More colourful bikes

This interesting pair of bikes, locked to opposite sides of the same pole and presumably belonging to a couple, caught my eye just off Oxford St the other day.

One was pure white, the other tube-of-sweets multicoloured.


What your bike's paint job says about you I'm not sure, but for the record, my town bike is grey, grubby, pockmarked and cheap-looking. So there must be something in it.

Have bike, wood be prepared to travel

We spotted this fine pair of hand-crafted wooden mudguards the other Saturday in Broadway Market, just off Regents Canal in Hackney.


The bike was chained to a gate by a sign saying 'Bicycles chained to this gate will be removed'. The mudguards were done by a furnituremaker friend of the owner who specialises in this sort of thing.

Impervious to rust, but Dutch elm disease might be a problem.

Stripy boiled-sweet bike

Spotted this bike outside the Barbican the other day.

I was rather taken by the boiled-sweet stripes, which even extend to the seatpost.



London is full of such exotic paint jobs. You see tiger-stripes, golden bikes, and several individually themed bikes.


Most are presumably to make a bike so conspicuous it is less attractive to thieves as a quick sell-on. This one, for instance, with a generally pink theme (right), but frame intricately decorated with magazine art.



Wow. That's cool. It wouldn't surprise me if someone gets those dodgy blokes from Brick Lane to nick a similar one for them.

On my hobby horse again

Our North of England correspondents have drawn our attention to Alnwick Castle's display of ancient bicycles. On a trip there recently, they saw this fine hobby horse from the 1820s.

An information panel by it explains that this model belonged to the Duke. Built by a London maker called Denis Johnson, this particular hobby horse was more sophisticated than the 'draisiennes' popular on the Continent: it had steering, which must have seemed edgy and controversial at the time.

Thanks to Si and Sue.

Pedersen: Old, but still way cool

Pleased to see this smart, shiny Dursley Pedersen - half bike, half crane, half coat-hanger - parked on a Plantlock somewhere up St John's St yesterday morning.

The fact that Pedersen's design can still be comfortable and effective over a century on is pretty remarkable. It's hard to think of another hundred-year-old machine that could genuinely serve its purpose as well as a modern counterpart.

Everywhere else you look (cars, computers, phones etc) the sleek and sexy new gadget is cheaper, quicker and cleverer than the rusty, lumbering old pile of scrap that used to do it. And by the way, yes, I have met the person who's taking over my job when it finishes on Friday.

Tiger-Bee-Wasp Bike

Ooh, very nice.

Bee? Wasp? Hornet? Tiger?

Boiled sweets?

Hull City supporter?

Someone who clicked at the wrong time and inadvertently bought a job lot of hazard-warning tape on eBay?

Bike-lock inflation yes, but this is ridiculous

Bike theft is a problem in London, and 'lock inflation' has clearly taken hold. In 1979 you could use a cheap combination lock. In 1989 you needed a strong D-lock. In 1999 it was more like two D-locks.

In 2009, if this bike parked outside The Horse pub near Waterloo last night is anything to go by, you require two D-locks, a stockade and defensive moat.

Things you find while cycling: money, shoes, knickers

You find all sorts of things when you're out cycling. You come across bits of change in the road all the time, especially for some reason at traffic lights. ASLs can be an unexpected cash cow. BP once found a five pound note at the Elephant and Castle roundabout, and occasionally you find a pound coin, but usually it's dirty old pennies.

I probably see about three or four pennies per week. I'm not superstitious - though I don't cycle under ladders if I can help it - but I'm aware of the old saying 'see a penny, pick it up and all day long you'll have good luck'.

I'm also aware that, if it takes me ten seconds to pick up and clean an encrusted penny, this works out as £3.60 per hour, which isn't even minimum wage. But I don't want to risk missing out on good luck, so I make a point of collecting these stray coppers, which means I'm £0.01 up on the day, and then buying a lottery ticket.

