Tasty: Bike to the bus cafe

As we know, bus drivers can sometimes be a problem. Now, don't get me wrong - I rarely have wrong words with bus drivers, mainly because I can't understand what they're shouting at me, and I recognise that it's only the badly-behaved majority that tar the rest with the same brush - but we rather like the novelty of having a friendly encounter with a bus.


So here's your opportunity: Foodmaster, a double-decker bus converted into a mobile cafe. It serves top coffee and cakes, and hearty German sausages, and is currently doing a season in Mile End park every week (by the Art Pavilion at the end of Ashcroft Road) from Thursday to Sunday.

There's lots of bike racks, and it's just off the canal, so you can get there pleasantly and traffic-free. It therefore joins the growing list of bike-friendly cafes in London, which are appearing faster than TfL press releases these days. So if you miss it, don't worry, there'll be another one along in a minute.

View Larger Map

Plane speaking: Bike to London City Airport

Cycling to visit an airport is usually about as enticing a prospect as dental work with a hangover, but London City Airport is an exception. It's only a few miles from Tower Bridge, and a pleasant run: you can go alongside the Ornamental and Thames much of the way, then through Canary Wharf and over the Lea bridge.

The airport is next to Victoria Dock, a cityscape built by robots for an offworld colony. With ExCel, a strange almost-transporter bridge, clean-cut alien buildings and a curious hidden beach, it offers a city-of-the-future vision from a 1960s boys' annual.

At its eastern end you cross an all-metal footbridge and duck under planes (above right). They abseil down and belay their way up the sky at unusually steep angles, thanks to the cramped runway.


You can park your bike almost opposite the terminal entrance, under cover of the concrete aqueduct that carries the DLR. The modest racks almost give you enough space to lock your bike comfortably, and look more patronised by staff than by citybreakers.

If you're travelling light and flying from London City Airport, bike is a fine way to get there - not that you'd know it from their website. Still, the bike sign is pleasingly Netherlandish.


We didn't actually go in the terminal on our visit yesterday - the coffee costs more than most Ryanair flights - but there's an excellent cafe nearby. Just to the west of here, across the main road, is Thames Barrier Park (right) which has a stylish, inexpensive cafe and coffee shop in the pavilion by the lawns.

So for a budget citybreak, cycle out to the airport, then turn back and stay in London. All the buzz of the airport, the cheapness of a staycation, and the excitement of finding your way round where nobody speaks English.

Sustain pedal: Bike-powered music in Hackney

Yesterday the Bicycle Music Festival came to London.

A collective of San Francisco musicians called Pleasant Revolution started their bike-based European tour, in which the electricity powering their PAs is pedal-generated by members of the audience.

(The show went on despite one of their number coming a cropper on a Surrey hill en route to the gig.)


We caught them in a hot and sunny London Fields, the Hackney park just north of Broadway Market.

This short video of the occasion shows one of them, CelloJoe, in action. And no, I've no idea why one of the cyclists is pedalling backwards.

They're in Regents Park until 7pm today, and further 'guerrilla gigs' are threatened round the capital too.



I quite like this idea of audience control over power supply in gigs. Especially if the guitar solo is starting to go on a bit.

Bikes welcome in Southwark parklife

A picnic with friends or family for Bank Holiday Monday might be just the job. But cycling in parks is a dodgy issue, as BBC TV's Jeremy Vine found out earlier this summer.

So come to Southwark for your holiday picnic. You're allowed to cycle in all of its 130 parks, so long as you do so responsibly.

BBC presenter in park-cycling outrage

BBC presenter Jeremy Vine, PA reported yesterday, was ticked off by a policewoman for cycling in "a London park" while out on a family picnic.

Hmm. But which park? Perhaps PA aren't aware that London has several. The big central ones only allow bikes on restricted parts of their pathway systems, but they're still a biking delight. Hyde (pictures), Green and St James's Park have well-marked bike paths that let you cycle almost continuously from Notting Hill or the Albert Hall past Buckingham Palace to the Houses of Parliament and Trafalgar Square. And maybe, just maybe, things are moving our way: Regents Park, which notoriously banned bikes completely until recently, is currently undergoing a trial to allow bikes to use part of it.


So hooray for Southwark, which allows cycling in all its parks, so long as you do so responsibly. Mr Vine can trundle round Ruskin or Southwark or Burgess or Dulwich or any of the other borough parks with his family, free from jobsworth molestation. Or hazily-reported news stories.