In one of those wonderful coincidences, the code to display cycle.travel’s app map yn Gymraeg was finished today just as the Welsh Government announced a project to crowdsource Welsh placenames for OpenStreetMap https://media.service.gov.wales/news/new-priorities-to-help-protect-welsh-place-names

just bored and thinking about how Freud's, the cocktail bar in a defunct Grade II listed church in Oxford, has been closed since 2023 'for renovations' but they haven't applied for any listed building consent and now it's the last remaining real estate in Radcliffe Observatory Quarter

Dobrinka Tabakova’s Truro Canticles are just full of gorgeous harmonies and you should listen to them, very very loud listeningproject.blog/2024/01/22/t...

AI instant answers have their uses but “is it safe to cycle across Sudan right now” is probably not one of them

Wait. The editor of Cotswold Life magazine was also lead vocalist in Inkubus Sukkubus? www.linkedin.com/posts/candia...

Lol. How well did the last govt insulting load-bearing parts of their electoral coalition work out for them? Like they watched what the Lib Dems did to the home counties and wondered what it'd be like if the Greens did that to the two dozen largest university towns.

what3words is pivoting to AI to save their floundering business model and it makes NO SENSE. If "AI voice chat" can book you an Uber to "///frog.eats.donuts", it can also book you an Uber to "my mate Darren's house" and cut out the intermediate step of w3w coordinates what3words.com/products/pro

everybody talk about pop muzik

British NIMBYism is truly a sight to behold. “We are rejecting this solar farm, because one time I saw an electric vehicle on fire, which reminded me that decades ago a coal mining disaster killed lots of children”.

I call my type of cycling and walking “bimbling”. It generally involves low speeds, an indirect route and a pub.

I want to explain a few things and then it might be clearer why UK trans people are upset. In 2001 I married my wife, Sylvia. In 2005 I started medical transition. (1/13)

And the New Statesman printed my letter!

A Baptist minister has been arrested in Oxford for holding a placard reading ‘I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action’. Rev Grote of New Road Baptist Church said ‘I am doing this because of my faith. I’m doing this because I’m a follower of Jesus Christ, who broke the rules and created peace.’

There’s a strong Labour tradition of “the working class currently do/think this and so it is de facto right”. It’s just like the Oxford traffic debate with Labour councillors fervently defending people’s right to drive through residential streets to save 15 seconds on their journey

In a bunkhouse in St Briavels in the Wye Valley. Local lad Herbert Howells wrote a (very obscure) hymn tune called St Briavels and, well, it would be a shame not to

On a public footpath high up the Wye valley side and I am absolutely baffled how it got there #cantparktheremate

Looking forward to National Rail countersuing Jaguar Land Rover for infringing on the Pace(r) trademark www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/27f1c45...

There’s a literal railway station here with 300,000 passengers a year you absolute halfwit www.newstatesman.com/politics/soc...

My pics! (Very good-natured demonstration against Vance in Charlbury this afternoon - I went along to take some pics for the Charlbury website and figured I might as well send them to the Oxford Clarion. Lots of press there. Charlbury is “having a moment” right now…)

I realise Apple have fixed the “ducking” issue, but I’m in a pub in the orbit of the Black Country and the phone will _not_ autocomplete “faggot”

I just verified my age by recognising Happy Mondays-style typography on the signwriting of a passing boat and getting a thumbs up from the owner

One of these for Charlbury too please!

On the boat in the Midlands and it’s remarkable how much harder it’s become to find a decent pint of cider. Two factors: Marstons have gone all-in with Heineken, and CAMRA have gone uber-purist in their definition of real cider so their site now lists hardly any pubs with anything drinkable.

And congratulations and thanks to Paul Norman, Martin Zdila and the osm.org maintainers who did the work on this (mysteriously not mentioned in this rather corporate-sounding blog post)

Iron law of politics: Labour always disappoints.

Komoot is now trying to get casual users to subscribe for £4.99 a week. Week. Not month. (Screenshot via Reddit.)