Only small change, I know, but these days, every little helps. A billion here, a billion there - it can soon add up.

But, more curiously, some cycle journeys are one long procession of mysteriously discarded small items of clothing. Some are on the road, others posted up on a railing in case the owner comes back to search for it.

In the space of two miles in Peckham last Thursday evening for example I encountered a red woolly glove, a hairband, a man's white sock and a pair of knickers. What narrative lay behind this trail of sundries-drawer debris I can only guess.


Well, today must have been Footwear Day. I was en route to the Oval Farmer's Market this morning. Within a hundred yards alongside Kennington Park I went past a high-heeled shoe in a front garden (top right), a shoe perched on the park railing (middle right), and a child's blue welly displayed on a wall (right).

The aftermath of a hopping event in the park? Spent missiles, recently hurled Bush-style at a passing politician? Kate Hoey is MP for Vauxhall, so I guess that's plausible.

More tales of comedy cargo

Yesterday's office chairs are not the most extravagant thing we've moved by bike.

Our monthly stock-up of fizzy water from the supermarket, for example, is a regular freight operation: 12 two-litre bottles each. That's 24kg of liquid load sloshing about every time you evade a pedestrian on the phone enacting a random walk from a maths A-level question. It's like cycling a carbonated paddling pool.

That's the sort of road-test magazines should do in their reviews.

I once carted a four-foot concrete post three miles home from the builder's yard on my rack. I don't know how much it weighed, but I suspect my tracks are still there in the Peckham High Street tarmac. It was like piloting an oil tanker with a pair of handlebars.

The CTC magazine once ran a short list of comedy cargo biked by its members - using trailers, I think - and I seem to recall that 'a coal bunker' and 'a tree' were among the front-runners.

In 1998 I ran into a window cleaner in East Yorkshire who did his rounds by bike, ladder and all (top right). No fancy bike-trailer nonsense for him. Clearly there isn't much traffic to worry about here in Hornsea, the small town at the end of the Trans Pennine Trail.

But for sheer amusement value, the best thing we've transported by bicycle is probably a six-foot metal reindeer (right). We saw him in a scrap dealer's skip in the street, did a deal on the spot, and took him home. (How'd you have done that by bus or car, eh?)

We thought we'd be the focus of amused remarks, rubbernecking drivers and the odd mild insult on the way home. But, being London, nobody paid a blind bit of attention.

Perhaps we should have bust a red light - they'd have noticed us then.

Speaking through the chair

I knew the world had finally gone mad when we took delivery of some new office chairs at work. The chairs came with a 24-page instruction manual, a tutorial CD-ROM, and a helpline number.

Chairs used to be straightforward things for sitting on. Or at least for parking coats and sweaters in student bedsits while everyone squatted on the floor instead. Or for throwing at each other at family weddings.

Anyway, the chair in our study packed in today. It had run out of gas. It couldn't be repaired, so we had to take it to the dump (right). It made BP's bike look enticingly like it was equipped with helicopter rotors.

Then it was off to Argos to get two new chairs. The store, that is, not the Greek city. We have actually cycled to Argos, Greece; it was quite a detour from our intended route to Athens, but how could we resist?

(I couldn't see why the chain store was named after it. The city didn't supply all its goods and services from an underground warehouse, it wasn't full of angry people taking their flatscreen TV back because they didn't like the programmes it was showing, and it didn't have a drunk in budget leisurewear at the entrance swigging from a can of Tennents and arguing with himself.)

Anyway, we then had to get the new chairs from Argos back home (right). It's amazing what you can transport with a rack and bungees. It would have been tricky to do it on a bus, horribly awkward on foot, and stressful by car, given the parking difficulties.

I'm not sure what passers-by of made of it, but they probably thought we had a pair of extremely large takeaway pizzas.

And we got them home easily and comfortably. Now all we have to do is wade through the manual, watch the tutorial DVD, and check out the chair's website, Flickr gallery, Facebook page and Twitter account...

