Clifton CC

'Dear Riders. It is with regret that the full series is cancelled, due to circumstances beyond our control. We find we are unable to meet the legislation required by North Yorkshire Police. We apologise for the late date to notify you but they have kept us in limbo since they received our paperwork on the 5th of February.
We hope in the future to resolve these problems, but in the meantime you could all do your bit and join the Facebook "KEEP RACING ON THE ROADS" campaign, and be sure to mention our TLI racing in North Yorkshire.
Your entries and cheques will be shredded unless you ask for them to be sent back to you.
Thank You all for your support in the past.
Regards and Best Wishes
Cliff and Brenda Beldon'

This is a great shame. The TLI events had provided a great way into racing, and Cliff & Brenda have put in an enormous amount of time to make these events a success. Any problems they've had in past years have been due to this success and the level of demand from riders.

Getting approval for races is currently very problematic in North Yorkshire (and it's worse in some other areas). Organisation of the club's veterans and BC events is turning into a nightmare. Procedures are different to previous years, in that the police are referring everything to Highways, and the requirement there is for rolling road closure with the control of traffic carried out by "qualified operatives". This basically means hiring a traffic management company to deal with safety measures during races - temporary traffic lights or whatever. The basic starting point, bluntly put to me in an email from the county Highways boss is that "the highway network is there to facilitate the movement of vehicles, not to act as a sporting arena".

I understand British Cycling are working with Dept of Culture, Media and Sport on this, but it's clearly taking time (problems were identified early last year) and until then organisers are going to have a hard time. To quote from the BC website:-

"The solution to these issues is relatively straightforward: the next government simply needs to amend and update the secondary legislation governing this area of law - the Cycle Racing on the Highways Regulations 1960. It was amended temporarily to allow the Tour de France to come through the UK, demonstrating not only how prohibitive the legislation is, but how easy it would be to amend it.

The amended legislation would start from the presumption that road races are a legitimate activity and should be authorised by the police, subject to the fulfilment of an updated set of requirements. This will limit the current regional variability of police requirements and allow our volunteers to organise races more effectively. We believe that the best means of introducing these conditions would be through a Code of Conduct which would include formal recognition of the role played by trained and accredited marshals to control traffic at bike races."

Changes in the law are doubtless some way off, along with affordable, available training and accreditation for marshals. Meantime...

I'd suggested a pub night on Sunday 18th for everyone planning on racing this year - maybe use that to stare at the calendar and work out what alternative events there are, and how to share travel arrangements to make sure everyone gets a chance to do some races?

How about a weekly mini bus from York up to the dreaded Croft circuit for their TLi series?
It does seem like one thing after another with road racing this year, with not only local but national and long standing events being affected for reasons seemingly thought up in an office far away from the real world.

Anyone game for cyclo-cross instead?

It'll be a sad day when all we have left is racing round Croft.

Isn't there a TLI East Yorkshire league? some good courses out that way too, might be a full field now mind... if it still is on?

TLI 2010 East Yorkshire league, details on Hull Thursday RC website.

I had been told via a reliable source that the highways agency had stipulated that temporary traffic lights were needed on certain junctionsn the various courses, cost of these was £400 per day which made the series finacially unviable for Cliffe and Brenda. Great shame as it was a great series.

OTHER TLI EVENTS - but rant first

What a ridiculous country we live in. I've lived abroad in a number of countries - the Netherlands and Belgium and of course, racing on the roads is not a problem. It is welcomed. Why does the UK always do things different to the rest of Europe? There are other, and better ways. Whilst this is not the complete extent of the stupidity of British laws - nor the worst, it is one of many that quite often make me ashamed to be British. Still, I'm still job hunting abroad so may not be here for too much longer if I get lucky.

