The Bike Show

Following on from last week’s show on well-being, we look at the importance of getting a good fit between rider and machine. Scherritt Knoesen of The Bike Whisperer, is a leading London-based bike fitter. We talk geometry, contact points and pedaling action. Read Grant Peterson’sPetersen’s article The Shoes Ruse on the folly of clip-in pedals [...]

 

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It’s the tenth day of Christmas and this week’s show is like a Christmas stocking with bulges in all the right places. Dr Steve Fabes is about to set off on a four and a half year cycle ride around the world, crossing six continents. He talks about his route, preparations and apprehensions. Any lover [...]

 

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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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The cycle camping tour continues into the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, through Vermont and into Massachusetts. Struggles with thunderstorms and flying insects and a visit to the Crane paper mill where US dollar bills are made. Picture above shows the view back down the road from the summit of Whiteface Mountain.
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The first of two features on a north American cycle tour undertaken over the summer. Starting in cycle-friendly Montreal and Quebec’s routes vertes and camping on the shores of Lake Champlain, this episode ends with a mildly disturbing encounter with an over-talkative former NYPD officer and child abuse investigator.
Plus more from Paul Fournel’s [...]

 

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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 [...]

 

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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 [...]

 

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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 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 [...]

 

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 Grant Peterson on overnight trips and a visit to London's 'anti-bike shop' [31:12m]: 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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Remembering Ian Hibell, the world’s most accomplished and intrepid long-distance cyclist and adventurer, who was run down and killed on a road in Greece last month, aged 74. He’d been on a ‘training ride’ which began in Hull (England) in preparation for his next trip to Nepal and Tibet. Nic Henderson talks about his friend [...]

 

 8 September 2008: Ian Hibell - Paying respect to a legend [29:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Alastair Humphreys has cycled round the world ‘the hard way’: four years, sixty countries and forty-six thousand miles. In the second of a two part special he tells the story of his epic adventure: from Mexico to Alaska, through Siberia, Japan, China and central Asia.
Thunder and Sunshine, the second volume of his travelogue is [...]

 

 The Bike Show: Around the world the hard way (part two) [27:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Alastair Humphreys has cycled round the world ‘the hard way’: four years, sixty countries and forty-six thousand miles. In the first of a two part special he tells the story of his epic adventure from Yorkshire to South Africa and Chile to Colombia. Thunder and Sunshine, the second volume of his travelogue is out now, [...]

 

 11 August 2008: Around the world the hard way (part one) [29:54m]: 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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This year’s Dunwich Dynamo was perfect: a dry, moonlit night, a tail wind and a hot sunny morning on the beach. Around 500 people enjoyed the sixteenth edition of the classic British night ride that covers some 120 miles (190 kilometres) through north east London, Essex and Suffolk. But you don’t have to wait until [...]

 

 21 July 2008: Sublime overnights: Dunwich Dynamo 16 and S24O with Grant Peterson [29:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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A ride along the splendid London end of the Grand Union Canal with Rob Ainsley, London cyclist and author of 50 Quirky Bike Rides, a new book about weird and wonderful places to go on bicycles in England and Wales. We visit a canal that passes over a motorway and take advantage of a little [...]

 

 The Bike Show: 7 July 2008: 50 Quirky Bike Rides [29:09m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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 The Bike Show - 16 June 2008 - From the Tropics to the Stones [30:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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 3 March 2008: Cycling Troubadours [30:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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