How much does cycling cost?

Bikes are not free. They're just free at the point of use, like the NHS or hotel toiletries or dinner at your mum's. You've already paid for it somewhere else. But they're cheap... aren't they?

Yesterday's Independent reckons London commuters can save a couple of grand a year by cycling instead of taking public transport. Their article is a bit light and could have done with some more case studies, but it's good to see another reason for cycling being pushed in the papers.

The Independent article quotes Sustrans's figure of running a bike as £75 a year. That's far too low if you cycle every day. In that case I'd put it more like £150-£250 per year.

It's hard generalising for all cyclists, but I keep a record of all my bike-related bike expenses for tax purposes, so can be pretty accurate with my own figures. (Obviously, as that's for tax, it's not in my interest to minimise costs.)

Last tax year I spent £360 maintaining my bike, accessories and bike clothing, for a total use of about 4,500 miles (7,200km). Most of that was for replacing worn bits (chains, cassettes, waterproof jacket, new wheel to replace the one turned into a Thomas Heatherwick-style sculpture by London potholes etc.)

Not cheap - but certainly much cheaper than if I'd done all those journeys by public transport, never mind taxi. A rough calculation suggests I'd have paid at the very least £1800 on buses and tubes for the same movements.

Though, in fact, about half the journeys I made would have been impossible or impracticable by bus or tube: short hops around town, jaunts out to places remote from bus stop or train station, or spontaneous side trips.

A separate question is: how much have I saved by making all my out-of-London journeys by bike and train, instead of car? Tricky to judge, as there are obviously lots of trips I might have done by car which are impossible or impracticable by bike; but as it happens all the places I visited (holiday, relatives, work) were convenient by rail and cycle. This boils down to rail fares versus car costs. I spent £640 on trains; running a cheap car for the same outcome would, a very rough calculation suggests, have cost me at least £3000 in petrol, depreciation, insurance, servicing and so on.

(I don't own a car because it's all hassle and expense and wouldn't enable me to do anything I can't or won't already do. I hire a car whenever I need one, which in the last five years has been once, for ten days; otherwise we simply don't need one.)

Which is all very nice, but saving money is not why I cycle. I cycle because it's fun and I love being in control of where I go and when.

Nevertheless, according to the above, I've saved myself something like £23,000 in the nine years since I moved to London. Which does raise the question: where's it gone?

Helmet? No thanks, I'm a dog

In case you haven't seen it, here's the cycling dog on YouTube that's doing the rounds.

Momo, the cycling dalmatian, appears in this 45-second clip - which seems genuine - for a Japanese TV programme.

The surtitles, as far as my rusty Japanese can tell, are:
1. Honto ni jitensha o koideru!! (genuine-ly-bicycle-[objective particle]-pedal: 'Actually pedalling a bike!!')
2. Jitensha ni noru inu Momo (bicycle-on-ride-dog-Momo: 'Momo [Peachblossom], the dog that rides a bike') (picture)

Momo may not look all that comfortable, but note that she is a Real Cyclist: no helmet, no lycra.

You're always wining

I've often bought a bottle of wine just because it had a bike on the label. (Another common reason is because it's cheap.)

One Flickr user (presumably called Paul Dunn) has put up his collection of photos featuring wine bottles that feature bikes: an impressive two-and-a-half dozen. Must have been a good weekend.

Wine and bikes is an excellent combination. There's even a Flickr group dedicated to the subject (to which I see a name very familiar to CTC members is an enthusiastic contributor).

But, obviously, you shouldn't drink and cycle. It could be dangerous. Stop, pull over to the side of the road, drink the wine, replace it safely in your pannier, and then proceed.

Comedy Cycle Lanes 2: Belvedere Rd

There's a special cycle entrance into Belvedere Rd, which goes east from the south end of Westminster Bridge past the Eye towards the South Bank Centre.

