Cyclists In Southwark

Experiments have been carried out to see what would happen if someone tried to clone the "official" Cyclists in Southwark website and set up an unofficial one. It would still have HTTPS encryption, but its security certificate would be "self-signed", rather an being approved of by an official organisation. Rides could be advertised on the site, but they would be uninsured. If you want to find this "fake" Cyclists In Southwark website, its URL is the subdomain f.cyclistsinsouthwark.org.uk. If you go to this site, your browser will give you various warnings indicating that the site is not to be trusted and should not to be used for storing personal data. If you click on the "Advanced" button, the browser will still let you go to the site, but you will have to acknowledge that you are aware of the warnings.

If you type in the following at a Linux command line prompt:

• curl https://f.cyclistsinsouthwark.org.uk/

this is the message you get back:

• curl: (60) SSL certificate problem: self signed certificate
  More details here: https://curl.haxx.se/docs/sslcerts.html
• curl failed to verify the legitimacy of the server and therefore could not
  establish a secure connection to it. To learn more about this situation and
  how to fix it, please visit the web page mentioned above.

This was our annual chance to keep our cycling group running by doing Barry Mason’s iconic Midsummer Madness Ride. It was not as well attended as when Francis Sedgemore ran it as an LFGSS ride, but we did manage to meet our "Rule of 6" attendance target. When we met at Bar Italia in Soho just before 3.45am, there was no sign of anyone having done the 2am start Cutty Sark Gardens ride, but we did manage to do the latter sections of the traditional ride, by cycling along Oxford Street and through Regent's Park to Primrose Hill. Several people on the ride were veterans from previous editions of the ride. This included one skater, who had no difficulty in keeping up with the cyclists.

There was much more signs of life at Bar Italia than there had been in recent years. The weather was ideal with just a small amount of cloud and were were able to find places where the rising sun could be seen through or at the side of trees.

The route and some more pictures. have been posted on Strava at https://www.strava.com/activities/9305207498.

Kent: the final frontier. Our five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where hardly any Southwark Cyclist has gone before!

This was our ride for April 1st. But I won't be using Michaels Lane again, as there were only inches to spare to allow cars to pass me - a route via Fawkham Green, Ash and Hartley Bottom Road would be much safer.

On arriving at Meopham, I found that the windmill had lost its sails, but I did find another excellent café at the Meopham PYO Farm. The next port of call was the Winterdale Cheese Shop. Some of the roots suggested by Google Maps were off-road and even completely non-existent, so I gave up using maps, until I noticed that the road started to descend very sharply, which turned out to be Vigo Hill. I quickly turned back and found the right way to the cheese shop.

After all that excitement, I followed Labour In Vain Road and Terry's Lodge Road to the tranquility of the Pilgrim's Way. This took me to Otford, where I stopped for lunch. On the way back, I visited Magpie bottom to take a photograph for my collection. My Garmin recorded a 22% incline on Row Bow at one point, so it was nice to have a rest and savour the experience of looking at the Magpie Bottom sign once I got there. I then descended to Shoreham, clocking an average speed of 12mph at one point. It was then just a short ride back to Badger's Mount and Knockholt (Zone 6) where I took a train back to central London.

Nigel Bee