Cambridge workers are being urged to take part in a Cycle Challenge. We are being pitted against The Other Place. We’ve beaten Oxford in the Boat Race and University Challenge already this year, so here’s the next trial of fortitude!

It works like this: you sign up at your place of work, then encourage your colleagues to do the same, then log your journeys (all of them, not just the commuting ones). The campaign aims to get more new cyclists doing short journeys of just 10 minutes (1 or 2 miles for most people).

The list of Cambridge organizations that has already signed up is impressive and I am pleased to say it includes the City and County Councils as well as both universities.

Read all about it here.

Did you know that only one in four women and girls in the UK ever cycles? I was staggered by this statistic, which came out of research carried out by Sustrans last year. It resulted in a 9,000 petition to the Minister for Transport asking for safer cycle routes.

The Cambridge Cycling Campaign (of which I am a member) is working on encouraging more women and girls to take up cycling as an everyday way of getting about.

They are putting on two events:

On Wednesday 10th March they will be showing the film ‘Beauty and the Beast — why British girls don’t cycle’.

‘Ride for Joy’ is a big fashion cycling event on Saturday 20th March. That’s NOT an oxymoron. The idea is to wear your ordinary clothes, but still be as stylish as you please. We’ll be riding around the centre of town, meeting  at Lammas Land at 2 p.m. and fetching up at Parkers Piece for a speaker later. For the latest news, see the Cambridge Cycling Campaign website. b

Ruth Murphy, a director of Addenbrooke’s Hospital,  has now responded to my letter about staff smoking and leaving litter in residential streets. While they are entitled to have a cigarette in their break, leaving litter behind is not.

Ms Murphy writes that there are now smoking shelters on the edge of the hospital site, and she has undertaken to have signs put up to encourage staff not to smoke near people’s homes. The hospital is making other efforts to get people to stop smoking altogether.

Any problems, get in touch with her.

I have now received a response to my letter of 16th September to Addenbrooke’s director Stephen Graves about staff smoking and leaving litter in neighbouring streets such as Red Cross Lane and Greenlands. See previous post.

He confirms that staff do have smoking shelters on site and should not need to go off site to indulge.

Progress is slow. A month after my initial letter, he has passed the complaint on to another director, Ruth Murphy. I shall be hoping to hear from her soon! I would be interested to hear from anyone in either of these two streets as to whether you notice any improvement.