What is your name, where are you from and how long have you been in Aberdeen (if not local)?
Ben Martin. I’ve been in Aberdeen for nine and a half years, but I’m originally from New Zealand.
How did you get into cycling?
Dunedin where I grew up is not very suitable for cycling. I learnt to cycle at the age of 27 when I moved to Canberra. Canberra has lots of off-road cycle paths (and lots of hills!).
What kind of cycling do you do?
Mainly commuting to work (at the University of Aberdeen).
What type of cycle do you use
A Whyte Shoreditch hybrid.
Where do you cycle usually/any favourite routes? How often?
Along the Deeside Way to Cults or Newton Dee. My family and I went as far as Banchory once.
What would you like to see to improve your cycling experience?
Better cycling infrastructure, especially segregated cycle paths.
Any top tips for someone considering cycling in the area?
I cycle across town to work and back most weekdays. Some of the main roads are busy and unsafe, but there are often better routes that involve sticking to back streets.
Twenty years ago on Tuesday 30th September 2003, Aberdeen Cycle Forum had its inaugural meeting. You can read the minutes of that meeting, which outline the attendees, what they discussed, and why the forum was created. Aberdeen Cycle Forum has held monthly meetings in the 20 years since with all the minutes publicly available on our website.
We’re still run entirely on volunteer steam. Over the years we’ve responded to countless consultations, organised protests, run competitions and campaigns, provided cycling lessons to locals, commissioned street art for the cycle network, provided feedback to the council on cycling-related issues and even organised a litter pick.
A big thank you to Aberdeen Cycle Forum members who cleaned up the path beside the River Dee today between the rowing sheds and Victoria Bridge.
We collected 20 bags of rubbish in just under 2 hours including bottles, cans, plastic, cigarette butts, bottle caps, shoes, styrofoam, bits of timber, rubber, metal, and two hypodermic needles which are thankfully no longer floating around the environment.
This is a slightly unusual activity for us. We’ve never organised a litter pick before but often people who choose to cycle do so to reduce their impact on the environment and so litter picking is a natural extension of that desire to make the world a better place.
The River Dee is a wonderful treasure for our region and home to salmon, sea birds, insects, amphibians, and mammals. Let’s take care of it. If you want to organise a litter pick the council will provide bags and picking tools. They’ll even come to collect the rubbish afterwards.
It has been a pleasure to visit my daughter and family who live in the beautiful city of Aberdeen. Following an energetic 2 month bike-riding / sight-seeing tour of France, Sweden and Norway, it felt good to relax with family.
Being a keen e-bike rider and due the generosity of a friend, I was able cycle many of the streets and paths of Aberdeen. In this letter, I wish to share some thoughts about bike access in your city.
As background, I am from Brisbane Australia and still young at age 76. I took up e-bike riding 2.5 years ago, encouraged by Brisbane’s extensive network of cycleways and shared pathways. It is such a fun way to get around and is now my preferred mode of travel to destinations such as shops, parks, cafes, train stations, and University. One-third of people in Brisbane live within 300 metres of a cycleway and almost two thirds live within one kilometre.
Brisbane City Council has plans to extend and develop cycleways even further. From their perspective, the network not only improves access to local destinations and the CBD, but also helps to minimise traffic congestion. There has been a huge positive response by our citizens, young and old, and especially recently retired senior citizens who have taken up cycling with great enthusiasm. What better way to enjoy the outdoors with friends, enjoy a healthier lifestyle, than getting outside for a bike ride?
As people get older some may find it easier to cycle an e-bike than to walk as our hips and knees start to object to the more jarring of physical activity. In this way a bicycle acts as a mobility aid, offering transportation and therefore independence to people of all ages and abilities.
The extensive network of separate cycleways ensures that we can cycle safely away from fast-moving motorised traffic. Many of the most used cycleways also separate cyclists from pedestrians. It makes it safe for families taking young children to kindy or for family outings on weekends. There are no downsides.
Here is a selection of photos of Brisbane cycleways.
As mentioned, my stay here in Aberdeen has been greatly enhanced by having access to an e-bike. I have cycled through the city, along the eastern beach esplanade path, around Seaton Park and the River Don, and along the south coast road. However, at times I have felt a little threatened by traffic, especially accessing the city centre, as you have few cycleways that separate cyclists from motorised traffic. Cycling on pavements is not ideal for pedestrians.
As a visitor, I am sure that future investment by the council to improve this situation would be welcomed by locals as well as tourists. Experience tells us that building new motorways attracts more traffic; likewise, building cycleways attracts bicycle traffic, the more desirable outcome.