On a very positive note - there are other TLI races not too far away and not as far as Croft. North Midlands around Harworth near Donny has a road race league. The link is on the TLI website. Harworth is just down the A1M and is easily doable in 45 minutes. I quite often go down and my folks live in Donny so know it does not take long. Give it a go. I've already done a TLI down there and found it excellent racing, friendly (as TLIs are - not A#&@lly retentive like BC events) and accessible due to the road links. Good luck.

Use to live in Hull as well and the Thursday Road race league is now under TLI and shared organisation by all the clubs in Hull. I think each one takes it in turn to organise an event. Again, very friendly and excellent hard racing with very good groupings and handicapping. They don't just wait for the scatch group to catch and groups quite oftern stay away. Another one to give it a go. You could ride out from York too to some of the circuits!!!

PhilBixby wrote:The basic starting point, bluntly put to me in an email from the county Highways boss is that "the highway network is there to facilitate the movement of vehicles, not to act as a sporting arena".

Depressing news - and Mr/Ms Highways is both confused and wrong. Horses and pedestrians are both legitimate users of the highway, and neither could be considered as vehicles. And then again - what is a bike race but a highly specific and organised movement of two-wheeled vehicles?

But anyway, the thing which still bugs me about the troubles of the last two years is this: road racing hasn't changed, and nor has the legislation governing it. Roads haven't change much either. So why a problem now? It seems to me that if it was reasonable to run TLIs for a few years, the onus is on the police/highways to explain why this is no longer the case (is this down to a crucial precedent in liability case law? or the weather?).

Without a reasonable explanation, they would look pretty silly, and more practically, they could lay themseves open to (armchair lawyer alert) judicial review.

Andy - any money in the BC pot to explore that avenue? Or has it been done already...

tom

"On a very positive note - there are other TLI races not too far away and not as far as Croft."

Thanks to both Colin and Darren for pointers elsewhere. I've done a bit of digging to see what the situation is....

North Midlands League based around Doncaster:- Email back from organiser says "Sorry but we were full over 2 weeks ago....and have around 15 riders on the waiting list if places become available" so no chance there - shame as it sounds good.

East Riding Road Race League:- I spoke to organiser Mark Robinson. He still has places available (he's got about 45 pre-entries so far) and is giving priority to riders who enter the whole series, although he reckons there would probably be a chance of EOL for riders who just turn up for individual events. Closing date for series entries is 15th April. Anyone up for it, on the basis of sharing lifts out? They're on Thursday evenings, starts 29th April.

Other than that, there's croft. Tim, Dave - what's the setup with these; how did it work last year? Did you just turn up on the night?

Hi Phil

Croft is normally enter on the line, just turn up. I don't know what the limit is but it's over 100.

Dave

I like the idea of riding in East Riding - easiest for me to get to for a start. I meant to get over for one last year but never did, as it's hard for me to escape from work in time on a Thursday.
But if there are others up for it that might get me organised...

A bit more info

The series timetable:
http://www.hullthursdayrc.co.uk/Results ... 02010.html

And some info on the courses (neat this one!)
http://www.hullthursdayrc.co.uk/X/Cours ... urses.html

Cheers Phil for making some calls!

Okay, I've bunged an entry in for the EYRRL series. I've ridden a couple of the circuits and they're interesting. Bit of a drive out but looks like this year just isn't cut out to be easy. Anyone else?

Just going to the postbox... worth it even if I can only make 3 or 4 races.
tom

Bloody great, just got back from holiday to read this!! I've never trained specifically for RR until this year and I've built my plans around the TLIs at Boroughbridge. What the %£** do I do now! At least I've entered the East Yorks TLI series. I need some races to which I can get an entry and I'm capable of riding. Given that the authorities seem to be having much success at their concerted effort stop racing (well group cycling altogether) there's gonna be a lot of cyclists like me, it's going to be like finding hen's teeth.

So we gotta go to East Yorkshire to do some racing? When I get back from Mcr for the holidays I was gonna do some racing, guess I'll just do TT's and Sportives now.