Honest piece by Adventure Cycling on “this internet thing kind of caught us by surprise”. Ironically “adventure cycling” is bigger than ever right now, but it’s called bikepacking www.bicycleretailer.com/opinion-anal...

The poshos’ pub over the road has a “4th July Celebration”. As Charlbury is not actually in the USA I guess we must be… celebrating getting rid of America?

Thoughtful post by HereAndThere on the perils of monetising a community-created mapping project www.hereandthere.club/post/ioverla...

An absolute labour of love – this phenomenally detailed history of British cycling maps from 1870 to 1970 cyclemaps.blogspot.com /cc @milleanick.bsky.social

@badlyparkedox.bsky.social S3 bus delayed in Charlbury by 15 minutes once again while the driver inched past this car parked on double yellows, carefully beckoned on by the regulars at the Rose & Crown (OH: “we’ll get you through here mate, I’ve only had two pints of Stella”)

It’s the most wonderful time of the year

Nicholsons Waterway Guides, the definitive UK canal/river guides for 50 years, have begun using OpenStreetMap mapping. Previously they were Ordnance Survey

Amazing new cycling soundtrack! Pascal Gabriel (aka Stubbleman, ex S-Express, Other Two producer etc.) recorded a 1hr46 ride up Mont Ventoux and used the data to trigger modular synth sequences. And it sounds great. It’s on Apple Music/Spotify etc. Background: stubblemanmusic.com/news

🚨 BREAKING: Oxford could get a congestion charge as soon as this autumn. The £5/day charge would apply to all cars driven past city centre cameras – but (almost) all areas would have a camera-free route from the ring road. Full report and first analysis: oxfordclarion.uk/oxford-conge...

These are kind of nice, but I’d love a tube map which was geographically accurate in the city centre (for walking distances), Beck-style in the suburbs (for compactness). Apparently there was an unofficial one in the 80s but I’ve never been able to find it. tfl-newsroom.prgloo.com/news/tfl-lau...

OpenStreetMap once again fulfilling Tony Wilson’s definition of praxis: "doing something, and then only afterwards, finding out why you did it" www.theverge.com/games/672035...

Researching a new route guide. A few tasters…

I do like a good bridge, and this is a VERY good bridge

Cycling in France. Today was day 3 (started in Tours, currently just outside Thiviers). It’s a delight… as it always is.

tfw your leader does a rivers of blood speech and you get banned from pride in the same week

One of the biggest problems with cycling infrastructure in Oxford is that it is riddled with what I call "dual provision", where two bad options are offered to people cycling instead of one good one. THREAD, following blog post at wanderingdanny.com/oxford/2025/...

Os ydych chi eisiau byw yn y Deyrnas Unedig, dylech chi siarad Cymraeg. Dyna synnwyr cyffredin. Felly rydym yn codi gofynion iaith Gymraeg ar draws pob prif lwybr mewnfudo.

Really good piece on reasons to distrust generative AI (and much more nuanced than my take, which is basically “ChatGPT writes like a twat”)

Five pages on Reform; two brief sentences on the LibDems. The new ‘Tortoise’ Observer is not looking promising. Suspect this might be the year we finally cancel our long-standing delivery.

Just wanna point out that LibDem/Green Oxfordshire was the absolute centre of the 15 min city conspiracy and today the LDs have added 15 seats and the Greens have more than doubled so it’s hardly electoral suicide. People like safe streets! @carlosmorenofr.bsky.social @filipwatteeuw.bsky.social

Proud to live in Oxfordshire right now. LibDems and Greens ascendant. Reform and the anti-LTN loonies comprehensively seen off.

Google’s AI overviews have such a “confidently incorrect” vibe, don’t they? Hooray for Kagi.

My gran lived in Runcorn (100 Cotton Lane, Halton Lodge). We spent so many weeks there as kids, walking to Shopping City, taking the T bus, getting disappointed by the sound of the late-night ‘ice-cream van’ that only sold cigarettes. A long time ago but somehow this clip strikes me as 100% Runcorn…