The Bike Show

The Dunwich Dynamo is the greatest London cycle event, bar none. A free, turn-up-and-go night right to the Suffolk Coast. Just long enough to feel like a real achievement, but well within the reach of an averagely fit day-to-day cyclist. The Bike Show has featured DD16 and DD12 but this year, coverage is going to be a novel experiment in what Nathan Barley would probably refer to as “self-facilitating, crowd-sourced audio mashup”. But don’t let that put you off.

If you’re riding this year’s Dunwich Dynamo and you have an iPhone, then I hope you’ll take part in the experiment. Here’s how it works. audioBoo is a really nice free application (made by a London-based company) that allows you to record snippets of audio, up to three minutes in duration, and post them to the web. Audio blogging if you like. It’s incredibly easy to use and the sound quality from the iPhone’s internal microphone isn’t bad at all. You just need to sign up for a free audioBoo account and download the free app from the iPhone app store. Then you’re ready to go.

What I want you to do is to record moments from the night - before the start, during the ride, at the half-way stop, at the end, on the beach, in the cafe having breakfast… on the coach (or ride!) back, in the bath at home… wherever. Record anything you like. The ambiance, your own reflections, a short interview with a friend or stranger. Add the tag DD17 and all the snippets will be aggregated into a big pool of sound, a unique record of a unique night. If enough people do it, it should be possible to produce a feature on the radio show made up of everyone’s recordings. Simple as that. Any questions, hit the comments below…

In an extended podcast edition of this week’s show, the journey from London to Bristol continues along the Ridgeway (pictured, left) to Avebury, one of the largest prehistoric stone circles in Europe. After a night by Lacock Abbey the route follows the Avon to Bath and the old railway track to Bristol. Featuring David Evans of the Highway Cycling Group, wild swimming author Daniel Start, Bristolian cyclists Mike McBeth and Matthew Symonds and Peter Lipman, Policy Director at Sustrans.

Photo credit: David Evans

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 Standard Podcast [51:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Part one of a ride from London to Bristol, in which presenter Jack Thurston is guided by listeners to the show. First stop is St Giles’ Church in Stoke Poges, home to the ‘bicycle window’ (pictured behind Jack and Denis Hartley, the Verger of the Church). One element of the window dates from 1642 and said to be the earliest ever depiction of a velocipede. The route passes through Willesden, Stoke Poges, Cookham, Henley-on-Thames before ascending the Berkshire Downs. Tune in next week for part two.

Photo credit: Michael Dunne

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 Standard Podcast [29:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A report on No Bike Week, in which a handful of courageous cyclists agree to abstain from two wheels for seven days. Find out what happened. And to read how the No Bike Week meme is evolving into something more akin to a direct action protest, check out No Cycle Day over at Crap Walking and Cycling in Waltham Forest and National Bring Your Car to Work Day at City Cycling.

Plus win a Cycle Film DVD of reconnaisance on this year’s Etape du Tour. And don’t forget to complete the Listener Survey.

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 Standard Podcast [29:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We all love films about cycling, almost as much as radio programmes about cycling. The fabulous and unsurpassed Bicycle Film Festival comes to London but once a year and it’s a long summer before Brendt Barbur arrives from New York with his battered leather suitcase bursting with the latest in bicycle celluloid action. In the meantime, why not come down to the Southwark Cyclists Film Festival on Monday 15th June at the Shortwave, the new ’boutique’ cinema at Bermondsey Square. It promises to be a great evening, not least because I’ve helped to choose the films. [Read more →]

The Bike Show emerges from its late spring hibernation into the bright sunlight of the summer season. This week’s show features a ride south from the Resonance FM studio to the southern limit of the station’s 5km FM broadcast signal at the Herne Hill Velodrome. With guests James Wilson, lecturer in radio at Glasgow Metropolitan College and Ed Baxter, programming director of Resonance FM.

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Photo credit: Ben McCloud / Flickr / Creative Commons

 

 The Bike Show: Radiocycle (1 June 2009) [29:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Bike Show is a London show, broadcast on Resonance FM, a London station. And despite the exhortations of the show’s worldwide podcast audience, we mostly cover things that are going on in this fair city. However, it has recently come to my attention that the UK’s numero uno cycling city is reputed not to be the nation’s capital, but its smaller west country cousin, Bristol. And believe it or not, I have never actually set foot in Bristol (its two railway stations excepted). So I thought it was about time I did pay a visit to find out about some of the bikey things going down in B-Town, as I have been told it is known to the cognoscenti.

