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Get on yer bike
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remember the kitchen sink
Alison Prince
TT racing on Arran?
Alison Prince
Bob Rosamond (18 October) is right to point to the profit yielded by the annual TT event on the Isle of Man. His idea of replicating this on a Scottish island is not new.
I can’t speak for Skye or Mull, but last year the Isle of Arran very nearly ran a bicycle road race. (Push-bikes, that is – nothing noisy, thank you.) CalMac said it could ship the bikes and support vehicles and the police thought they could close the island’s narrow mountain roads without inconvenience to the public.
The public thought otherwise. Closing any one of our three roads can mean a 60-mile detour to get from one village to the next. And there is the fact, stated by North Ayrshire Council’s infrastructure officer last month, that Arran’s roads ‘are the worst in Scotland’. Our potholes are well able to catapult a speeding cyclist over his handlebars and, if unlucky, down the cliff and into the sea. So bicycle TT was a non-starter. As to motorbikes – we’ve had too many leather-jacketed lads colliding with trees to fancy that idea.
Roads on the Isle of Man are smooth and well-maintained, like everything else, with enough fancy corners to attract speed addicts. What’s more, they have an opulent hospital on high land outside Douglas, with its own three helicopter pads, handy should any biker come unstuck.
Money breeds money. What we need is some way to kick-start the upward process. Or, of course, a philosophic shrug. The fact is, we like things the way they are.
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Get on yer bike
Beijing style, and
remember the kitchen sink
Douglas Wood
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