Teasing the Rugby Club

Next week I'm acting as one of the guides for the Mayor's cycle tour of the Borough of Scarborough - now given the what feels like slightly macho title of "Ride the BoS - conquer the elements " - and the participants are being encouraged to use the event to raise money for charity.

Those of you who've read more than one or two of my posts, will now rightly be expecting a personal twist in this narrative and will not be disappointed, or dismayed, to find it coming now. Getting sponsored to do something that's clearly fun and brings no obvious wider social benefit simply feels like a way of offsetting an indulgence. Not only will we be absenting ourselves from domestic responsibilities for the four days of the ride itself but we've already been doing this when we've been out training. Not only will we get the personal buzz from completing a physical challenge but we'll get the bragging rights that go with it; in particular those that come from being on the limited edition inaugural ride of what we hope, and I fully expect, will be a well used cycle route for years to come. 

Whilst I couldn't possibly say that raising money for any of the charities involved is anything other than a good thing, I can't help thinking that if it was such a good thing why couldn't you just ask your sponsors for the money anyway. Why link it to the completion of a self indulgent task ? (It probably has something to do with the way people find it easier to identify with another individual rather than the abstraction of a charitable cause, but please allow me the rhetorical indulgence)

Now what's this got to do with the Rugby Club? 

Well,  a few years ago Scarborough Rugby Club relocated itself onto a green field site to the north of the town and adjacent to the Cinder Track. Before they'd even got their plans off the drawing board we, the then Renaissance Walking and Cycling Action Group and the Friends of the Old Railway, suggested that it would be a really good idea to give the site a quality access route off the Cinder Track. Not only would they make it easier for club members, young and old, to get to the Club under their own steam, with all the health and fitness benefits that come from routine everyday physical activity, but they might also reduce demand on their car park.

It's likely that the Club were so preoccupied with the important matters of building buildings and beginning to generate income off them that they didn't really give this issue the attention it deserved. So, instead of a high quality access route what we got was a bumpy ditch.

Narrow bumpy ditch with barbed wire edging

I did speak to the Club about this apparently wasted opportunity but it would be fair to say that I received a frosty response and, without giving a probably unhelpful account of the details, the path remains as inadequate as the day it was put in.

However, the Rugby Club have been extremely helpful in providing the use of its facilities for the organisation of the Tour de Borough and as far as I can tell I'm the only one of the participants in the ride who've used the path to get to the club for any of the many meetings involved - and then only to get an up to date photo - . So. it occurred to me one day that one way in which I might a) deal with my own feelings about sponsorship and b) to be perfectly frank, tease the Rugby Club into doing something about the path, would be to announce that I was seeking sponsorship to raise money for the Rugby Club with the specific purpose of establishing a fund to go towards the cost of making a decent cycle-able entrance to the Club from the Cinder Track.

Now I fully appreciate that the Club may not wish to accept any funds that I raise in this way so I have decided that if they're unwilling to accept money for this purpose then I will instead devote 3/4 of any money I might be pledged to Sustrans with the remaining 1/4 going to the Mayor's chosen charities. 

The Cinder Track

About 10 years ago Scarborough was declared a Renaissance Town. This was  a national initiative to improve the quality of our urban infrastructure so that the towns and cities involved would become more attractive places in which to live, work and set up business. The process was sponsored by the then regional development agency, Yorkshire Forward, and was managed by a locally appointed Town Team supported by a variety of action groups. With the assistance of a Dutch urban design company, West 8, a visionary masterplan, Kissing Sleeping Beauty, was eventually drawn up and some of the proposals eventually came to fruition.

My part in all this was to set up an action group that looked at how we could improve the town for walking and cycling. Amongst the traditional establishment this was not seen as a major concern but I knew that one of the inspirational figures behind the whole renaissance process, the architect Richard Rogers, had identified a major failing with British towns and cities in that they'd allowed themselves to become dominated by cars and were no longer comfortable places to either walk or cycle.

Determined not just to be a talking shop but to see actual progress on the ground we managed to get one or two things done and, in particular, set up a Friends Group to develop the old Scarborough to Whitby railway line as safe route for walkers and cyclists.

Manor Road Steps 

(the very first renaissance project to hit the ground)

Since then we've managed to make other access points, put in bins, benches and picnic tables, produce a leaflet for the track that's now been reproduced over 40,000 times etc.etc. but we still haven't managed to get the track up to the standard that we'd like. See Smooth enough for buggies and wheelchairs. 

