Connected at last!

 



Berenda, one of the many LCSG Angels that helped organized the event - Pic KC

Pic Taiwoon

 



Pic URA

For the longest time, the wonderful cycle paths of the East Coast Parkway in Singapore had a most unhappy ending. One can cycle all the way from Changi Village, through the lovely East Coast Park for nearly 20km or so but it ends abruptly at Fort Road. It's like watching a beautiful movie only to experience a power failure and all the build up that takes much work to develop suddenly gets killed just like that.

Hence, I was overjoyed and very pleased to learn of the opening of this most important connector recently and yesterday, the National Parks organised a ride to celebrate this opening. My good buddy Roland invited me to tag along and I joined over 100 cyclists at the Road Safety Center that met at 8am. There was a briefing about the finer points of cycling this most magnificent part of Singapore. It was also lovely to meet many cycling friends and good to see Taiwoon, the co-founder of LCSG there all beaming and inspiring his flock.

Pic Daphne Ngo

2 rides were organised, the 8km and 14km routes and I joined the latter. It is always nice to be on my Tikit chatting with friends as we cruised together as Group 2. The connector starts by a special green bridge for cyclists that went overhead, passing Fort Road and continued along skirting the Marina Bay Golf Course. This very significant 1km + journey then led to Rhu Cross, which fringes the lovely Marina Bay "lake", and allowed us to enjoy this beautiful and famous playground of Singapore. The ride through Gardens by the Bay, Marina Bay Sands etc is truly a must do for any visitors to Singapore as it is truly breath-taking.

We did a loop passing through the Singapore Flyer and the impressive new Singapore Sports Hub and Stadium. I noticed too how crowded the waterways were with so many kayaks as well as dragon boats speeding away. We returned back to the East Coast Park once again via the Happy Connector (for a lack of a name) and was pleasantly surprised at the lovely welcome back at the Road Safety Park. Cold drinks, bananas and a much appreciated goodie bag with gifts of arm sleeves, a small bike pouch and a map of the East Coast Cycling area.

All in, it was a lovely morning well spent. Kudos to the National Parks for the wonderful job at making the Singapore cycling scene more and more vibrant and to LCSG for their tireless advocacy and support. It is indeed delightful to be able to cycle from the Singapore River all the way to Changi Village completely on the wonderful park connectors. Connected at last!