So, I’ll be cycling from London to Bristol on the long weekend of the 29-31 May 2009. And I’d like to extend an invitation to all Bike Show listeners who live anywhere in between to join me for a segment and show me a few things of local interest. As it stands, the route is going to take in Stoke Poges (in search of a notable historical artifact), a night near the bare mountain of Silbury Hill, and a roll along the the byways of North Wiltshire, where I look forward to being guided by the Highway Cycling Group. That leaves quite a few gaps to be filled.

If you’d like to show me your patch, then please get in touch via email: bikeshow at resonancefm dot com.

The Bike Show may be off air, but come with us on a trip to Belgium, home of the Flemish hard men and De Ronde van Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders). Along the way I get a surprise tour of the legendary showers at the Roubaix velodrome (pictured left).

Don’t forget to take The Bike Show’s Listener Survey.

Photo credit: Garmin Slipstream

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 Podcast only: Spring Classics Special Edition [41:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It’s the end of the road for The Bike Show. Find out why in this special podcast only final edition featuring many Bike Show favourites including Buffalo Bill, editor of Moving Target, cycle sport correspondent William Greswell, London bike messenger Nhatt Attack, Barry Mason of Southwark Cyclists, and Joe and Wes from the London Bicycle Repair Company.

Please note that this special episode was broadcast on 1 April and is what is known, in France, as Un Poisson D’Avril.

 

 The Bike Show: 1 April 2009 - Special Podcast Edition [17:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

[Read more →]

In the last of the current season we drop in on a police bicycle auction to pick up a bargain. Plus a bike pop epic from the Grave Architects (pictured above) and we hear from Jo Upton, presenter of Bike Love, a bicycling radio show in Sydney, Australia.

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 End of season finale: A bike pop epic [31:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Rás Tailteann is an 8 day stage race in the Republic of Ireland held each May since 1953. A particularly gruelling race, some say it is Ireland’s ‘Tour de France’ and it is a much cherished tradition, far more so than the Tour of Ireland. John Herety, Directeur Sportif of the Rapha-Condor road racing team and formerly DS of Recycling.co.uk talks about the modern Rás. We also tell the story of possibly the greatest legend of the Rás: ‘Iron Man’ Mick Murphy, the blood-drinking, fire-eating hard man who won the 1958 race in quite extraordinary circumstances. Peter Woods is a documentary-maker at RTÉ and tracked down Murphy (pictured above, at his home-made stone gym) and tells the story of one of sport’s living legends. Woods’s 40 minute documentary is compulsory listening. You can find it on the RTÉ website. Photo credit: Kieran Murray.

 

 Legends of the Rás [29:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

No Bike Week will soon be upon us. It is an experiment in asceticism and an attempt to subvert the tired notions of government-sanctioned “Bike Weeks” that take place from time to time.

Here’s how it works. You - a regular cyclist - vow not to ride a bicycle, tricycle, unicycle or other pedal-powered mechanical contrivance from 23.59 on Sunday 8th March for seven full days and nights. You may ride again from 00.01 on Monday 16 March. During this period, which you might like to think of as a “bikefast”, you will keep a record of how you manage to get around, how you’re feeling, what’s going through your mind from one day to the next. Your expectations, frustrations, unexpected pleasures, unbearable torments…. whatever they may be. The best way to do this is using a voice memo function on a mobile phone, or other recording device. Failing that, a pen and paper will do. The results will be compiled into a No Bike Week feature on The Bike Show.

I am inviting all those taking part to be my guest for a Last Supper Carnival on Sunday evening, 8 March, somewhere in central London, quite possibly at my house. If you don’t live in London or even in the UK, you can still take part. We will find a way to connect with you. If you’d like to join the brave souls who have already agreed to take part, please get in touch by email bikeshow@resonancefm.com.

The Ride Journal was launched last year to widespread acclaim. Issue two is at the printers. Philip and Andrew Diprose, editor and art director, explain how they came to start a journal of personal stories about how bikes have changed people’s lives.

Among the articles in Issue 2 of The Ride Journal is Rediscovered by Rona Sutherland and is read by Ruby Wright. Ruby presents a fortnightly music podcast on Radio Nowhere called Ruby’s Chicky Boil-Ups. It’s great!. And if you want to read the article on the Highway Cycling Group from Issue 1, it’s here.

We also spotlight the new issue of Rouleur, the quarterly magazine from the Rapha stable, including an extract from Jean Bobet’s Tomorrow We Ride, translated by Adam Berry and read by Jean-Marie Orhan. To win a copy of issue 12 of Rouleur, send the correct answer to the question by email to bikeshow@resonancefm.com.