However, I was recently approached by a local artist, Joy Lomas, who has an exhibition coming up this autumn that is themed around the town's urban renaissance. Included in this will be a picture of the Cinder Track and I've been invited to write 150 words to go with it. Here they are

According to Lord Rogers, who inspired Urban Renaissance, British towns and cities had become dominated by traffic and needed to become more comfortable for walking and cycling. The old railway line from Scarborough to Whitby (The Cinder Track) runs through the northern part of Scarborough and provides a perfect alternative route for those who choose to get about under their own steam. Used for over half a million trips a year, our aim has been to improve access to the track, and its quality; so that it's smooth enough for buggies and wheelchairs and wide enough to get past two people walking together..

By encouraging people to incorporate modest amounts of physical activity into their everyday lives, we not only improve their physical and mental health but also reduce social isolation and, if it gets them out of their cars, cut pollution, noise and congestion at the same time.

The Friends of the Old Railway logo

Town, sea and moors

Courtesy of Colin Foster

Nature's recipes

In he middle of next month the Mayor of Scarborough and his wife are setting out on a cycle tour of the Borough. It isn't often that local politicians in our area take cycling seriously and, since its been something that I've gently been campaigning about for years, I made sure that I got invited to the organising committee meetings and found myself recruited as one of the guides on this year's inaugural ride.

Now whilst I may use a bike as my everyday means of transport and head off into the North York Moors National Park for the odd hour or two, I'm by no means a well practiced cycle tourist and am not one of those people who happily set out for a 100km + ride every weekend. This means that to make sure that I can appear to cope effortlessly with 320km of very hilly riding over 4 days I've been getting in some training and as a one time physiologist I couldn't help but find out what effect this must be having on my body.

One of nature's not so well hidden secrets is that whilst DNA provides a recipe it doesn't provide a blueprint. A favourite example of this is demonstrated by a simple experiment carried out on young chicks. Attach a contact lens to the chick's eye so that the image that's being formed on its developing retina is thrown out of focus and the eye changes shape to make the image clear again. So there isn't a detailed set of instructions to be followed to the letter rather a general idea that is then adapted to the circumstances.

There are loads of much simpler examples of what is now called Adaptive Self Organisation; A tree trunk will by thicker in the direction of the prevailing wind, an astronauts skeleton gets thinner when subjected to micro gravity and muscles get bigger when you exercise them.

But with muscles there are two different types of training. One of these is simple strength training. Subject a muscle to repeated large loads and the fibres get biggger. The other is endurance training, and that's the sort that began to interest me. It turns out that when you repeatedly use a muscle, even at relatively low loads, there are two major changes. The first is that the numbers of mitichondria (the little intracellular energy processing plants that use glucose to turn ADP into ATP which, in turn, is used by the proteins in the muscle fibres as an energy source to ratchet themselves along each other and generate force) increase. The second is that the number of capillaries that supply blood to the muscle fibres, and consequently oxygen and nutrients, also increase.

Now this increase in capillaries also happens with strength training but, it turns out, in a slightly different way. One of the consequences of strength training is that the muscle fibres, and capillaries, suffer direct damage and that during the repair process the damaged capillaries produce sideways sprouts (that can get through the thin layer of connective tissue that surrounds the capillary) and thereby make sure that the new enlarged muscle fibres get a new enlarged blood supply. With endurance training the effects are subtly different. Rather than burst out sideways, new capillaries are formed when an existing capillary simply cleaves along its length; leaving two parallel capillaries where there was one before and without having to break through the surrounding connective tissue. 

Of course, once you get into thinking about this process more and more questions spring to mind. How did the capillary "know" that it needed to split? Once it "knew" how does it tell the cells that its made of what to do? etc. etc. This process involves a great long chain of biochemical processes, all of them are thoroughly ignorant of the final intent. Suffice it to say that, as a physicist at heart (that is as someone too lazy to remember the names of all the parts and happy to just have some basic idea of what's going on), I was interested to discover that the basic signal telling the cells of the capillary that something needs to be done comes from the shear stress felt by the capillary walls as blood flows past.

Take an old fashioned eraser in your hands (the sort you'd use to rub out pencil marks) push one side one way and the other side the other. That's a shear stress. If you pump more blood down the capillary the speed of the blood flow will increase and so will the shear stress felt by the blood vessel's walls. So new capillaries are formed just where they're needed.

