what an increasingly large number of people both here in Spain and in the UK seem to believe. 

The other day we were almost bowled over in Calvario, on the pedestrianised stretch of Urzáiz, by a cyclist towing one of those chariot affairs that you can put small children in if you don't want them on a special child seat behind your saddle. Not only was he cycling at quite a speed but he was swerving from side to side, weaving in and out of trees and benches, presumably giving his small passenger an exciting ride. A very dangerous character and the sort who gives cyclists a bad name! 

If you insist on cycling on the pavement then you should travel at a sedate speed, not above a fairly fast walking pace. And you should have a bell which you should ring at regular intervals to let folk know you are coming. Bicycles, with their almost silent tyres, are great for sneaking up on people! Oh, and in pedestrian areas, cyclists should get off and walk! You can't drive a car through a pedestrianised area. Neither can you ride a motorbike or moped! So you should not be permitted to cycle. Or ride a skateboard for that matter! 

Having mentioned warning bells, here's a little something we witnessed yesterday. As we walked along Vía del Norte, heading towards the centre of town and eventually on towards the Castro, we heard a sort of tin-whistle tune. Just the beginnings of a tune, the opening notes, repeated several times. Then there would be a pause before the whole thing was repeated. We looked for a beggar, thinking it might be one of those who think that because they can play half a tune badly they deserve to given a stipend to live on. 

And then we spotted him: not a beggar but an itinerant knife grinder, pushing his moped along the pavement (not riding it, please note!), his knife-grinding equipment strapped to the luggage carrier at the back. When he reached the end of the blocks of flats, nobody having taken up the service he offered, he hopped on his moped (on the road) and headed off for fresh fields and pastures new. We heard him again later, a few streets further up the hill. 

 A little moment of nostalgia, taking us back to the rag-and-bone man of our childhood, who used to come around with his horse drawn cart, calling out "Ra-a-ag bo-o-one!" And offering you a goldfish in a plastic bag as a reward if you gave him a bag of old clothes or household stuff you no longer had use for. No matter that the goldfish rarely survived more than a couple of days! 

We found ourselves wondering how many of the people living in the flats along Vía del Norte and the other streets of the city recognise nowadays his tin-whistle-tune and what it signifies!