The first snowfall of the winter over Copenhagen. It started gently. I was in a café taking a spot of lunch and when the flakes started drifting down the bartender put on Christmas music. So very cosy. The Copenhagener above didn't seem to mind.
It started snowing more as the light faded and Copenhagners sped through it on their way home.
It started to stick in the early evening. The bike lane snowploughs hit the lanes but until there get there, you just muscle on through.
In the centre of the city the snow quickly turned to slush but snow and slush are no good excuse not to take your bike and hit the town on a Friday night.
Copenhagener looking as stylish as ever in the evening. No doubt heading off to meet friends and have a great night.
While others were heading out on the town, I was heading home, knowing all too well that sledding was on the menu for me and the kids in the morning.
9 comments:
Oh man, these pictures are gooooooorgeous!!!!!
hmm...do copenhagers change their tires to studded (or just knobbier) ones for the winter?
I say this because when the snow and ice hit here in Toronto, I wipe out without the proper tires.
thanks.
uh, no... no tyre change. we have snowploughs for the bike lanes so it's usually clear sailing. if it's icy, I slow down.
We have the same dusting of snow here in Montréal today; also melting as it will reach 4c today - ironically the snow has brought milder weather.
Well, we get a lot more snow and ice than Copenhagen does, later in the winter, although you are much, much farther north than we are.
I don't really cycle in heavy snow and icy conditions any more. Last year was very snowy, even down in Toronto and Hamilton where they usually don't get a lot through the winter. Year before that, no snow at all until past the middle of January, and very mild, so I enjoyed the wintry cycling. It is really hard to predict the weather any more; it is much wilder than before ("when I was young", she says a bit creakily)...
Great photos. I think there are towns far north of you in Sweden and Norway where people cycle in the wintertime, no?
I'm working in my home office today and have a pintade (guinea fowl) braising in the oven, and olive-oil/garlic potatoes and a squash slow roasting, so I doubt I'll even be cycling today unless I have to meet a client or run an errand. Out the window , I see quite a few cyclists still heading off to work or university. It is perfectly cyclable; the snow has melted from the roads and pavements and is just decorating roofs and our postage-stamp-sized front lawns.
As per Zakkaliciousness's comment, now several km of bicycle lanes here are being snowploughed every winter and the city is planning on gradually extending this.
santa claus is coming in town!!
Yes.... beautiful photographs!!!!
I'v never changed to knobbier tyres - it's just not necessary. One time, though, I'd bought some absolutely slick, wide tyres in the summertime, which just were no good in the snow. Tons of fun though. Biking suddenly weren't about transportation, but survival.
As a resident of Uppsala I say a big HAH to the ploughing of snow on bike lanes. HAH. It's a lovely thought - in theory.
I've all but stopped cycling in the winters, it makes me too aggressive/depressed. Having to stop every 50-100 m to lift my bike over the snow ridges left across the bike lane wherever there's a crossing (ridges that become slush ridges and then later ice ridges, all but impassable) does my head in. Not to mention enormous pools of half-melted ice, where you never know what the bottom is like and if you'll survive the crossing. Lastly of course, there is only so much I can take of sodden footwear and clothing from all the splashing. No, this is lastly - the annoyance of the snow plough creating a straight road through the snow, where there should be a curved bike lane. Not being cyclists themselves (a pox on them) they don't know what the bike lane looks like underneath the snow. So they wing it, and when the snow starts to melt two days later we have to cycle across the grass, which has become an icy swamp.
Hrmf. We still have a long way to go until we have a bike-friendly world...
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