More than a few people have raised objections to the way the Mayor of London has, for the relatively modest sum of £5 million a year for 5 years, given Barclays bank the right to paint large swathes of London’s public highway in its corporate shade of blue, have its name emblazoned on street signs and plastered over the 6,000 new hire bicycles that will be hitting the streets tomorrow.
If you sign up for the bike hire scheme (for £45 a year) you’ll get a special key (costing £3) that you will use to release the bikes from their docking stations. Like the streets, the signs and the bikes, the key comes with some Barclays corporate branding. Fortunately, it is rather easy to remove – with just a scouring pad and a little elbow grease. At least you can prevent the corporate takeover of the London’s streetscape from extending into your own pocket.
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Photo: Richard Pope (Creative Commons – Attribution | Share Alike)
Lionel Birnie of Cycling Weekly shares his best moments of this year’s sensational Tour De France. Plus we look ahead to Bicycle Thieves, which combines theatre and BMXing on the streets of London, as part of the InTransit festival. Book tickets for just £4 here or by calling 0845 230 9769.
Paul de Vivie (1853-1930), who wrote as ‘Velocio’, was an early advocate of the bicycle, supposed inventor of the derailleur and the father of French cycle touring. Here are his seven commandments for the wise cyclist:
1. Keep your stops short and few.
2. Eat before you’re hungry, drink before you’re thirsty.
3. Never get too tired to eat or sleep.
4. Add a layer before you’re cold, take one off before you’re hot.
5. Lay off wine, meat and tobacco on tour.
6. Ride within yourself, especially in the first hour.
An extended, hour long edition of the show featuring French writer, poet, cyclist and cultural ambassador Paul Fournel (pictured). We stroll from the French House in Soho to the Rapha Cycle Club in Clerkenwell, to visit an exhibition of a hundred years of racing bicycles. The exhibition runs for two more weeks and is well worth a visit. Paul Fournel’s book Besoin de Vélo is one of the loveliest pieces of writing about cycling and is available in English translation as Need for the Bike. If you buy it after clicking through on the link, Resonance FM gets a few pennies. Rob Ainsley of the Real Cycling blog reports on the launch of London’s two new cycle superhighways.
On 30 July, 6,000 bicycles will be available for hire on the streets of London. Registration costs £1 a day, £5 a week or £45 a year and the bicycles are free for the first 30 minutes, then a rising scale of £1 for the first hour, £4 for the first 90 minutes, £15 up to three hours. The bicycles will be distributed across 400 docking stations. So what are the bikes like? [Read more →]
Tim Dawson joins artist Gavin Turk on the first of two rides in the East Anglian countryside. Plus a detailed look at the Mayor of London’s new cycle hire bikes, with Transport for London’s Gary McGowan, technical adviser to the special projects team.
To join the second of Gavin Turk’s rides, starting in Ipswich, on 17 July, book through Commissions East.
As part of this year’s London Festival of Architecture, Stephen Bayley leads a ride around the best of French architecture, art and design to be found on the streets of London. Stephen Bayley is the Observer’s architecture and design critic, the founding director of the Design Museum and in 1989 was a made a Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France’s top artistic honour.
If you’re interested in my drinking guide for this year’s Tour De France, it’s here.
After a week of hard drinking racing, the peloton will have earned its high altitude rest day on 12 July. The race continues with another punishing Alpine stage in which the riders must haul themselves over four different climbs culminating in the Col de la Madeleine (2000 metres above sea level) and you may want to join them in spirit by lining up four different wines from a dazzling Savoyard selection. The high altitude and dry soil of this region is only suitable for specific varieties of vine that are rarely cultivated elsewhere. So fill up while you can. Look out for Jacquère, Roussanne, Altesse and Gringet whites and Mondeuse reds. The stage finish is in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne where the iconic French Opinel brand of penknife is made. So celebrate by getting out the whetstone and introducing your blade to a few hearty Savoyard cheeses. Tome, Beaufort, Abondance and Reblochon would make a fine quartet for a dégustation fromages et vins. [Read more →]
Saturday sees the start of this year’s Tour de France, the world’s biggest annual sporting event. While the athletes will be subsisting on little but Lucozade and saline drips, we spectators can thankfully pass on such revolting fare and instead charge our bidons with the finest vintages and watch as the scintillating landscapes of La Belle France unfold before our eyes (live coverage on ITV4, I’m told). What follows is a handy guide for those who’d like to match their wines with each of the twenty stages of the three week race. [Read more →]
Yesterday I wrote a letter to Keltbray, the lorry company whose vehicle was involved in the collision with a cyclist on Borough High Street. (It was a Keltbray lorry that killed cyclist Haris Ahmed earlier in the year, on a backstreet just a few yards from where yesterday’s collision took place). [Read more →]
Not much text needed to accompany these photographs taken yesterday on the streets of Southwark and posted on the SE1 Forum.
