The Bike Show

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 [...]

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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 [...]

 

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Tim Dawson, cycling columnist for the Sunday Times, runs the Cycling Books website, the most compendious review website for cycling books. He joins me in the studio to discuss the literature of cycling, from Tour de France to cycle touring. Paul Fournel reads another extract from Need for the Bike. Below is a list of [...]

 

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Copenhagen is widely regarded as the world’s most cycle-friendly city. I ask Copenhagen’s Mayor Klaus Bondam what advice he gives to other city leaders in how to emulate the Danish capital. Multitalented musician, songwriter and cartoonist Peter Blegvad reads Alfred Jarry’s proto-absurdist short story “The Crucifixion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race”. Jarry (pictured, above) [...]

 

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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 [...]

 

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

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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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On this week’s show I promised some documentary evidence of my cycle tour in France last month. Well here it is. All filmed on a cheap and cheerful Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX07 compact digital camera with a video mode, so please excuse some less than perfect audio quality.
Part one:

Part two:

My route took me from Biarritz on [...]

 Summer antics: Cycle Camping in France [12:33m]: Download

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Looking back at this year’s Tour De France, with Guy Andrews, editor of Rouleur magazine and author and broadcaster Graeme Fife. As well as discussing the racing, we go into what it means for a small towns when it plays host to a stage of Le Tour de France. You can listen to an hour-long [...]

 

 28 July 2008: Looking back at Le Tour [29:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Celebrating Bastille Day and the first week of Le Tour De France plus a discussion of civilised streets with Louise Duggan, streets advisor at the UK’s Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE). Just six days until this year’s Dunwich Dynamo….
Play on links below. Other file formats (e.g. Ogg Vorbis) over here.

 

 The Bike Show: 14 July 2008: Vive Le Tour // London Street Design [29:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Kieron Yates and Matt Tempest report from Paris on the Vélib bike hire system that has brough 20,000 bicycles to the streets and transformed the French capital overnight into a cycling metropolis. Can it work in London?
MP3 | Other file formats (e.g. Ogg Vorbis)
Photo by Deep Blue

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In a special Valentine’s Day edition, sultry Southwark Cyclist Miss Alex Crawford explains why cycling is so good for flirting while love goddess Venus Kamura tells of the fifth annual Reclaim Love ‘happening’ on Saturday 16 February at the Eros Statue on Piccadilly Circus. Over the past few days, all across the bicycling world, there [...]

 

 11 February 2007: Love [29:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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The Bike Show this week has a distinctly Mediterranean and gastronomic feel. Kieron Yates reports from northern Italy, the world capital of the Slow Food movement, on a ’slow bicycle’ ride along the length of the River Po (for more on ABICI bikes, look here) Meanwhile, Jack Thurston is joined by William Greswell in the [...]

 

 The Bike Show: 'Slow Bicycling' in Italy; on two wheels in Provence [30:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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In this week’s show we hear from Patrick Field about how to survive the grueling Paris-Brest-Paris: by riding a recumbent. Also a look at the blossoming world of bicycle radio and podcasting and a look ahead to the best in cyclosportives in 2007.
Links:
Bikescape podcast from San Francisco.
Rapha’s ‘Culture Clash’ Roller Race at Shoreditch Town [...]

 

 Cyclosportives, bicycle podcasting and Budapest: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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First run in 1891 as a race designed to demonstrate the practicality of the bicycle, Paris Brest Paris has since become a four yearly event that attracts long distance cyclists from around the world. This year is a Paris Brest Paris year and Kieron Yates – this week standing in for Jack Thurston – talks [...]

 

 Going the Distance and the Physics of the Bicycle: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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This week’s show is a Tour De France special recorded at the Charles Lamb pub in north London. The Charles Lamb is one of the few places in London that is showing Le Tour this year. I am joined by Therese Bjorn, a former European Bicycle Messenger Champion and Matt Seaton, cycling correspondent at The [...]

 

 Le Tour down le pub: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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The Bike Show returns after a winter break to the news that the Grand Depart of the 2007 Tour De France will be in London!!
Featuring the formal presentation by ASO’s Jean-Marie Leblanc and a press conference by London Mayor Ken Livingstone.
Also in the show is Kieron Yates’s impressionistic and thoughtful account of a winter [...]

 

 13 February 2006: Tour De France in London in 2007!: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Spotlight on a classic 1965 film about the Tour De France “Pour Un Maillot Jaune” (dir. Claude Lelouch). Guest in the studio is William Greswell.
MP3

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As we enter the final week of Le Tour De France 2005, I am joined in the studio by Bike Show regular William Greswell. Interviews with Guy Andrews, editor of Road Cycling UK and Rouleur magazine. Also talking with Kent Benson who is watching roadside in the Alps. Kent runs If Hannibal Had, organising cycling [...]

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Special on-location feature on the 2005 Paris-Roubaix classic race (L’Enfer du Nord) with William Greswell. Look ahead to this month’s 11th birthday of London’s Critical Mass bike ride.
MP3
Track list:
Cars – Desperate Bicycles
Coeur Vagabond – unknown accordionist
Triplets of Belleville – The Triplets of Belleville
Rockin’ Bicycle – Fats Domino

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In the studio is Johnny Green, former road manager of the Clash, talking about his other passion in life, Le Tour De France. In his new book ‘Push Yourself Just a Little Bit More’, Green gives a vivid and at times hilarious account of life backstage at Le Tour in 2003 and 2004 and finds [...]

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