No cyclists have been penalised in Colchester in the 15 months since the city council adopted an "educate don't fine" system under its public spaces protection order (PSPO).

In May and June 2024, 62 riders were handed fixed penalties under the PSPO system, including for riding on a cycleway, riding on roads where cycling is allowed, riding considerately on footways and going through barriers where cycling is permitted. The council admitted its mistakes and apologised.

Will Bramhill, the campaign secretary, praised the city for acting sensibly and quickly.

He said: "The news that no cyclists have been penalised shows three things: the wardens were stopping people who were generally law-abiding; the wardens are now applying the Boateng defence ... and the little sods who ride badly and pedal off while giving wardens the finger still get away with it."

Will added: "We now have a good relationship with the warden managers in the town hall and this is helping.

"Sadly PSPOs are still being misapplied on cyclists elsewhere. It's a flawed system and needs to be rethought at national level."

A Colchester PSPO on motoring matters, which is mainly aimed at "car meets", is currently being renewed. The campaign will be watching closely to see whether car idling and footway parking can be included.

The East Hill saga goes on: we still don't know when Tom Cunningham, the Essex Highways portfolio holder, will give the go-ahead (or not) for better walking facilities and cycleways (details here), though some sources say it is imminent.

In the meantime Colchester Civic Society has urged Essex to delay implementation so that the roadworks do not clash with changes to the St Botolph's roundabout. 

The society is also calling for Essex to give time for the Department for Transport to issue new guidance on bus stop bypasses.

If the county pays heed to that, there may be a delay of a few months. 

The DfT advice has to be issued within three months of the Bus Services Bill being passed in parliament. The legislation is due to come back to the Lords on October 13, when amendments made by the Commons will be debated. 

The bill may be passed before Christmas so the guidance should come out by the end of March, meaning that construction could begin early next year. 

When I saw a cyclist wearing a jazzy orange shirt on an ebike with amazingly low handlebars, I had to ask if he knew about Colchester Cycling Campaign.

We were in front of the Mercury Theatre where a farmers’ market was being held on a warm day in late August.

That cyclist turned out to be Simon Vincent —and I suspect a few of you know him already.

Simon, 67, has been in the city for four years, arriving from the Essex side of London “after my amicable divorce” and a career as a charity worker helping churches and schools. 

If you have been in Colchester for a while, you might have known his father, John Vincent, who taught at St Benedict’s School.

When I visited Simon in his home in New Town, he was making sure that Spartacus, his large, recently adopted, pure white cat, was feeling settled despite a succession of “furball sneezes”.

Simon has never driven, relying on buses, trains and, until a few years ago, a Raleigh racer passed down to him by his brother when he was a teenager.

It was only when his father died and Simon inherited a Carrera cycle that he realised the Raleigh was like Trigger’s broom: the newer bike was so much better.

A long-distance walker who once covered 1,000 miles in three years, Simon was fit for his age. It came as a shock, then, when a blood test showed high calcium levels, indicative of cancer.

He was diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma and over several rounds of chemotherapy in Ipswich and Colchester he lost 40 per cent of his body weight. The treatment also caused neuropathy in his feet.

Back home from hospital, Asda was delivering food and friends were bringing treats but Simon was worried. “I was thinking: ‘I’ll never use my legs again’. Then I decided: ‘I can’t just sit here’.”

He thought long and hard about getting a mobility scooter but then opted to try an electric bike at New Town Bike Hub.

After that, Simon called Matt from the Future Bikes cycle store in Drury Road who visited him at home.

Simon was soon the proud owner of a low-step Elektra Townie, which cost £2,000. He said: “My first few trips were hard. The bike is heavy and I was lacking in strength. It’ fell on me a couple of times. I took to wearing pads on my knees and elbows.

“I found the handlebars weren’t suiting me so I spoke to Matt and we turned the ends down. We added covers so my fingers didn’t slip and bar ends so my hands didn’t jolt off the bars if I hit a bump. I’ve pimped it up with a mirror, indicators and a phone holder.

“The ebike has given me my freedom back. It has been an amazing success. Soon I was pedalling to Aldi in Magdalen Street and Burgess’s greengrocers in Old Heath Road.