It used to be something of a joke (top right. looking east): nice planters with tropical palms, but they didn't exactly leave much space for your bike.

Now, however, they've revamped it (bottom right, looking west).

We cycled past it today, and you can see what a difference it makes.

Oh no, not that Tavistock Place story again

Tavistock Place's separate cycle lane is like visiting an ageing relative who always tells the same old stories. You spend ages trying to get through to them, then when you finally do, they won't let you go.

Getting on it, for example. My natural route is to join it from the south and turn right, the same direction as this van is turning in the photo. But thanks to it being a separated cycle lane, I have to cross not one, but three lines of traffic; to wait for a simultaneous gap in not two, but four lines. It's like waiting for planetary alignments. I end up coat-tailing a taxi and making the sort of nervous, promiscuous eye contact you get in a student disco.

Then after a couple of hundred metres I turn left. Except that the way the lights are phased, the traffic turns left first, across the cycle lanes (next photo). What you get is the mild chaos of the above student disco at chucking out time: some cyclists wait patiently; others jag out right to rejoin the car lane and turn left across the two cycle lanes, strictly adhering to the lights; others plough straight through regardless.

So this particular separated cycle lane, as I've banged on about before, only makes things worse in my opinion. As does every other particular example I can think of (such as the fiasco at Waterloo roundabout that plunges you into a bus-stop lagoon). Not only do they create problems at every interface with the rest of the traffic, they also suggest to drivers that cyclists 'ought to be' out of the way.

What I'd like to see more of is permeability, something of a current buzzword. More blotting paper streets, more capillary action, more ease and spontaneity and ability to use any combination of side roads and alleys. That means, essentially, making every one-way street two-way for cycles as of standard. The recent announcement that five City one-way streets will be made two-way for bikes as an experiment this summer is therefore a welcome first step, but a pitifully small and timid one.

As, no doubt, I'll cover in some future post... rather like that loquacious old relative. Nurse! Nurse! They've stolen my clothes!

Mae hen feic fy nhadau yn annwyl i mi

Southwark Cyclists' mailing list, first with the news as ever, has just drawn my attention to this new TV ad which features Welsh singer-songwriter Duffy riding a bike (right).

Hooray! Another victory for Real Cycling! No helmet or lycra nonsense, just a good honest generic bike. Shame it doesn't have a rack or panniers, though. And not sure I'd recommend trying to ride through convenience stores.

Anti-theft advice for Lance

Lance Armstrong's got his bike back, reports Bike Radar. It was stolen three days ago from the back of a truck in Sacramento, California.

Good that it's been recovered, but how unfortunate that it was stolen in the first place. And a few simple precautions could have prevented all this.

First, expensive-looking bikes will get nicked. Many owners of such bikes in London daub the frame with blobs of paint; such distressing does seem to be a deterrent to the Brick Lane gang.

By displaying sponsors' names prominently, you see, you're telling the thief that you have a costly machine. Better to paint them out, or consider replacing them with downmarket brands (processed cheese, all-you-can-eat diners, pound / dollar stores, etc).

And Lance, always use two locks. Maybe in some areas you can get away with one; in London you need two sturdy Abuses. But don't just leave your bike unlocked in the back of a van, which is what was reported in this instance. There is a slight weight consideration, but it surely won't trouble someone as fit as you.

And was your bike registered with immobilise.com? I bet not.

Lance, you'd have been far better off with an inexpensive commuting bike - ideally one unattractive to thieves, with three hub gears and a basket at the front.

Man rides bike shock

The Daily Mail ran an item yesterday about Top Gear presenter James May being spotted on a bike in London.

'It's not exactly a Harley!', the headline helpfully informed us - though it seems no-one at the Mail could identify a Brompton, one of the most distinctive bike brands in the world. All they could say about it was that it is 'green', but as we know the Mail has excellent colour vision.

"The green bike even came complete with a bell, so he'd be able to warn anyone who got in his way", marvelled the newspaper. "And the presenter also appeared to be carrying a small parcel, which he had attached to the back of the bike."

