Here comes the winter

The cold snap arrived n Bordeaux on Tuesday and coincided with us being on duty in the café. This 'cold snap in Bordeaux' means minimum temperatures of 2°C and maxima of just early teens.With impressive lack of foresight I had not unpacked or even located my warm winter clothes, so I suggested we travel by tram. 

Bike is better.

Thankfully the café has a new and advanced system controlling its electric radiators. It's a system installed free, paid for by the electricity producers. It enables them to switch off your heating for short bursts in order to control peak demand on the grid. It also enables you to control thermostatically and by timer old electric radiators without such controls. It's great! So the café is warm when we arrive and stays warm while people are there. We turned on the heating for the toddler group about a month ago, but now it's on whenever the café is open.

Cycling back and fore has been much nicer than the tram. It's only really cold first thing, and we layer up. Pat wears mittens. I wear wrinkled blue fingers. And the cold weather coincides with clear blue skies and high tides, so the ride is beautiful.

We do have an issue with traffic lights. There's often tension between motorists and cyclists, and one man has even been mowed down deliberately by a driver in Paris. Some of this is provoked by cyclists unfortunate habit of behaving like pedestrians - that is, looking at red lights to see if any traffic is coming and, if not, crossing quickly. Drivers, who would be caught and fined for this behaviour, understandably feel resentful. So we respect the traffic lights.

Generally.

The thing is that when we cycle to and from the café the four lane road along the waterfront (WHY?????) is generally empty of traffic. Empty! There's the occasional delivery van or tourist bus. And of course the traffic lights are cadenced for rush hour traffic. Which means LONG WAITS at the light to cross an empty road. 

I stand there on my bicycle aging while elderly ladies with zimmer frames totter safely across the road in defiance of the pedestrian lights and look curiously at this madman in yellow on a yellow bike too yellow to cross the stupid road.

So I have a half-way measure - where I dismount from the bike and walk across. Then I am not one of these annoying cyclists who do not respect the rules. I am just another pedestrian joining the ranks of prams, zimmer frames and shopping trolleys crossing when the light is red.

I have a plan to write to the town hall - again. I have written to ask that traffic be banned from the waterfront. Why have a four lane highway right through the most beautiful touristy part of the city? But also, please adjust the cadence fo the traffic lights, or at least add a button so we can cross before exchanging our bicycles for zimmer frames.