Car park gull family are on their bikes

The birds have flown. The family of herring gulls who set up home on the upper floor of Ashford’s Edinburgh Road car park a few months back have now moved on.

The young gull that hatched from a nest created by his parents among the parking bays on the car park’s top floor must now be flying.

KE news editor Alastair Irvine, who has been keeping a close eye on the birds during the summer, visited the car park at the end of last week and found no sign of the feathered family, the nest or the bollards and warning signs erected to protect them.

The parents set up home in the car park back in May.

This led to Ashford Borough Council, which owns the car park, cordoning off a block of car parking spaces and erecting warning signs for motorists not to disturb the nesting herring gulls, which are a protected species.

The parents then guarded the nest and became very agitated when any pedestrians went anywhere near it.

In June one baby gull hatched from the nest.

Alastair said: “It’s good that the baby survived in what was a fairly precarious and open position.”

So, the wonderful Team GB returned home this week from Rio with a suitcase full of medals. And as they attempt to get back to some kind of normality after the highs of the Games, so do the rest of us, as we grapple with Olympic withdrawal syndrome, wondering how we are going to cope without Clare Balding, Chris Hoy, Michael Johnson etc sitting in our living rooms every evening.

And what about some of those weird sports we’ve been watching? Half the country doesn’t have a clue how they score in taekwondo or judo.

And cycling ... well, what a lot of strange events the likes of Laura Trott and Jason Kenny (gold bless them!) take part in.

Members of the Nuts and Bolts team still don’t have a clue what the five race omnium is all about.

In the final women’s omnium race they watched baffled as Laura Trott cycled to Olympic gold in the points race.

One said: “There was a bunch of cyclists who were all jumbled up, then one would go up the banking, then there was a sprint and some were overtaken and some surged forward.

“And then there was a man by the side of the track on the finish line pointing his finger at the rider who was in the lead.

“It was like some mad children’s sports day event where the competitors all seemed to know what was what but the spectators were just mesmerised by a ball of colours and riders. Bizarre!”

But our favourite was the keirin race where the cyclists sprint for victory after following a speed-controlled start behind a motorised or non-motorised pacer for several laps.

This derny, as it is known, is a kind of electric motorbike that gradually speeds up before leaving the track – and that’s when the real race begins.

Apparently the keirin was developed in Japan around 1948 for gambling purposes and became an official event at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia.

And then we had what we’ve called ‘the cat and mouse race’ where two riders do a couple of laps, with the one in front looking over their shoulder as the other rider teases them as to when they will make their move to surge past. Then the two race hell-for-leather for the finish line.

So where does cycling go from here?

Maybe in Tokyo in 2020 there will be some blindfold races, cycling round the track the other way races (just for a change) and the one we’d like to see most – a no-bicycle, derny-only race (preferably blindfold, too)!