This week I rode to Banchory and back on the Deeside rail trail. A delightful experience. However, it could be improved by management of the track surface and encroaching vegetation, as well as restricting on-road travel sections to a minimum; and maybe better signage for novice riders. This could be a wonderful attraction for tourists, with local castles along the way, an added attraction. My original plan was to ride all the way to Ballater but I was discouraged by lack of a dedicated cycleway between Banchory and Aboyne.
I will continue to be a regular visitor to your wonderful city and look forward to enjoying any cycleway upgrades that you construct.
I had the great pleasure of meeting the delightful Joanna Robertson today. She was training on her handcycle at Duthie Park.
Joanna is a local athlete who uses her handcycle to compete in sporting events like the London marathon. She’s currently training for the Edinburgh and Manchester 10k marathons. Normally she gets around by wheelchair because of a spinal injury but having a handcycle as a mobility aid has given her “A whole new sense of freedom”.
I asked Joanna what the biggest issues are for her cycling in Aberdeen? Without hesitation she replied with potholes. Potholes are especially problematic for people with disabilities as it’s not easy to stand up when going over the bump, making it even more jarring. Another issue is tree roots.
Joanna sticks mostly to off-road paths like Deeside Way and the beach because being so low to the ground, as is often the case for people using handcycles, she’s particularly vulnerable to much larger vehicles who are less likely to see her. This is another very good reason why Aberdeen needs a network of segregated cycle paths.
If you’d like to learn more about Joanna and follow her sporting journey then visit her Facebook page – Joanna Robertson T54 WC.
The Aberdeen Cycle Forum applied for funding from Sustrans through their ArtRoots fund to commission art work for Deeside Way. Our application was successful and after many months of searching for an artist and getting everyone to agree on a design the work was completed this week and it’s terrific.
The design and painting was done by KMG. It features two leopard cyclists as a nod to Aberdeen’s mascot along with a wheelchair fox, a sausage dog pedestrian and dog and a gull and blackbird.
We’re really thrilled with how it has turned out and we hope it will encourage people to be more physically active whether it be through cycling, running, walking, wheeling, rollerblading, or scootering. You can find it on the south wall that forms part of the road bridge for Great Southern Road which is near the Duthie Park end of Deeside Way.
Local government elections are only two weeks away and The Aberdeen Cycle Forum took the opportunity to contact all political parties to get their views on cycling-related issues.
We sent each party the same 6 questions and here are the responses so far.
ACF is apolitical and thus neutral, but please have a read and make your own decisions. Even better take 5 minutes to contact candidates standing for election in your own ward and let them know your views. We’ll post any additional responses we get as they come in.
Liz has been associated with the forum since almost the start. She has been one of our most faithful and consistent members, regularly attending meetings and always willing to help at events or contribute when we are responding to consultations. Her husband, David Lindsey, was one of the founding members back in 2003. You can read minutes from those early meetings and all our meetings since then on our website at Aberdeen Cycle Forum meeting minutes.
I snapped this photo of some of us afterwards. Liz is in the purple jacket second from the left.
Liz brought along an old newspaper clipping of a letter David wrote to the paper way back in 1993. This is from the Evening Express 24/11/1993 about the controversy of putting some painted lines on North Deeside Road. Not much has changed in 30 years, it seems.
We wish Liz all the very best and big thanks to her for all her contributions to the forum over the past two decades.
Thanks to funding from Paths for All and Cycling UK we were able to run more cycling lessons in Duthie Park today. These were a continuation of lessons we ran last year and the last of the series was meant to be in March this year but it was cancelled due to covid. Finally the lessons went ahead today and they were a great success.
These lovely ladies were absolute beginners and learning how to ride a bike for the first time. It’s truly satisfying to see someone learn to ride and get the thrill you only get from whizzing along on two wheels with the wind in your face. They were both cycling without assistance by the end.
We also had a lessons for adults who wanted to develop confidence cycling on roads with traffic. After some initial cycling in the park our second group braved the local roads and the traffic and did so splendidly.
We forget when we’ve been cycling for years how scary it is being on the road with motorised vehicles especially trucks and buses. It’s a frightening experience when you do it for the first time and having an experienced instructor lead you through the traffic and show you the road positions to take for ultimate safety is a big confidence booster which can help people make the leap from leisure cycling in the park to commuter cycling to work and the shops. The humble bicycle is, after all, more than just a contraption for Sunday cycling in the park; it’s a legitimate mode of transport that can replace the car and that is exactly what the world needs.
We’ve received lots of photos of unaccessible infrastructure in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire to our Make Aberdeen Accessible campaign. Here are a couple of examples.
Barriers like these make active travel difficult and in many cases completely exclude wheelchair users and people with non-standard bicycles like trikes and cargo bikes. Thanks for all the submissions so far and please keep it up! The more examples we get the more we can take to the local authority to demand action.
Aberdeen Cycle Forum 