Stolen Rat runs of the city: Fry's Close

Our coverage of Bristol before the war on motorists began got a lot of interest, so expect some intermittent coverage of places stolen from us.

Here then: Fry's Close.

This used to be a secret shortcut from Park Road, Stapledown, over to Blackberry Hill, bypassing a jam on Park Road and a mini-roundabout. A treasured rat-run of the early 1990s

And now: abandoned to cyclists, pedestrians and their pets. At the bottom of the vale, there's even a path linking Eastville Park (on the right) to a path leading to UWE. That is: students are being encouraged to cycle.



This is just wrong.

Now: does anyone actually remember when this road closed? One team member has distinct, fond memories of the queue of stationary traffic heading towards Blackberry Hill from about '89-90, but certainly by 2006: gone. At some point between those dates, the council stole it from us, the taxpayers.

School run: stapleton

Footage reaches us of what it is like at 08:30 on a weekday in Stapleton. There is a nice dropoff area on the left hand side, "pavement" as it was originally called in the days when even wealthy people walked.

Only a couple of vehicles are making use of this otherwise wasted space, BG02OHO, and the little mercedes behind it.Why so few, in a low-stress dropoff area.

We suspect the coach parked opposite has something to do with it, it's bringing kids in and dropping them off. This actually makes it harder for proper volvo-driving parents to get between the coach and the traffic island safely, so endangering their children.

Uprating the route, downgrading the experience

Here are a couple of civil engineers surveying the riverside path from Eastville park and the (now closed to cars) Wickham Glen to Broomhill Road. You can ride it, its lovely, but you do then have to carry your bike up a flight of steps.

It's going to be uprated, with the steps removed, making it part of an extended route up to UWE and The North.

Problem is -those steps. The surveyors said that from where the photo was taken, it was going to need a 1 in 20 gradient to bring the path up to the road. Which means this lovely green path (admittedly, it becomes unusable for commuting in the rainy season), is going to change to something tarmaced that slowly rises up to the road.

In its favour, it will still be green and quiet. But at the same time, its urbanification. Just as with any upgrading of Purdown Camp routes, what you gain in bike friendliness, you lose in wilderness.

Northern Shores

A "North Shore". An extremely technical mountain bike "freeriding" course, hand made out of wood.

Originating on the North Shore of Vancouver, in the logging country heading up to Alaska, they are a common feature in mountain bike videos -but a rarity in Southern England

This could change. Here, beside a river bank within our city limits, we have all that is needed: wood, fallen trees, and enough of a height differential to let people in heavy DH bikes do the descent. Indeed, the foundation of a route is already in place.

Some people will be worried about the risk of bike/pedestrian conflict on what appears to be a flight of steps, put in to make ascending or descending the hill easier.

They have nothing to fear. The new landowners have fenced off the steps, keeping pedestrians away, and felled enough trees to provide the raw materials for the other components of a complete North Shore. For this is Grove Wood, off the River Frome, in Stapleton. Private Land, to which pedestrian access is denied. Obviously this means bicycles aren't allowed to ride down the steps either, but that has always been the case -what has changed now is that the walkers are kept at bay.

Stoke Park

There's lots of online gossip about council plans to turn Stoke Park into a cow field. There are some interesting environmental and economic details, but we are more worried about the social costs of the plans.

Stoke Park is the primary off road motorbiking destination for North/North East Bristol. Southerners have the trails of Dundry, residents of Lawrence-Dubya have the wastelands of Severn Beach, but only here in Stoke Park is a place for residents to come with their family and go off-road.

Here's a lovely summer photo from a rare dry day last August, with a family all out enjoying a bit of motorbiking on the grass.

Nearby, some of the local motorbiking enthusiasts have been doing some trail work

The park connects with stapleton, you can get all the way to Lockleaze or Purdown camp. It is an integral part of off-road motorbike enjoyment of the city's greenery.

This is not compatible with cows.

Some people may say "good, the bikers shouldn't be there", but there is bugger all else to do in Lockleaze; every kid out there is someone who isn't stealing cars or taking drugs. And you know that advert for the army showing soldiers driving around off-road in a landrover in the dark? These bikers can do that -which is the kind of skill the army looks for when recruiting. Given a choice between the motorbikers of lockleaze and the cows of Stoke Park, my money is on the motorbikes.