On Sun, 08 Jul 2007 15:11:12 +0100, John Hearns <
[email protected]>
wrote:
>Tom Crispin wrote:
>>
>> We returned in a much smaller peloton of about 20, half of whom were
>> children. We encountered some truly horrendous driving - especially a
>> bus whose behaviour was witnessed by the police who booked him.
>I heard this tale. Pat on th back Tom.
It was totally unnecessary behaviour by the bus. The time from front
to rear of the peloton can't have been more than 5 seconds. We were
taking up the whole of the bus lane, with light traffic on the main
carriageway. The bus started to overtake, then pulled *through* the
peloton twice. It then overtook a third time, passed *very* close to
me at speed. It then pulled into a bus stop well ahead and as we were
passing started to pull out. I blocked him, furious at his behaviour,
and he actually made contact with me. After the peloton had passed,
which included children as young as 4 (on a tandem triplet) he passed
a fourth time passing *even closer* to me than the time before. The
police had no hesitation in giving chase when I told them he seemed to
have some sort of vendetta against our group as they had witnessed the
driver's passing manoeuvre.
We suffered no such problems on the way up, but with about 120
cyclists behind the children's and inexperienced peloton I guess we
were well protected. I am very grateful to Lewisham, Greenwich and
Southwalk cyclists for agreeing to have the children at the head of
the ride. Once we'd merged with the Tower Hamlets' ride the lead
group became more mixed, but they weren't privy to our arrangements.