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 2 March 2009: The best in cycling writing [30:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

London’s cyclists have plenty to contend with whether it’s deadly lorries and trucks, bendy-buses, white van man or suicidal pedestrians stepping out without looking. But now there is a violent cyclist-hating rollerskating monkey impersonator on the loose on our city streets. MovingTarget has the full story and the London Fixed Gear and Single Speed Forum has more, and it looks serious (well, serious and faintly amusing, if that’s possible).

Chandra, a London bicycle messenger, was assaulted earlier this week in Holborn. She recounts:

I saw him get close to a cyclist up front but couldn’t see what happened, then he headed straight for me. He threw a punch but it didn’t land straight, grazed my side more. I didn’t come off my bike or anything. Then I got really really angry and without quite thinking turned straight round and followed him onto Theobalds. I grabbed his shoulder from behind and then he swung round and hit me on the elbow…

Buffalo Bill, editor of Moving Target has taken up the matter with urbanMONKEYS (a group that represents London’s monkeys) and received this response:

[This is] the first i’ve heard of it. This is crazy. I’ve never heard anything like this before. Most monkeys I know, and I know most of them, are decent monkeys who work as or know couriers themselves. Whoever this lunatic is, I can promise you that he’ll get a serious hiding from the other monkeys if he’s caught. I seriously hope the people involved don’t hold this monkey’s actions against the rest of us and that no one is hurt further by his reckless behaviour.

Speaking for London’s bike messengers (and other cyclists), Bill offers some reassurance, “I seriously doubt that any London messenger (or any other cyclist) would hold the rest of the monkey community for this idiot’s behaviour.”

Well that’s good then. For now, dear listeners, my advice is steer clear of the monkey.

Bicycle polo. It’s the latest sensation that’s sweeping the nation. After an account of bicycle polo played with Hungarian counts in 1934 from Patrick Leigh Fermour’s classic Between the Woods and the Water, we travel to De Beauvoir Town to find out how the game is being played in 2009. The European Hard Court Bicycle Polo Championships will be held in London this August. For more on where to play, there are lots of listings here.

No Bike Week - what happens to a cyclist when he or she can’t ride for a week? Let’s find out. More details soon. It’s likely that No Bike Week will take place at some point between now and Easter 2009. Expresssions of interest to bikeshow@resonancefm.com

Picture credit: Roxy Erickson.

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 23 February 2009: Bicycle Polo and No Bike Week [29:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

With the UK mired deep in recession, unemployment on the rise, the value of the pound going down and consumer confidence at an all time low, we ask what effect this is having on the cycling business. We hear from the owners of two of London’s new breed of bicycle boutiques (Tour de Ville and Bobbin Bicycles), from bike messenger Nhatt Attack, who has swapped her bike for a Christiania tricycle and is delivering flowers, from Carlton Reid, cycling journalist and Executive Editor of bike industry magazine BikeBiz.com and from BikeSnobNYC who adds his two pennies from New York.

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 16 February 2009: Cycling and the recession [29:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Yes, it’s true. The Bike Show is mostly communicating by Twitter. Apart from being on the radio once a week, of course. @thebikeshow

Are you finding ways to use Twitter to add to your bicycling fun? Please tell! I’m finding it really good for finding out when Ivan Basso is going to bed and which of Lance Armstrong’s bikes has just been stolen. There must be more…

An accident of geography means that, official speaking, I’m a Lambeth Cyclist but I’m a Southwark Cyclist at heart, not least because of the dynamic Barry Mason, the quirky Rob Ainsley, the luminous Rebecca Lack and the feisty Ann Warren. I can even see the Southwark-Lambeth ‘county line’ from my doorstep. So I was delighted to be invited to attend their monthly meeting last night at which Transport for London’s project manager for London’s ‘Velib style’ cycle hire scheme gave a talk and answered questions. [Read more →]

This week’s show features Dave Brailsford, Performance Director of British Cycling, explaining how his team achieved a record medal haul at the Beijing Olympics. We also discover that Shanaze Reade (pictured left, racing in the team sprint with Victoria Pendleton) has never heard of fixed gear freestyling despite being a world champion cyclist in both BMX and track racing. Someone who is all too familiar with the fixed wheel phenomenon is BikeSnob NYC, who regularly wins gold medals for “systematically and mercilessly disassembling, flushing, greasing, and re-packing the cycling culture”. Over a few ales, the BikeSnob offers his reflections on 2008 and his hopes and fears for the coming year. We talk penny farthings, the Opinionated Cyclist and how to survive the New York winter on two wheels.

Photo credit: knackeredhack

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 9 February 2009: British Cycling // BikeSnobNYC [29:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download