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This blog is no longer maintained. It has been moved into the new version of our family blog. Please visit http://wightweirdos.co.uk/ww/category/mutterings/ for the latest mutterings. Thanks for reading.

Worse than locusts....

....is the plague of signs on our esplanades. I think they should all be removed, there are now so many that no-one pays them any attention and they are just a blot on the landscape. If we have to have signs lets have happy friendly ones that welcome people and invite them to have fun, rather than a myriad of metal monsters telling us we can't do anything at all.

Frankfurt - a few ramblings

We got back a couple of days ago from a lightening trip to Frankfurt. It was borne out of Ryanair's 1p flight deal, discovered thanks to the most excellent Martin Lewis and his splendid Moneysavingexpert.com website. When I say 1p, that was it. One solitary penny per person each way (inc. taxes). So 7 of us travelled from London Stansted to Frankfurt Hahn for 14p. Unfortunately it cost us £55 to get across the Solent....

This was my first visit to Germany, and comments on line had left me uninspired about the idea of visiting Frankfurt. Overall I was pleasantly surprised. We found a clean city, a very friendly welcome, and a huge Christmas market (which was the main reason for our visit).

So, some vague ramblings about some of my observations. I'll talk about the airport in a separate post, including our top transport tips!

The transfer from the airport left us at an S-Bahn station, where we needed a little help with the ticket machine to get the best tickets, but we ended up with an all day ticket for 5 people for just €8.40 and a single trip ticket for just €2. The trains were fast, clean, on time and the information provision was pretty good.

We stayed in the Hotel Europa (booked via Hostelworld.com), which was carefully selected as it appeared to be the cheapest habitable hotel with the right configuration of rooms. For a triple and a twin room we paid around £80 for the night including breakfast. £16 per person is pretty good in my book. The rooms were small but clean and comfortable, the hotel was a bit noisy but we were prepared for that based on online reviews (like this and this), but the staff were fantastic; helpful, laid back and friendly. Breakfast was simple but good and plentiful. Really can't quibble for the money. Oh, and it's 3 minutes walk from the Hauptbahnhof (main station).

I won't bore you with all the details of the trip, but a few things stood out:

This beautiful (cough!) sculpture really is as dominant as it looks in the picture. I guess the people of Frankfurt are proud of their place at the centre of the European banking system. Unfortunately this appears to be what happens when you let bankers commission art. The towers in the background are interesting too. I had presumed that Frankfurt's "skyscrapers" would all be in a group together in the city centre, but they are actually quite spread out. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing...

Now this was a better attempt IMHO. This guy is pretty big, and he moves. I think the scale is just right for the space, and I actually got left behind because I kept wandering round this sculpture looking at it from different angles, where the size seems to magically change. The picture below shows how small it appears when viewed with the tower behind (sorry, didn't notice what the building was, but it was tall!).

When taking these we were on our way to Senckenberg, the natural history museum in Frankfurt. As with most museums it had its good and bad points, but what really stood out was the Cafe. In the UK we pay high prices for awful canteen food in many museums. The Bistro in here was not particularly cheap, but the food was good (mmmmm cakes) and you could even get a beer....I wonder if the Natural History Museum in London serves alcohol.... It also looked very attractive. So all you OK museum curators - it can be done!

Heading back for the Christmas market we forced certain members of our party to walk rather than catching the underground. I'm glad we did, because we meandered along some interesting residential streets. They aren't going to get in the guide books, but I think this is an important part of visiting a new city. I also saw lots of evidence of simple cycle provision, like residential streets which were one way for cars and two way for bikes. This was the norm it appeared, as it is in the Netherlands. Take note UK traffic planners!!!

Give way to those travelling uphill...

I was going to rant about car drivers not giving way to cyclist travelling uphill, but see the Weekly Gripe has beaten me to it. (Great title by the way!). I share their grievance. Travelling along National Cycle Network 23 I had the same problem the other day. In a car, stopping to give way to a bike takes mere seconds and no effort (unless you count depressing the brake pedal). By following the correct procedure you will, however, save the cyclist from losing momentum, and expelling lots of effort restarting on a hill. Get a grip guys, it costs you mere seconds.

Anti-bike culture

Just posted on the family blog about how good cycle infrastructure is in the Netherlands (after a slightly petty gripe about signage at one junction) and that improving ours in the UK would almost certainly see a modal shift from car to bike. What I'm not sure about is how you change an anti-bike culture. The Dutch drive sensibly around cyclists, are tolerant of them making mistakes (and misdemeanours), I would wager there are few calls for compulsory tests, insurance or tax on bikes as are often heard in the UK. Cycling is deeply embedded in Dutch culture though, and we have lost that now. I'd like to hope that would start to change if we got to the stage where we had decent facilities for cyclists and hence more people using bikes. But I'm not sure. Oh, and before anyone suggests no-one will cycle in the UK because its hilly, and the Netherlands is Pancake-flat, I don't expect us to reach NL numbers of cyclists or distances, but for many trips a bike makes sense, and for many more it would make sense with some major or even minor improvements to our infrastructure.

Oh, and by the way, Dutch roads are excellent by and large. Driving here is not unpleasant at all. Just often unnecessary.

Cycling in the Netherlands

Cycled the 7.5km (5 miles or thereabouts for the terminally British) into Breda.

Along the main road there was mostly a cycle lane on each side of the road, separate from the road and footpath. It was wide, well surfaced and had right of way over minor roads and entrances to premises. It's illegal to cycle on road if there is an adjacent cycle path. Some people think this should be the same in the UK. I could go for that, but only when all our cycle tracks are up to Netherlands standards.

Breda has a population of over 150,000, yet we managed to cycle right into the heart of the town with young children without ever feeling unsafe on the bikes. Can we inject some of this into UK transport planning, please?