Cycling fast through the puddles

I went to help Steve Ellis with his ice-bats again this morning. More about that in a couple of days, as I'm making a video about it.

I had to ride to the ice-skating rink this morning in time for the short period that we were allowed on the ice. When I set off from home it was tipping down and also quite cold.

I wore my rain cape as I could put it on last minute and not have to change clothes. Some people may think that capes are not fashionable, but I'd answer that by saying that when riding a bike in heavy rain you're not on a cat-walk. Besides, with a cape you can wear any clothes that you like when cycling in the rain, and are not restricted to waterproof "cycling clothing". Also, you don't sweat in a cape like you can in waterproofs.

I wasn't the only person in a cape this morning. These two ladies were in front of me just as we all arrived together at the ice-skating rink. Both of them had also taken the sensible option of a cape to keep themselves warm and dry.

The slogan on the back of the woman on the right says "Today I ride fast through the puddles". It's part of a marketing campaign for a probiotic drink. There's a nice, and somewhat unusual, video which goes with the campaign:


Of course, when you ride through puddles you suffer not only from rain falling from above but also from water being sprayed towards you by your tyres. For riding comfortably in rain, mudguards and mudflaps are essential. It's also worth thinking about puncture resistant tyres for winter. Our selection of winter tyres increase your chance of not having to stop when cycling in winter.

If it wasn't for seeing these two ladies wearing capes this morning, and it reminding me of the video, it wouldn't have appeared on the blog. I'm not convinced personally of the value of taking probiotic dietary supplements and I try to avoid dairy products. The European Food Safety Authority has so far rejected 260 claims from manufacturers of these supplements.


However, I'm rather positive about using rain-capes to keep you dry when cycling. They're not intended for sporty riding, but for everyday use they work magnificently to keep both your upper body and also your legs dry when riding in normal clothes. If you want to stay dry while riding fast through the puddles, consider buying the same good quality cape as I use, in our online shop, DutchBikeBits.com.

How cyclepaths make rain more pleasant

A couple of days ago I made a video as I rode home. It was horrible weather. Really a lot of rain. Part way home from work, I realised that it was a good opportunity to show the advantages of cycle paths when the weather is bad so started a camera on the back of my Mango.

Being away from motor vehicles in bad weather has a number of advantages. For a start, you have no concerns about "not being seen" by drivers whose vision is obscured by rain, spray or mist. You also remain drier because you are not hit by spray or splashed water from puddles. And you also don't ride over spilled diesel or broken glass from cars.


Grotere kaart weergeven

Journeys like this are a world away from the sort of thing that would happen quite regularly to me when I rode on the roads in the UK. If only I'd had a video camera on my bike back then I could easily have had a collection of videos to compare with this chap (or the many others documenting how cycling is in the UK).

What's more, such cycling provision brings huge benefits in speed as well. In the just short of 14 km distance covered in the video, which shows part of my 30 km each way commute, I average 36.5 km/h despite headwind and rain. The journey would not only have been less pleasant, but it would have taken longer on the road due to there being more traffic lights, traffic calming, and more things to give way to.

This video carries on from about the point that the video in my previous post stopped.

Commuting in the rain

There's quite a lot of rain in Northern European countries, which is why it's a very good idea to ride a velomobile which is particularly good for riding in rain. The Mango has a fully enclosed drive-chain which doesn't get wet and dirty, so lasts a long time even if used in bad weather.

More Mango posts here, in which amongst other things you'll see it raced in the summer, and ridden through ice and snow in the winter. Also, a blog post about the speed bumps on the cycle-path.
Read my review of the Sinner Mango Velomobile.

It almost never rains (het regent bijna nooit)

A Dutch blogger who makes a 36 km commuting round trip (40 minutes each way) by bike 3 to 4 times per week has produced a website called "It almost never rains". On this website he documented rainfall during his commute over the year from September 2008 to August 2009. Just 32 days out of 288 days had rain during his commute.

The Netherlands is not the driest country on earth, but rain isn't a very good excuse for not cycling here.

Rain

Winter's here. You can tell: it's started raining. Not that this is unknown in the summer...

One of the common ways of keeping dry when cycling here when it rains is to use an umbrella.

I'm sure it works better with a coaster (back pedal) brake than otherwise, and a lot of bikes here have those brakes.

These two photos were taken within seconds of each other on my cycle home from the shops this evening.

Cycling with an umbrella is actually (nearly) officially sanctioned. The 2005 Houten design standards (which unfortunately are no longer available at this link) referred to making sure that sufficient headroom was available for cyclists with umbrellas.

The second photo shows a variation on the theme. Carry a passenger and they can hold the umbrella for you: leaving both hands free for controlling the bike.

It's almost a safety feature...

Talking of safety, I'm sure that some people seeing this will be shocked. Not only are they holding umbrellas, but there are no helmets, no bright reflective clothing, the bikes haven't got lights on (the photos were taken when it was quite dark and I brightened them up in a photo editor). What's more, one of the bikes is carrying a passenger in a way that is illegal in many countries (not here).

So, is it dangerous ? No. The Netherlands is the safest place in the world to cycle. It is so because infrastructure has a far greater effect on safety than such things as special clothing. It is safe here in a passive manner, due to conflict having been designed out of the streets and not due to people being expected to take care at all times and never ever make any mistakes.

There is a very high level of subjective safety here, which is why you find people behaving like this on bikes and feeling safe doing it. The high level of safety is the case with the cyclists who live here, behaving as they behave. i.e. in wet weather behaving as you see here.

Toby Sterling previously wrote a fair bit a while ago about the safety of cycling in the Netherlands. No extra safety equipment is needed.

You may also like to watch this video showing more cyclists in the rain:


There are also blog posts showing people cycling in the snow, in fog and at night.

Cycling in the winter is made more pleasant if you use products which are specially designed to help winter cyclists.