Quick - get on that bike, there's a tube strike

With the tube strike due to hit London at 5pm today, surely now's as good a moment as any to dust off that bike you've been keeping at the back of the shed, check the tyres and brakes, and get going - perhaps tomorrow morning would be best.

There's a timely link on the cycle site road.cc advising anyone who hasn't ridden in London before to check the site cyclestreets.net to see a likely route. It rather cunningly lets you plug in your start and finish locations, then gives you three options - fast, medium and most quiet.

Slightly oddly, the Transport for London journey planner site also does a cycle route option. It's a bit fiddly and you have check and uncheck various options, but you do get a decent route at the end of it.

I've been trying the Sustrans site but I can't for the life of me get it to do a route "from" and "to" somewhere.

Anyway, if you are thinking of riding tonight or tomorrow and feel a bit nervous - good luck. Most of the time it's fun. Try not to get intimidated by cars and motorbikes, use common sense don't try to to be too "nippy" and fancy ... go gently, with the flow.

Where do cycling accidents actually happen?

This is a depressing post I'm afraid - but my attention was drawn to this map on a site called City Beast. Many of you may know about it already. But it logs all the fatalities and serious accidents which have happened in recent years, and shows the roads where most collisions have taken place.

I wasn't too surprised to discover that Theobold's Road, which I've blogged about quite a lot, is one of the most dangerous.

If you dare, have a look. And then avoid half the roads in London!

How to tackle a new route on your bike

Today I had to go to a different venue for my work - Millbank to be precise. Here's what I think you're supposed to do when you are going somewhere different on your bike:

1. Study route the night before
2. programme route into iPhone, and place iPhone in handy iPhone strap-on device on handle-bars
3. If you don't have an iPhone, print off map
4. stop every now and then to look at by now crinkly map
5. Go back to old fashioned techniques - ask people where to go

Being me, here's what I did:

1. Hurriedly check address as I try to leave house, failing to print map
2. Go on normal commute route, hoping I'll recognise a few landmarks
3. Get lost around Trafalgar Square
4. Suddenly spot Big Ben
5. Find venue just in time.

I suspect that many people are more organised ... but is a cool iPhone the only answer?