In't nature brilliant...

A little cat's tale

A few years ago I went up the garden and found that our intact tom cat, Jim, had come home with a kitten. We never did find out where it was from but suspect she was from a litter that had been abandoned.

To make sure that Poppy, our dog, didn't simply chase her off, I introduced them to each other by simply holding the kitten while they sniffed.

It would be hopelessly anthropomorphic to claim that they soon became the best of friends but Poppy certainly tolerated the little cat and the little cat, now grown up, behaves as though Poppy is her hero; following us down the street, greeting her when she comes home, laying ambushes up the garden and getting close whenever possible.

Jim, on the other hand, had a cat's limited repertoire of responses to other cats and rather than fight or pose, he chose to try to have sex.. A mismatch of scale meant this wasn't really possible but it did cause some concern for one of my sons who thought this meant we'd got a paedophile cat. Happily, it only took one or two bits of operant conditioning - a quick biff on the flank - to put Jim off and that was the end of that.

Little cat must now be nearly 5 years old and, even though the name we gave the vet who neutered her was Molly, we've never really managed to call her anything other than little cat. Her behaviour, especially the way she still gallops about the house, sometimes seems more like a dog than a cat and she treats the growl that Poppy emits when she gets too close to one of her Bonios as though it were a loud purr rather than a warning to get off.

Postscript: A couple of springs later Jim's hormones sent him wandering and he was found squashed on the main road a couple of streets away. 

Smooth enough for buggies (and wheel chairs) - wide enough to pass

You'll know from previous posts that I'm keen on encouraging everyday physical activity* and that basically this means making it easier to walk or cycle. Compared to other parts of Europe we in the UK are lagging well behind. Whereas over 20% of journeys in Holland are made by bike. Here its less than 2%.

As part of my self appointed role as champion of getting around under your own steam, I set up a Friends Group for the old railway line that runs between Scarborough and Whitby. Now branded as The Cinder Track, the urban section in Scarborough runs right up through the northern suburbs connecting three schools and three major play spaces. If you wanted to create a quiet off road corridor for the town then you simply couldn't do better than what already exists.

But, and I suspect you knew there'd be a but, if we are ever to bring about a serious modal shift (out of cars and onto bikes and feet) then there simply won't be a solution that doesn't bring facilities like the Cinder Track up to scratch.

The Cinder Track near Barrowcliffe and Northstead

This picture shows the Cinder Track as it crosses to old carriage sidings to the north of the town. At this point the track is less than 2m wide and the surface is badly broken up making it extremely bumpy. Conversations with wheelchair users suggest that most of them tend to go on the grass, as long as its not too wet, to avoid the spine crunching bumps.

Close up of the surface where it is breaking up

A fence next to the eastern side of the track compromises the width even more when the track passes Northstead School.

Further up the track where it passes Northstead School

The good news is that the southern section of the track, between Manor Road Play Area and the ironically titled Safe Ways Park, has been given a decent surface of proper width and is now very popular with parents who have children in buggies and is no longer avoided by the wheelchair users.

The Cinder Track approaching the town centre

But, and I suspect you knew there'd be another but, its been extremely hard to convince the Borough Council, who own the track, or the County Council, who are responsible for transportation and highways, to make the necessary investment.  It seems that spaces such as this, and the potential they offer to improve public health, cut pollution and reduce congestion, simply haven't quite made it onto the conventional political radar. 

*See  The cost of sitting around in North Yorkshire

A brief moral dilemna

Just over a month ago the tenants of a small house that we let in Scarborough did a runner. Luckily for us they weren't to far in arrears and it would have been far worse if they'd stopped paying rent and then obliged us, after the statutory two months notice, to take legal action to get them out. As it was they abandoned a load of rubbish they no longer wanted along with three rooms where they'd got as far as ripping off some of the wallpaper, with a view to redecorating, and took all of the light bulbs ( a very old fashioned gesture of defiance).

I'd known that things were likely to go badly for some time when I realised they'd been buying domestic appliances from Brighthouse; a store that provides overpriced goods at extortionate rates of interest to people who can't get credit elsewhere. Now the hidden part of their business model means that, like old fashioned hire purchase, you don't actually own the goods until you've made the final payments. If you fall behind at any point before them they simply take the goods back and put them into storage until you not only start paying again but also pay the costs of the storage.

