I was right about that saddle though...

Many thanks to Bunneh for posting this up.  It's an old Yellow Pages advert that I'd never seen before, in which a northern lad is dreaming about getting a racing bike. His dad is talking down his expectations - about that kind of bike without proper mudguards and chainguard and with a razor-sharp saddle.  ''Mebbe next year, eh...''  And then, come his birthday...yes you've guessed it....

(For some reason - it worked when I tested it but it hasn't embedded  - here's the address anyway.)

 But the main reason why I liked the clip was because when the lad sets off up the hill, I suddenly realised that I knew this ''northern'' street.

Because it's Maidenstone Hill, all the way north in London, SE10 - a street which I ought to recognise because my very first ever girlfriend lived at the top of that hill.

I couldn't take a photo from the first floor, but this is how it looks from the street - note the corner shop in the ad was once a corner shop but hasn't been one for over 30 years - they've just dressed up the outside

So down the hill I cycled, got back to a computer to see how they compared.  So I started the youtube video again and went ''hang on a minute..." because if was only after coasting back to Deptford that I realised the opening shot was also up that hill.  But there was no way Google Streetview could have that image on streetview because it's not a road.  Right, off up Point Hill for the second time. Here's the opening shot:

And here's the view from the path.

(I was going to take a closer picture but there was a woman with a child at one of the windows and I thought I might get taken for a snooper.)

Greenwich, bikes, nostalgia...right up my street.

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Talking of Greenwich, bikes and nostalgia, here's a curiosity about Witcomb's cycles in Deptford (now gone)...the presenter fails to cycle up Hyde Vale and remounts up by the drinking trough.

The video's here

Get here by DLR....how, exactly?

A Time Out Guide to Greenwich & Docklands by DLR 2010 landed on my doormat this morning.  I was surprised to see the picture on page 6.

Greenwich, cyclist, bike with the caption ''Get here by DLR.''  But the DLR doesn't allow bikes on their trains. So how can the pictured person get there by DLR?

Exceptionally, because of a triathlon event being held at the Excel centre, they will be running a train service for competitors from Bank to Excel and bikes will be allowed on board special trains on 4 and 5 August.  But, unless you want to cycle from the Excel centre - further away than the towers on the horizon - you're going to have to get here not by DLR but by bike.

Faire les bises

I guess it's probably because I'm half-Swiss and I've spent a fair while in France that I appreciate the confusion that cross-border kissing can cause.  The Swiss rule is a triple peck, the most common French rule is a double peck, though in some rural areas it can stretch to four.  And most English people just do a single peck.   Because I'm very familiar with that moment of feeling a little lost, I've been enjoying the embarrassment that Tour de France cyclist Andy Schleck has managed to cause whenever he gets the maillot jaune.  That's twice now that he's managed to confuse a podium girl by insisting on his Luxembourgeois right to treble pucker.  In the screengrab below she's just realised that she can't just stop at two and hand over the stuffed lion. He's waiting to close the deal.

I now want him to win a few more yellow jerseys out of simple curiosity about how long this cross-border comedy of manners will go on for before the message finally gets through.

UPDATE after Stage 11: Kissing chaos continues.  For a start, the Manxman Cavendish won the finishing sprint and gained the green jersey.  He gets up on the podium and kisses the two girls in threes - and they seem to be ready for three - and then afterwards he repeats the triples with the 2 dignitaries to the side of the podium.  Then comes Schleck again, having retained the yellow.  The first girl imposes a 2-cheek limit and he then turns to the stuffed lion lady and he reasserts his treble.  He then wanders off to shake hands with the male dignitaries and faire les bises with the 2 women.  The first woman, perhaps preconditioned by Cavendish offers her left cheek, then her right cheek, then her left cheek for the finale...only to be left hanging because Schleck has gone straight on to the 2nd woman.  The first woman, an ex-French time trialler, looked a little discombobulated.

Curiosycles...

Spotted at Tescos early this bank holiday Monday after a beautifully car-free morning ride (but, my, was it cold!)...

This bike certainly wasn't built for speed, with its big road-hugging motor cycle tyres and its absence of gears, and neither was it built for doing the shopping - no baskets or pannier racks - yet shopping is what its owner appears to have been doing.  I particularly like its straight-V handlebars.

Though they have been making odd-looking bikes for quite some time.  Here's one with an early suspension system that I have had lying around on my hard drive for a while

The outer rim is sprung, and it would apparently have worked like serial shock absorbers as the wheels went round.  I was surprised to see a penny-farthing with drop handlebars.

(I would say where I found this photo but I can't remember apart from the fact that it was in a bike museum somewhere in the Netherlands.  Or was it Denmark?)

And when it comes to complicated-looking engineering, how about the bike park at Silkmills?  I still haven't quite worked out how this thing works - how do you get your bike onto the upper level? Note that the resident cyclists don't seem to be using the 2nd tier. But it's got to be the  most fiendish bike park I've ever seen.

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Just because I happened to be passing with a camera, here's the Ladywell ghost sign.  There is a better photo of it on the ghostsigns.co.uk site, taken I believe by Caroline of Caroline's Miscellany.  Bolton Corner, where Ladywell Road reached the north end of Rushey Green.  Bolton & Co also had a shop on The Pavement, Ladywell.  And I don't know where that might be, or have been - presumably down by the station.