From Usk to Wye with Dr Ian Walker

Jack goes for a ride with Dr Ian Walker, an environmental psychologist from the University of Bath and long-distance bike racer. Ian found global fame about fifteen years ago with an experiment he did to measure how close he was passed by overtaking cars, depending on what he was wearing.


Ian is also an accomplished bike rider, specialising in ultra long distance racing. He was a high placed finisher in the Transcontinental Race, he won the North Cape 4000 and last year set a new world record for riding across Europe in a north south direction.


The ride takes Ian and Jack from Abergavenny up the Usk valley and after a a climb via Pengenffordd into the Wye valley, returning via Cockitt Hill.

Preston by Bike with Gavin Renshaw

Jack goes to Preston, Lancashire to ride with artist Gavin Renshaw. They ride out on some of the City of Preston’s bicycle infrastructure before heading for the wild uplands of the Forest of Bowland. Along the way they talk about cycling in Preston and Gavin’s work with In Certain Places, a long-term project that is bringing artists and creative thinkers into the process of city planning and urban development.

Image above is View of Preston from Brindle by Gavin Renshaw, 2016.

Gavin Renshaw

The Expanded City – Gavin Renshaw

To watch the Routes In Routes Out discussion event on YouTube, go here:

Routes In, Routes Out: Gavin Renshaw in conversation with Jack Thurston

Gavin Renshaw is on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/mrteaone/

What Goes Around

chappell Jack Thurston heads to mid-Wales to meet Emily Chappell (pictured, above), former London bike messenger turned author turned ultra endurance racer. Her book, What Goes Around: A London Cycle Courier’s Story is published by Faber & Faber.

Plus the social enterprise that’s finding a new use for the Royal Mail’s unwanted fleet of postal bikes, as Elephant Bikes.

The Politics of Adventure

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Jack Thurston’s guest this week is self-confessed angry young man, Julian Sayarer (pictured, above), who, five years ago, set a new record for cycling around the world. Having taken a strong dislike to Mark Beaumont, the previous record-holder, whose record attempt was backed by big business and, thought Sayarer, represented everything that was wrong with the world. He wanted to beat Beaumont and take the record back ‘for the people’.

They meet on on the banks of the River Wye a few miles downstream from the city of Hereford. Julian Sayarer’s book Life Cycles is published by John Blake and available in paperback and on the Kindle.

Rolling with Klaus

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Klaus Bondam, Director of the Danish Cyclists Federation and former deputy mayor in charge of cycling in Copenhagen rides with ‘Buffalo’ Bill Chidley to the Hackney Cycling Conference. En route they try to find out how London’s roads compare with cycling cities like Copenhagen. Then Bill joins Kieron Yates and Jack Thurston to discuss what happened at the conference, and where things are with the Mayor of London’s much heralded cycling revolution.

A Ride in Border Country

In the last show of the summer season, Jack goes for a leisurely spin around the Welsh borders with local cyclist Owen Davies as his guide, from Abergavenny to Monmouth and back, past Raglan Castle (pictured above), Rockfield recording studios and the unlikely Welsh residence of the notorious Nazi politician Rudolf Hess.

Image credit: Cadw

Boardman versus Obree

The sporting rivalry between Chris Boardman and Graeme Obree is among the greatest in history, on a par with Ovett and Coe, Borg and McEnroe or Ali and Frazier. Twenty years on from their record-breaking exploits, Jack Thurston and Edward Pickering consider how their era marked a turning point in British cycle sport and how Chris Boardman’s scientific approach to training set the template for the top riders that followed him, from Chris Hoy to Bradley Wiggins, elevating Britain to the top of the Olympic medal table in cycling and Team Sky as the dominant force in road racing. Edward Pickering is the author of The Race Against Time: Obree, Boardman and the Quest to be the Fastest Man on Two Wheels.