“Then I visited the Odeon cinema in the city centre, getting there under my own steam and leaving my bike in the secure bike store in Sir Isaac’s Walk.

“For the past six months I’ve been riding the Wivenhoe Trail. It always amazes me when people go by car. The journey times can be so erratic, day by day. I know I can get to Wivenhoe, door to door, in exactly 17 minutes.”

This is your chance to help fund the campaign. Thanks to Jean for last month's donation.

Stuart Johnson writes: We held a positive meeting with Essex County Council to look at the upcoming developments in Colchester. 

We are hoping to see improvements soon to the link from Wellesley Road to Lexden Road as well as work on improving the connection between North Station Road and the new cycle lanes on the Northern Approach Road via the Albert Roundabout, Mile End Road and Bruff Close.

Separately we will be keeping an eye on how the Tendring Colchester Borders Garden Community will provide routes to cycle from the new development to Colchester and Wivenhoe.

Stuart Johnson writes: We have written to the three Colchester MPs (Pam Cox, Sir Bernard Jenkin and Dame Priti Patel) to express our lack of confidence in the Essex Police Extra Eyes service and the way it handles reports from cyclists. 

A recent case was this attempt to kick a cyclist off their bike, which happened near Layer de la Haye. 

Essex Police has said it is treating this as a minor traffic offence and will provide no further update.

Thanks to the campaign's Chris Stevenson for his hard work on our response to Better Connected Essex, the county's new transport strategy.

We judged that the council's proposals were like the curate's egg: both good and bad in parts.

Amazingly Essex is still clinging to plans to dual Cowdray Avenue and complete an orbital ring road: all very 1960s.

If the county ever gets that kind of money (spoiler: it won't) then it should go into active travel first.

Chris sensibly divided our response between the main document and the "Colchester implementation" section, saying on each what we like, what we dislike and what we would like to see.

You can read the full paper here – it's not that long!

Middlemill bridge has finally reopened to cyclists and pedestrians ... to the relief of lots of people for whom it is the fastest route from the station to the Dutch Quarter https://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/25475027.middle-mill-river-called-visual-disgrace-ex-colchester-mp/

The blue box at the far end of the bridge is filled with contractors' gubbins and may stay pending possible work on the weir itself.

On a related matter, the campaign has heard that the former Lloyd's List building in Sheepen Road might be redeveloped soon. We have said to planners that we would like to see an improved route from King's Meadow, Victoria Chase, a new bridge over the Colne and into Sheepen Road. This would really help youngsters from Riverside and the Dutch Quarter to ride to St Helena School and the Colchester Institute. Fingers crossed!

The campaign has responded to a housing study being carried out by West Bergholt parish council. As is usual with this kind of consultation, the campaign hasn't commented on the number of houses to be built. We have however pointed out that more homes, more people, will increase the need for better cycling connections.

We said: "Work needs to be done on providing a cycle route through Bergholt itself, which may require land acquisition.

"Any route to Colchester is likely to require a new bridge over the A12 or alterations to the blue bridge and that should be borne in mind."

We have suggested a route into the city via the blue bridge, going through Westhouse Wood and crossing Bakers Lane to join Axial Drive, Colchester.

Another option would be the conversion of the public footpath from Armoury Road to Great Horkesley, where a cycleway is to be built to reach Trinity School within the next three years.

Colchester Cycling Campaign uses Email Octopus to create this newsletter. If you would like to do the same for your organisation please use this link https://emailoctopus.com/?urli=XN4MS. The campaign and the new group each get a "new joiner" benefit of 15 USD (about £12). 

The campaign continues to badger Colchester City Council about its plans to replace the roundabout at United Way/Via Urbis/Axial Way.

The city is proposing to put in a traffic light junction as part of a planning permission granted before LTN 1/20 kicked in and improved planning for pedestrians and cyclists.

The result is that the new layout will be very much an old-fashioned "cars-first" scheme with little thought given to other road users. 

Check the engineers' drawing above and you can see that riders and walkers will have to make three crossings on each of three arms of the junction. That is hardly an incentive to go anywhere by bike or on foot.

