Mark Cavendish of Britain crosses the finish line to win the sixth stage of the Tour de France cycling race over 227.5 kilometers (141.4 miles) with start in Montargis and finish in Gueugnon (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

Arthur Lamy takes a look at what is currently happening in the tour de France.

Postcard from the Tour de France (I wish!):

• Here is a short video showing Fabian Cancellara’s mount for the cobbled sections of this year’s tour. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvjt8EF4D1I

• Scotland hopes to host the start of the Tour de France some time in the next 10 years.  Paul Bush, the chief operating officer of EventScotland was a guest of the Tour organisers at this year’s start in Rotterdam.

• After a miserable finish on Wednesday, Mark Cavendish recovered to take the honours on Thursday’s run into Montargis, claiming his first stage win of the 2010 Tour, and his 11th.Tour de France victory overall. He was in good form again the next day, when he won the stage from Montargis to Gueugnon.

Here is his post race interview:

http://www.letour.fr/2010/TDF/LIVE/us/600/videos.html?target=155379

• As we go into Monday’s rest day, we have American Cadel Evans currently leading the race; the highest placed English rider is Bradley Wiggins at 14^th spot; potential 2010 Tour de France winner Alberto Contador is in a comfortable third place whilst his nemesis Lance Armstrong is back in 39^th position, having been involved in no less than three crashes during Saturday’s race from Station des Rousses to Morzine-Avoriaz. Armstrong is now 13 minutes 26 seconds behind Cadel Evans, can Armstrong, who is not a mountain specialist, hope to pull back the deficit?

• As usual pick up all the latest news, videos and everything else on the official website: http://www.letour.fr/us/homepage_courseTDF.html

Sprint Bonuses

• Bristol City Council is doing away with two car parking spaces in six separate locations, and turning them over to cycle parking. This will let another 72 bikes be parked in the city centre. Notwithstanding the loss of these car parking spaces, there are still 1,800 on-street car parking spaces left.

• The London Transport Museum, in conjunction with the Association of Illustrators, has recently promoted a competition to design a poster encouraging cycling in the capital. An exhibition of the top 50 entries is taking place from 5th.July to 22nd. August, during this period, the museum is also hosting a number of other cycling -related activities.

Go to the website: http://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/whatson/128.aspx#aoi

• Travelodge has just opened a new 279 room hotel at Waterloo, part of the offer is an exclusive complementary ‘Triplet London sightseeing tour ,‘ and a tour guide. This gives two customers the opportunity to cycle around London’s most famous landmarks with their guide. As well as this, the hotel is trying out a cycle hire service using ‘Go Cycle’ electric bikes.

• Essex County Council have given the go-ahead for the London 2012 Olympic mountain bike course to be built at Hadleigh Farm near Benfleet. The 220 hectare site offers both woodland and grassland, and Essex County Council hope to start work on creating a course very shortly.

• Going out on 24th July at 8pm on ITV 4 -I think that you can pick the programme up afterwards on the ITV website: itv.com/itv player – is an hour long documentary which details the two year cycle adventure that Dominic Gill undertook in 2006, in which he travels from the north of Alaska to the very tip of Argentina. He does this by tandem, picking up random passengers as he goes along. It sounds fascinating, even before you throw in the inevitable difficulties that crossing two continents brings.  Don’t miss it!

In the meanwhile, here’s a short video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=185pGsXOw_g&feature=related

• One of the most interesting stories of the week was that of Oliver and Gillian Schonrock, who allow their five-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter to cycle the one mile to school every day. It must be mentioned at this point that the children cycle on pavements, and that their only road crossing was controlled by a lollipop lady.  On the way home they were supervised.

A problem arose because the headmaster of the children’s school, Mark O’Donnell of Alleyn’s Junior School

in Dulwich, had tried to get the parents to accompany the children to school because he was bound to do so

legally. Southwark Council guidelines suggest that children of nine are old enough to cross roads

unaccompanied.

Mr. and Mrs Schonrock received massive amounts of support for their stand on their children’s safety, among

the people who agreed that they alone should take responsibility were the Prime Minister David Cameron;

Mayor of London Boris Johnson;  Sustrans  and the London Cycling Campaign who mention in their e-

newsletter that John Forrester, author of Effective Cycling and Bicycle Transportation, a Handbook for

Cycling Transportation Engineers, was a pupil there in the Thirties, and he cycled three miles to school each

day when aged eight!

• Transport for London has just introduced three new measures that they hope will cut down on the number of cycling fatalities in the capital. The first is the introduction of large ‘trixie’ cycle safety mirrors on traffic signals which should show HGV drivers any cyclists who are hidden in their blind spot, between them and the kerb. The second is a poster campaign aimed at alerting riders to the dangers of undertaking trucks at

junctions and the final measure is a voluntary agreement with the Freight Transport Association to look at

making deliveries away from peak cycling times.

I don’t think that trucks are a great danger in Jersey as our articulated trucks are half the length of English

ones, but nevertheless here is a pdf of the poster:

http://static.lfgss.com/attachments/27448d1278448004-hgv-blind-spot-campaign-poster.pdf

Thanks to Andreas of the London Cyclist Blog for the pdf: http://www.londoncyclist.co.uk/

And Finally,

If you find that you have a bike that gets heavier as the hills get steeper, spare a thought for Paul Talbot who has the wholly eco-friendly, pedal along, solar powered coffee cart in Liberation Square. It looks like a monster to navigate, even before you start pedalling.

Arthur Lamy is a freelance writer and tourist guide. www.cycleinjersey.com