PMB - Cycling Meca

As I started to approach retirement, my long time squash opponent left the country to spend 10 years working in the United Kingdom. His departure was timeous because at that time I also developed a lower back problem and was advised to give the game up. So I started cycling, and have never regretted it. I have thoroughly enjoyed cycling around my home town and seeing things I either never knew were there, or passed so fast that I simply did not see them.

About a year after I started cycling, I decide to do the Amashova (Shova). This too was a great experience. My only regret at the time was spending far too much money on Ascent MTB riding shorts and a shirt for the big day. The gloves made sense, and while I do occasionally use cycling shorts for 100+ km rides, I generally cycle in khaki shorts, a Burg Wheelers cycling shirt, and my Jim Green Veldskoens (Half boots).

Since that first shova I have done the inaugural Berg 100, the 94.7, the Argus, three Tour Durbans, and three more Shovas.

Right now I am training again and hopefully will have completed my second Argus (now the Cape Town Cycle Tour) in two weeks time. So naturally I am trying to put in some long rides and it was one of these rides that prompted me to write this blog. The ride I am speaking about took me past a sign that clearly indicated that a cycle track lay ahead and can be seen in the first of the photograph included below. It is situated at the corner of X and Y roads, and it does indeed stand at the start of a purposely constructed cycle path. It is a cycle path much the same as can be found all over of Perth in Western Australia. I mention Perth because from my own limited experience, Perth serves as a city that takes cycling seriously, and features superb cycling facilities.

Now getting back to Pietermaritzburg (Msunduzi PMB), you may or may not know that in recent years, PMB has started to claim for itself the status of a cycling city or center. In fact these claims go back as much as 10 years to when the Msunduzi Innovation and Development Initiative (MIDI) was first established and made it an intention to make PMB a Cycle Safe City. However to the best of my knowledge, PMB has only recently become a center for Mountain Biking (MTB), and has hosted several world class events at the Cascades MTB Park.

I guess one could argue that PMB is a city where MTB'ing is a popular pastime, with much of the activity taking place in the hills and beyond that, the surrounds of Hilton and Howick. What is clearly not the case, is that PMB is a cycle safe city with plenty of cyclist cycling in the city on a daily basis. If fact the converse is true and that is probably because the road surfaces are not good, the pavements are worse, and other than the cycle path that I have already referred to, there is is no network of cycle paths or cycle routes that traverse the city. Beyond that, the nature of the traffic which makes driving in the city testing, also makes cycling very risky. Even the hills and district roads are not safe as there is a risk, albeit small, that you may be hijacked and lose your bike and the personal belongings that you are carrying in the process. This is of course also unfortunately also the case in other parts of South Africa, and I guess, the rest of the world to a lesser extent as well.

So it is not surprising that the net result of all of this is that one seldom sees children commuting to school on a bicycle, and one also seldom sees anyone cycling in the city during office hours. I certainly wish it were different, but from where I am pedalling, it is not, and if I am wrong, I would love to be corrected. I would also like to know whether there are other cycle paths, I would love to hear about them as well.

Make no mistake, I love PMB and I love cycling in the area and so I am not enjoying writing what reads like a litany of gripes. But I am doing so because I care. Of course caring about it will not fix the problem, that requires doing. Well I do what I can, and I also write about it. If you visit my PMB Blog you will find several other blogs written previously about PMB, its problems and my cycling experiences midst it all.

It is of course not all bad. In fact, some of it is superb. I enjoy meeting and exchanging banter with the ordinary folk walking on the pavements that I am riding on while cycling up roads like Howick and Town Bush. Similarly while cycling through the city during business hours I get to see some of the city life as it exists on the pavements, and other interesting roadside sights. Then there are course the road races I ride which offer full road closure. To be able to ride the Amashova (Shova) from PMB to Durban under those conditions with thousands of other cyclists, is a world beating experience!

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