So, there I am tidying up and finishing off stripping wallpaper when there's a loud knock at the door. It's the men from Brighthouse and they've come for the telly, the washing machine and the cooker. After a brief conversation, where I explained that I didn't know where they'd gone and that I'd been left in debt too, they went on their way.

Now I probably could work out where they are (there were letters from a Housing Association in Oldham) but because they don't have any money I'd be unlikely to get anything off them and the hassle simply wouldn't be worthwhile. But, for a brief moment I wondered whether, if I knew where they were, I'd let Brighthouse know. Had it been some local business that they'd ripped off then I would have thought about it for a little longer but as it was the thoughts of spiteful retribution quickly passed and I was more than happy for Brighthouse to take the hit. Besides, I'd be surprised if they didn't have an investigative team of their own for precisely this kind of case.

Things have now settled down, I've got a decorator in to bring the place up to scratch and he's liaising over colour schemes with the new tenants who'll be moving in at the beginning of April. Meanwhile the mantlepiece is starting to groan under the weight of final demands from mail order companies addressed to persons unknown, at least to me.

Stop that you'll get hurt

It seems that around 30% of European 11 year olds are now considered overweight or obese. Partly this is down to the ready availability of high calorie foods and partly down to a lack of physical activity. The arguments about food are now well rehearsed, with a key role being played by the sugar in soft drinks, those about physical activity have been less so. In the UK there has tended to be a preoccupation with the role that sport can play in encouraging children to be more active but this is unlikely to be effective for very many young people and the arguments in sport's favour tend to emphasise the importance of developing young people's competitive spirit, a useful quality if your view of human nature, and your politics, is that both are fundamentally hierarchical with us, the winners, quite rightly at the top.

The other reason that there's been an emphasis on sport is that it avoids talking about the other factors that prevent children being as active as the might and the main one of these is that many parents are simply too afraid to let their children out to play. Part of this fear can be summed up by the unfortunately memorable expression "stranger danger" and reflects a general distrust of other adults. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of child abuse happens within the home, and is perpetrated by adults known to the children, and that abductions by strangers are so rare that the odd case which does occur can easily dominate the news, at least in the UK, for weeks at a time. Another part of this fear has much stronger roots in reality and that is the fear of traffic.

Such fears have become the social norm to such an extent that parents who let their children out to play on their own are seen as "irresponsible" by their peers and so, apart from the time children spend doing God, or is it Google, knows what online they often have very few unsupervised moments.

Now we were lucky that we brought up our children in a small North Yorkshire village which still contained a fairly large proportion of grown ups who'd been brought up there themselves. We were not, therefore, considered irresponsible by the older villagers for letting them roam free and if they wanted to spend all day up a tree, building a dam or sliding down the face of the old quarry with a rope tied around their ankles, bungee sliding, then so be it. The only real concession that we needed to make was to accept that other adults might well tell them off from time to time, thereby displaying old fashioned collective responsibility and, as far as we were concerned, if Mr Braviner thought you were being a nuisance then you probably were and don't annoy him again.

Of course they had accidents, but that's how you learn, and each time they had one the thought that went through our minds was "at least they won't do that again". 

Now all of this was brought to mind on a recent visit to the local supermarket which has just had a new extension built and the cycle parking is now provided by a long row of so called Sheffield stands (simple metal hoops that rise up about 1m from the ground). To young children this long row of hoops is simply an ambient assault course. They can be clambered over, ducked under or vaulted over in whatever combination you fancy. So, what happens when a child comes along and gives in to the temptation? Well every time I've noticed, they get told to stop it or they'll hurt themselves. Its as though children would willingly endanger themselves if it wasn't for constant adult intervention and this simply isn't true.

There have been many experiments with babies and visual cliffs (a glass platform that extends out over a drop) and even though they've never been explicitly taught about heights, drops and what happens if you suddenly meet the ground, none of them seem prepared to take the risk. So, the problem may be that we're turning naturally risk averse babies into risk averse children who, in turn, will become risk averse, and probably sedentary, adults. 

When our children were small we did try to make sure that potentially harmful objects were kept out of reach. We did not, however, gate off the stairs. Instead we somehow established the habit that if you were going to crawl downstairs you shouldn't go head first but should turn around and go down backwards. One day, for some by now unknown reason, we'd left a mirror on the floor. Along comes the baby, looks down into the mirror, turns around and tries to go down into the image backwards.