The Bike Show

When Prince sings about the most beautiful girl in the world, we know he’s not telling us she’s the most beautiful girl in the world, rather that she’s the most beautiful girl in the world to him.
In 1994 or thereabouts, when I moved back to London after university, I bought a bike from a second-hand [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

 

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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 [...]

 

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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 [...]

 

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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 [...]

 

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Can London ever be as good a cycling city as Berlin? Helen Pidd of the Guardian and Matt Tempest give their views. Artist Mila Lipowicz talks about East London Local(Eyes): an interactive video installation that recreates the feeling of riding a bike around East London. Katy Hallett of Sustrans on commissioning public art for the [...]

 

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David Kitchen, aka Velocio, set up the London Fixed Gear and Single Speed Forum almost three years ago. In a short time it has spawned an active and inventive cycling community and in the process the forum has grown to become the world’s eleventh most visited cycling website. David talks about the success of the [...]

 

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The Bike Show moves into advocacy mode this week with guest in the studio Debra Rolfe, Campaigns Director of the Cyclists’ Touring Club (CTC), Britain’s largest cycling organisation with 60,000+ members. Debra is spearheading the CTC’s new campaign against bad driving by motorists called Stop SMIDSY. The aim is to draw attention to the dangers [...]

 

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Boris Johnson is London’s first cycling Mayor and he has put a ‘cycling revolution’ at the heart of his programme of government. As well as the Cycle Hire Scheme, Mayor Johnson has announced plans for what he has dubbed ‘cycle superhighways’. There will be twelve superhighways, each offering “safe, fast, direct routes to central London [...]

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Riding with Amy Fleuriot, a young British fashion designer who’s Cyclodelic range of clothing and accessories is offering women a more stylish alternative to the typically drab clothing sold to cyclists. This is the final show in the current season. Thanks for listening!

 

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For long-distance cycling they’re a must and they’ll improve the look of any bicycle. Brooks leather saddles date back to the 1870s and are still made in Birmingham where they were first invented. Steve Green of Brooks talks about the history and the craft of the most venerable and most comfortable bicycle saddle there is. [...]

 

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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 [...]

 

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

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Riding the Northumberland coast from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Newcastle-upon-Tyne with Daniel Start, author of the best-selling Wild Swimming, a guide to natural swimming spots in Britain. Wild Swimming Coast (the salt-water version) will be published in the late spring. To enter the competition to win a signed copy, send an email detailing your favourite wild swimming [...]

 

 26 January 2009: Cycling the Northumberland Coast [29:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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The latest on moves by the London Assembly to reduce the dangers posed by lorries to cyclists. Plus an extended talk by Andrew Ritchey, inventor of the Brompton, the folding miracle that is the toast of London’s bicycle-train commuters. The talk was given over the summer at the iFest 08 in Barcelona. It tells the [...]

 

 20 October 2008: The invention of the perfect folding bicycle [29:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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The concluding episode of a two-part feature on the story of Dr Alex Moulton and the reinvention of the bicycle. We pick up the story with the launch of the Moulton space frame design (pictured left) in the early eighties. Featuring interviews with eaturing interviews with Dr Alex Moulton, Shaun Moulton, Tony Hadland, Michael Woolf, [...]

 

 The Moulton Story (part two) [29:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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The first of a two-parter telling the story of Moulton bicycles: the radical reinvention of the bicycle by Dr Alex Moulton that, despite some commercial setbacks along the way, continues to push the boundaries of cutting edge engineering. Moultons have been feted by architects and designers, won races and broken speed records, and are taken [...]

 

 The Moulton Story (part one) [29:45m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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The Bicycle Film Festival comes to London from 1-5 October. Laura Fletcher is the BFF’s London ambassador and she previews a handful of highlights from the seven screenings at the Barbican Cinema plus all the parties, art shows, polo matches and roller-racing that make the Festival a veritable jamboree of bicycle culture. Plus a very [...]

 

 Podcast-only special: Bicycle Film Festival comes to town [22:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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On this week’s show we ask whether the bicycle and cycling are inherently left-wing or right-wing. Featuring Ruth Beale and Karen Breneman, two artists who recently rode together from London to the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home in Liverpool in search of cycling’s socialist and non-conformist past, present and future. [...]

 

 4 August 2008: Cycling, politics and ideology [30:13m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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