The Royal United Hospital in Bath was the centre of my world for this shift. 12 of the 16 calls I completed were either picked up from, or delivered to the RUH. In fact I was there so often, I am now on first name terms with one of the chaps in the pathology laboratory. His name is Matt and he’s a nice guy.

Apart from the RUH, I visited the 3 main hospitals in Bristol – Frenchay, Southmead and the BRI, and also the smaller community hospitals in Frome, Chippenham, Trowbridge and Paulton over the weekend. I also went to the Mineral hospital in Bath 3 times, which meant I had to ride through the centre of Bath very carefully to get there. The route to the Min takes you through some very busy shopping streets, where people tend to forget that there might be traffic coming. You have to ride through the streets very slowly & carefully as a lot of people just walk across the road without looking. Next time you’re shopping in the centre of Bath, make sure you look before you cross – you’ll be safer and you might see the Flying Crane go by!

I rode a total of 347 miles during this shift around various hospitals, nursing homes and health centres, and by far the friendliest place I visited was the Maternity ward at Frome hospital. I went over there to pick up some blood samples that needed to go to the RUH pathology lab urgently. When I walked in the nurse said “Thank you so much for coming, we don’t know what we’d do without the Freewheelers” It’s always nice to be appreciated, and feedback like this shows how important the Flying Crane’s work really is. I don’t know whether it was a mother or a baby that needed the tests done, but either way it was important and the Flying Crane helped to get the job done.

The odometer (mileage counter) on the Flying Crane showed that it has done 40,566 miles when I picked it up at the beginning of my shift. I know from checking previous FC blogs that it was given to the Freewheelers on the 1st of July 2010 (about 6 months before I became a Freewheeler), so it has covered about 2,700 miles every month from new. That’s a lot. Some bikes don’t do 2,700 miles in a year!

The internet tells me that the circumference of the earth is about 25,000 miles at the equator, so the total mileage the Flying Crane has covered so far is the same as riding round the world 1.6 times. Like I said that’s a lot, and the Flying Crane is still going strong which is very impressive considering it has been in almost continuous service for well over a year. Those clever engineers at the Bavarian Motor Works certainly know how to build a bike, which is just as well as the Freewheelers bikes very rarely get a rest.

It was very windy at times during my shift and this can make riding tricky, especially if the wind hits you from the side from between 2 buildings. All of a sudden you’re blown sideways, and it can catch you out if you’re not careful. You have to make sure you are not riding too close to any parked cars, or you might get blown in to them. If you are riding past a row of houses and the wind hits you from between each one, it looks like you are weaving from side to side as you go down the road. It can feel a little odd too – almost as if a giant hand is pushing you from side to side as you are going along!

Miles ridden                                                                   347
Calls completed                                                           16
Visits to RUH path lab                                                  11
Pedestrians startled near the Mineral hospital        3

Nick Archer