It’s the flooding season, and riding a bike anywhere – on main roads or on quiet cycle paths – has become a game of dare. What do you do when water engulfs the road? Ride through it? Or get off and push around it? Whatever you choose, cycling and floods can be a lose-lose proposition. Riding through is my usual choice but it’s a risky one. Who knows how deep a pothole or what debris may lie in wait? Usually it’s fine and you can ford quite deep-flooded stretches without getting your feet too wet. And if you go slowly enough, you won’t get too hurt even if you do lose your front wheel in a crevice. Whether you boldly ride through or sensibly bypass, there is no accounting for others on the road. Cars and particularly buses create a huge wash on flooded roads and many’s the time I’ve watched a lumbering bus send huge bow-waves my way as it passes. Mostly motorists can see the risk and slow down, but others either don’t see it or don’t care and race through deep kerbside puddles drenching cyclists and pedestrians alike. As a frequent buggy-pusher on the pavements, and as a careful rider with a toddler in the rear seat, it really does get stressful trying to time your passing of a deep puddle. I now know to my cost that two seconds too late could mean a thorough drenching with ice-cold, gritty roadwater, so beware.

Soon, the icy season will be upon us. Nothing beats riding along empty roads when everywhere is snowed up and freezing. You can get a taste of that intrepid polar-explorer feeling right here in the heart of the city, plus bask in the smug knowledge that biking means you can still get anywhere. The gritters and occasional buses tend to keep most of Oxford’s main roads passable, and roads that are normally snarled with cars are lightly trafficked as motorists around the county are snowed in and can’t get into the city.

Watch out for non-gritted cycle paths. Despite some hugely popular petitions, the highways authorities remain reluctant to grit even the busiest routes such as the Marston Ferry cycle path, used by hundreds of children going to the Cherwell School, not to mention thousands of adult commuters. My fingers are crossed that the university will this year grit the university-owned path across the flood meadow from Marston to the science area. Following the floods and the freeze, the thaw will reveal roads that are a patchwork quilt of potholes. Potholes damage cars but are especially dangerous for cyclists.

I was glad to see that the CTC (the national cycling charity) has received a £30,000 Whitehall grant to expand its Fill-That-Hole app. It currently works only on IOS but the grant will mean they can produce an Android version too. It allows you to photograph the pothole, locate it on a map and describe its location. The council responded within days after I reported a few, so get reporting.