Colchester says it can't make changes because it would mean a complete remodelling involving various agencies to assess the effect on the A12 – though we dispute this and are writing to National Highways.

We don't think Colchester's excuse is good enough. This junction will be in place for the next 50 years and needs to be put in right – first time.

Bluesky is the better social media alternative to Twitter (in the opinion of your editor). If you want to try it, sign up at bsky.app. Here's a great starter pack of urbanists for you to consider following.

This guide to bike lights by Havering Cyclists is worth a read. https://www.haveringcyclists.org/our-guide-to-bike-lights/

The next Bike Meet is on Tuesday October 21 at 8pm. Watch for an email giving details nearer the time. If you subscribe to the newsletter as a member, this will arrive automatically.

Our apologies if you tried to attend last month's virtual event. A glitch with Zoom meant we had to cancel it at very short notice.

• Children's travel should be properly measured:

transportxtra.com/publications/local-transport-today/news/79015/children-s-travel-matters-and-that-s-wh?etid=7073013&artid=79015 and https://www.solvetheschoolrun.org

• The Government’s Road Safety Strategy has had parts leaked (Guardian). Read the view of the Road Danger Reduction Forum

• A beginner's guide to cycling in the rain ... and what to wear: cyclinguk.org/article/beginners-guide-cycling-rain

• UK startup Wayve begins testing self-driving tech in Nissan cars in Tokyo:

This month we leave Colchester and head to north Suffolk. This busy snap shows workers at Richard Clay printers in Bungay streaming through the town to "go home for dinner" in 1959.

Today's busy lives mean that dinnertime with the family is a luxury reserved for days off and holidays. Such is "progress".

In any case, imagine this group fast-forwarded to 2025 ... they'd be in their cars, queueing in a long jam both there and back. 

They'd only have  time for their partner to push a ready-made sandwich through the car sunroof ... and then "the traffic's awful today" would mean they'd be ticked off by the boss for being late getting back to mind the press.

Pretty – but it is not a lock of hair. This is a post that has been "resurfaced" to use the jargon. It dates to 2018 but your editor had not seen it until last month. The illustration shows the instability of an unsteered bicycle with 800 runs of a bike being pushed to the right.

Matthew Cook, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology, was stumped when he found that riding a virtual bicycle did not  reflect the real thing. He wanted to find whether our understanding of how we keep bicycles upright was flawed or missing.

“In real life there must be additional cues that I sense which are missing from the simulation," Cook said: "I had to learn as if from scratch what cues to attend to and how to react."

His study is here: It Takes Two Neurons To Ride a Bicycle and there's more on the story in Canadian Cycling Magazine.

If you want to try leisure rides, Colchester Cycling Campaign recommends both Cycling For Pleasure and Happy Handlebars. Both clubs run a variety of events for people of different abilities. 

Cycling for Pleasure: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1594722180845186

Happy Handlebars: https://www.facebook.com/HappyHandlebarsColch

Other clubs and local routes to try: https://www.colchester-cycling.org.uk/maps-rides-clubs.html 

Colchester Cycling Campaign has lots of LOCAL cycling advice on its website. If you have a question, make our advice page your first port of call.

Visit https://www.colchester-cycling.org.uk/advice.html

Essex Highways has finally conducted a stress test of the old bridge and the results are expected in a few months. The hope is that the bridge will reopen to walkers and cyclists, as well as boat users on the Stour. Full story: https://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/25478543.colchester-campaigners-unconvinced-boxted-bridge-test/

Have you signed the Colchester Cycling Charter yet? If not, please do. If you work or volunteer, please ask your organisation to sign too. The more people on bikes, the fewer traffic jams will snarl up our city.

Feel free to pass on this newsletter via email and social media by using the link at the very top ... and encourage your friends to join the campaign so they receive their own copy every month.

Chairman: Stuart Johnson
Vice-secretary: Will Bramhill
Treasurer: Catherine Johnson
Your committee: Alex Hooper, Chris Stevenson, Jean Quinn, Nathaniel Catchpole, Alan Spence, Kristin Bradley and Paul Byrne