You are reading a single comment by @Velocio and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@Velocio
Lack of knowledge of London streets and the best (highly subjective) routes from A to B might also factor.
Felicity pointed out the last time we drove to Ikea that one of her Japanese students who she went on a ride with last summer had "discovered" a faster route... on the A40.
She did this, because she'd got hold of a load of cycling maps from the TFL (they're free or something), and was religiously following them (the Japanese way is to do what the government says), and found she'd be constantly lost down the back ways of Acton and Ealing. So she started trying to follow the biggest lines on the maps, which just turned out to be the major roads.
Anyhow, London's geography doesn't lend itself to being easily navigable if your only knowledge of what is where is based on the tube map, and only a little exposure to one area.
Street signs for cyclists do exist in some places, but if you try following them you find they're not entirely complete along a given route. So this Japanese girl felt that she would cycle more if she could just figure out how to get from A to B without existing only at the extremes of being lost, or being on a very scary road.
(this post is gender neutral and based on anecdotal record only - therefore, it should be considered hard fact and girls only for the purpose of all future posts)