Whatever next? Web-savvy, Twittering guru Stephen Fry seen posting a letter? ("The letter appeared to have a stamp attached to it...")

I'm a bit puzzled as to why this is news. Getting around on a bike is a perfectly sensible way of getting round London, regardless of your relationship to the motor media, so I'm not in the least bit surprised that the presenter of an amiably daft programme about cars should cycle here and there. It's simply not worthy of comment. Except that I've just scuppered my argument by commenting on that very item here.

Anyway, I commend Mr May on his excellent choice of bike. He looks to me like a Real Cyclist, too, given that he's happily trundling along helmetless and in his civvies.

Training session in York

York, this is York. Please ensure you have all of your belongings with you when you leave the train.

What, all of my belongings? There’s racks of CDs in our house, and boxes of stuff up in my mum’s attic...

But today I was in York for work, so I just had to check out the station’s cycle parking (right). It puts the London termini to shame: Sheffield stand after Sheffield stand, as far as the eye can see.

The station also boasts this historic tilework map (right: click on it to see it in detail) of the rail network of north-east England as it was in the olden days, circa 1900.

You could get everywhere in East Yorkshire by train; most of it was uprooted in the Beeching era, and quite a few of them are now railtrails (Hull to Hornsea, part of the Trans Pennine Trail; and the wonderful Scarborough to Whitby, one of the country’s most underrated).

There's a discreet notice on the map warning you it might not necessarily reflect the sparse coverage of today, just in case anyone turns up thinking they can get to Withernsea without facing a very long ride into a cold easterly.
And finally... thanks to Northern Rail for opening up the bike closets (right) in their two-carriage trundlers, such as those plying the Hull-York backwaters. Previously, the space you see was closed up. Getting a bike in - especially one with handlebars the size of the antlers on a Highland manor's trophy head, like mine - was as cumbersome as trying to get a bike with handlebars the size of the antlers on a Highland manor's trophy head into the bike space on a Northern Rail train.

And finally and ultimately... hooray for National Express East Coast, whose website makes it easy to book not only your ticket, but also your bike reservation: all you have to do is tick a box.

Except of course it books you into Coach B, quarter of a mile away from your bike at the other end of the train. Not the most convenient situation when you get to Doncaster with only 30 seconds to sprint down to your bike. I couldn't run a four-minute mile, even with a considerable shortcut.

London's narrowest alley... update

There's a narrower London alley than Brydges Place (London's shortest streets post, a couple of days ago). Phillip Barnett emailed me with the exciting news that Emerald Court (right), off Theobald's Road in WC1, is narrower.

I dropped in on both alleys this crisp, sunny morning, equipped with a tape measure. And I can confirm that Brydges Place is 33 inches wide at its narrowest point, funnelling you into St Martin's Lane at the side of English National Opera's Coliseum.

Emerald Court, however, squeezes down to just 26.5 inches at its north end, which squirts you into Rugby St. It's barely wide enough for my handlebars.

It starts at its south end as Emerald St, a promising-looking turn left north off Theobald's Road. It's quite possible you'd find yourself cycling up here, if you'd just missed your turn left up Lamb's Conduit St. It's also quite possible that you'd naturally keep going north, through the (pedestrian) alley which it narrows into, the Ozly-named Emerald Court.

So (unlike Brydges Place, which offers no plausible reason to go through with your bike) Emerald Court is currently our top candidate for the narrowest alley in London you'd reasonably go through with a bike. Unless, of course, you know different...

Thanks Phillip; I'll update the previous post, by the way, and add Emerald Place to the Google map.

Between the two I also checked out Lazenby Court, off Rose St, in Covent Garden. It's another very narrow alley, perhaps 36 inches at its narrowest, and it was very busy with commuters shuffling into single file. One of them had a Brompton; nice to have a bike that you can shrink down if the going gets narrow.