Exhibit A: Lorry and cyclist collide on Borough High Street, junction of Dover Street. Keltbray services the Shard construction site and one of its lorries killed a London cyclist back in March, just a few yards from this spot. Note the lovely ‘guard rails’ that trapped the cyclist on her left. Photo credit: Phoney.
It’s time to blow out the candles on The Bike Show’s great big carbo-loaded birthday cake. 6 years old! To mark the occasion this week’s show features some of the more memorable moments from the first three years of experimental two wheeled art radio. Years four to six in due course.
In this mix you’ll hear from the following: Nicky Hamlyn, Sheldon Brown, Julia Lohman, Daniel Start, Navindh Baburam, Mark Ellen, Rosie Walford, Buffalo Bill, Patrick Field, Kieron Yates, Chris Bloor, Ruby Wright, Maisie Hitchcock, Chris Weaver, Richard Thomas, David Ferry, Fifi Fontanot, Michael Hutchinson, Johnny Green, Brendt Barbur, Dusty Limits, William Greswell, George Wright, Martin Newell Anna Shepherd, and a handful of other London cyclists whose names I don’t know.
Thanks to all who have contributed material for broadcast, taken part as guests on the show or submitted ideas. Special thanks to all the volunteer engineers at Resonance FM. If you enjoy the show, why not make a donation to Resonance FM, the volunteer-run radio station that is The Bike Show’s home.
With thanks as ever to the office of Jenny Jones AM here is this month’s batch of cycling questions and answers to the Mayor of London. Ian in Jenny’s office writes, “Lots of interesting answers from the Mayor. Real progress made on cycle parking at East london Line stations, as a result of questioning. Going backwards this year on greenways. Lots of good detail on the big schemes which are being launched this summer: cycle hire and superhighways. Delays in docking stations and it doesn’t look as if Barclays sponsorship funding is additional money.”
As always, reactions, analysis in the comments please.
Talking bicycle security with author and blogger Rob Ainsley and Anthony Lau, architect and designer of the excellent Cycle Hoop that cheaply converts street furniture into cycle racks. Anthony is also soon to unveil a new car-shaped bicycle storage rack (pictured, above) at the London Festival of Architecture. Rob gives his verdict on the new double-decker bicycle storage racks at Waterloo Station.
Sustrans is the sustainable transportation charity and lobby group that pioneered the national cycle network. It is also one of the country’s biggest commissioners of public art. Today’s show is devoted to one of Sustrans’s new Prospectives series, a handful of deliberately experimental projects that are more conceptual and investigative in nature than the more traditional kinds of public art you might find on the national cycle network.
Entitled Tranquility is a State of Mind, the project was conceived and led by Liminal, the duo of architect Frances Crow and sound artist and composer David Prior. They brought together clinical audiology, computational neuroscience and acoustics in a quest to understand more about the relationship between our sonic environment and personal wellbeing.
This week, a guest production by Stuart Watt. Life’s race from childhood to old age, as told by those who live it on two wheels. Original music by Chris Annetts. If you’d like to contribute material to The Bike Show, please get in touch bikeshow@resonancefm.com
As the Giro d’Italia enters its third week, we discuss Italy’s great stage race with Lionel Birnie of Cycling Weekly, in an experimental live broadcast from Look Mum No Hands, London’s newest and best cycle-cafe. Sam Humpheson shows us around the premises. The show also features a look back at Fausto Coppi, one of the biggest stars of the golden era of cycle racing, with a visit to the exhibition of Coppi-related memorabilia at the Rapha Cycle Club, just down the road and a chat with bicycle collector Kadir Guirey. Simon Rose, who put together Rapha’s new Giro-inspired compilation CD also puts in an appearance.
Listeners may notice slightly sub-optimal audio in parts of this broadcast. These should be fixed in future live broadcasts.
A long, hard look at the Mayor of London’s plans for 12 cycle superhighways – bike routes from the outer boroughs along London’s main arterial roads. With Kulveer Ranger, Boris Johnson’s top transport adviser, Rob Ainsley of the Real Cycling blog, and Charlie Lloyd of the London Cycling Campaign.
. If you buy it after clicking through on the link, Resonance FM gets a few pennies. Rob Ainsley of the 
