Beneath the sugar coating

I had far more bliportunities today, but it was tricky to stop to take out the camera since I didn't have a pocket or a neck strap for the Canon. So I'm afraid you're stuck with the gingerbread man from the window of a very nice deli in Dulwich. I probably couldn't afford justify buying even one of his buttons.

It was a cycling kind of day and Fred and I pedalled into the city via Chelsea Bridge to Hyde Park, where we came across the Tour du Danger - a protest urging TfL and the London mayor to reassess the top 10 dangerous junctions in the London to make them safe for cyclists. Yesterday, a cyclist was killed on one of the mayor's "superhighways" on Bow Roundabout. She was the second fatality on the roundabout within a few weeks. It's the superhighway that cyclists will use to access the Olympics next year. It's absolutely shocking that it's not safe. Both fatalities were caused by collision with a truck. When I cycle, I stay well, well away from trucks, even if I have to alight from my bicycle and walk the junction as a pedestrian. However, they do creep up behind you and on large junctions they can come from anywhere. I avoid the large junctions, but it adds time to my journey.

I cycled only part of the Tour du Danger, from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square. I became annoyed when the cyclists didn't stop to let pedestrians cross at a green man crossing. We were a few hundred cyclists and for the short time it would take for the pedestrians to cross, we weren't going to lose the group ahead (the argument was that we had to keep going so the group wouldn't fragment and it was OK to carry on through crossing because the protest was a procession). Still, I felt bad and pedestrians have a raw deal, too, and cyclists need them on their side. At that point, Fred and I left the protest (only physically, mind) and cycled home via Waterloo Bridge (Waterloo is one of the ten bad junctions) and Dulwich.