AN ESSENTIAL ingredient of proper mountain biking is, er, a mountain, or at least a slight slope. Sadly for Brentwood Council, its patch is too flat for serious bikers, and so the search goes on for a venue vertical enough to stage the 2012 Olympic mountain biking event. The MJ (Feb 7) says that when inspectors from the International Cycling Federation rolled up in their Lycra to check out the proposed site, they decided it lacked sufficient steepness and said an alternative had to be found. Making a mountain out of a molehill is harder than it looks.
In Health Service Journal (Feb 7) mountain bikes are riding to the rescue of society’s ills. At a conference on sustainability and the health service, it was suggested that handing out NHS-branded bikes could help people to get fit and contribute towards tackling climate change. Delegates heard that the health service could, with the right business partners, dish out bikes for £50 – cheaper than putting a patient on cholesterol-busting drugs. The conference marked a serious attempt to get the NHS to take a lead against global warming. Apparently 6 per cent of UK road journeys relate to NHS business – not healthy.
Anyone who remains reluctant to ingest the healthy life-style message that the NHS is keen to promote should turn to Times Higher Education (Feb 7), which carries yet more evidence of the benefits of exercise. Researchers have found that people who keep fit appear biologically younger than do couch potatoes. It’s all down to your telomeres, apparently, which, as everyone knows, cap the end of chromosomes in our cells, protecting them from harm. After that, it all gets a bit complicated but the gist is that if you get on your NHS-branded bike and pedal like crazy you will look forever young, while sofa-sitters will wrinkle like a prune.
Badger news, next, and an item in Inside Housing (Feb 1) indicating that “sustainable communities” apply equally to the stripy little chaps as to humans. It emerged during construction of a new eco-village that badgers like to sleep on one side of the site and eat on the other. The answer? A specially built badger highway, allowing them to sleep and eat undisturbed.
Not sure what the Chinese is for “badger corridor” but the children of St Paul’s school in Manchester may be able to help. Children & Young People Now (Feb 6) says that the school is one of the first primaries in the UK to offer Chinese lessons as part of the curriculum. The rather wonderfully named Confucius Institute at Manchester University is lending a hand.