Right or Wrong?

Some mornings seem to just be full of problems on the ride to work. I don’t know whether it was the added number of cyclists in the good weather, or what, but I hit a ride which featured a number of incidents.

It’s hard to know who was right or wrong, and no one crashed or anything and instantly I felt I was in the right, but judge for yourself.

At the first junction I hit the lights as they changed and weaved my way through the slow-moving cyclists. So far so good until I hit the road the other side of the main road. Here the road splits. I was going on the left fork, but another major road goes straight on. I was in the lane to turn left but after my move I was fairly over towards the right hand side of the lane. The issue was that there were cyclists who had hugged the near-side and now wanted to cross to the right fork. With me so far?

I went wide. A cyclist dithered looking like they wanted to come over, and looked over. I was sure he’d seen me. I went wide outside him to go left, as he started to drift a bit aimlessly out towards the right. I got past, but felt his handlebar brush my hip as I went past.

I felt I’d been justified to be where I was, and that with assertive riding he should have been better position, but then I know he was coming across to the right and so should I have backed off and cut in behind him?

Next up was another odd one at traffic lights. I filtered on the off-side to the lights as I was turning right at the junction. I paused as the lights were red but changing to green, and then pulled away to the right when they did. This was just as a cyclist who was going straight on decided to overtake on the outside. She was annoyed, but I am pretty sure it was clear what I was doing and a fairly silly move to try and go round, but once again, was I in the wrong? Should I have double checked? Should I have been signalling more clearly?

Anyway, aside from all that, Sky announced their (highly surprising) team for the Tour, and there’ll be nothing here on Monday as I attempt not to get lost on a ride for which I’ve been pouring over maps and hoping that I understand what I’m getting into. More on that next week.

Until then enjoy the added behind the scenes footage from Imaginate.

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