TV seeks cyclist: Bike programmes on BBC iPlayer

BBC4 last night had a bike-themed evening of programmes. Two of them, conveniently for those of us who don't have a television, are available for the next few days on iPlayer.

The Bicycle is a half-hour history-of-the-bike, but concentrating on the Edwardian period - the Golden Age of the Bicycle.


And in the hour-long Ride of my life: The story of the bicycle, Rob Penn treads a giant carbon footprint over most of the G7 as he assembles his dream bike.

With TV-programme logic, instead of simply ordering his Brooks saddle or Campag parts over the internet, Rob has to buy them all in person in a journey of discovery etc.

En route we also get an enjoyable history of the bicycle. Nice to while away a spare hour with, while you're on hold trying to phone your bank, perhaps. It's all feelgood stuff, and we're reassured several times that today is the beginning of a new Golden Age of the Bicycle.

Hmm. Perhaps iron pyrites would be more appropriate.

Plus ça change: Bikes through the ages at Rapha

Even if you're a real cyclist who considers the Tour de France a good ride spoiled, we recommend nipping into the Rapha cafe, the über-stylish racers' pop-up in Clerkenwell that we've blogged about before, this week.

While the Tour is on - this week, then - they have a fabulous exhibition downstairs of racing bikes for every decade through the 20th century. (It's actually in celebration of the 'centenary of the Col du Tourmalet', an age geologists might dispute.)

The remarkable thing is, of course, how little bikes have changed since 1900. The single front brake on the century-old model is pretty rudimentary, but otherwise with a respray it could be a trendy single-speed next to you in today's ASL, Brooks saddle and all.


As the decades roll on, gearing technology develops from alarmingly crude levers on the rear seatstays, but otherwise the most noticeable change is the choking algal growth of sponsors' logos.

And the handlebars of this bike - from the 1910s - show the cutting-edge technology used by the club racer of the post-Edwardian years.

London alley that gave birth to pavements

Fancy some illegal pavement cycling? Here's the most historic place to do it. This tiny cul-de-sac off Whitehall gave birth to the pavement, and therefore the entire pavement cycling menace that threatens western civilisation. It's Craig's Court, the tiny alley first left as you go down from Trafalgar Square.

In the mid-1700s, there were no pavements. Pedestrians, horses, carriages, chirpy costermongers with carts of pig offal, all jostled each other on the dirt road surface, right up to the housefronts. There were a few calls for improvements to the road surfaces, but fighting wars was much more important. Obviously that wouldn't happen nowadays.

However, Arthur Onslow, speaker of the House of Commons, was involved in an accident while trying to get his carriage into this very alley. Starting a tradition which continues today, he decided not to blame the driver, but someone else. The problem, he decided, was caused by the lack of this new pavement technology. Soon after that Onslow was instrumental in passing a bill to introduce pavements to London's streets, resulting in the widespread slaughter of innocent civilians by cycling torpedoes that we know today.

Unfortunately, the pavements are so narrow that it's virtually impossible to cycle on them. I tried, leaving a trail of carnage and destruction (not illustrated), but was soon forced off into the road.

There's little else in the alley to detain you. Harrington House is there, whatever that is, but the pub is more promising to explore on a chilly winter's day. Cheers. Merry Christmas.

Sneaking bikes into the new BL exhibition

The British Library's latest exhibition, Points of View, has just started to some excellent reviews. The fascinating collection of 19th-century photos at St Pancras is free, runs until 7 March, and is conveniently visitable by bike.

A small part of the exhibition is a series of twenty-odd pictures of London sights in the 1870s compared with the identical views today. It's on an easily missable black pillar with a video display, towards the end of the end of the exhibition on the left.

The two pictures on the right are an example: the celebrated (and bike-friendly) George Inn in Southwark.

All the series is being featured on the Points of View exhibition blog, starting with the George.


The 'now' pictures were all taken by me this summer. The ideal way to do it was by bike, of course. It was therefore a fine excuse for being paid for a few days' leisurely cycling round London in the sun, taking snaps, and stopping to research each location thoroughly. (This isn't typical of working at the British Library; it's not usually that hectic.)

The 1870s pictures, sadly, don't feature any velocipede or 'penny-farthing' riders. So I did my best to smuggle cyclists into the 'now' pictures wherever possible.

No doubt there was a debate in the 1870s between the 'real' cyclists (normal, everyday, comfy clothing such as frock coat, high collar and top hat; sensible luggage carrier such as a Gladstone bag) and the sports cyclists (lightweight penny-farthings weighing only a few stone; Devonshire serge jacket in hi-vis dark green, knickerbockers, Stanley helmet with small peaks and Cambridge grey stockings - the uniform specified for the founding members of the Cycle Touring Club).

As with the pictures, some things change, some things stay the same. As my mum says sagely, it's like everything else.

Hull's bike museum shows how it's all changed... not

There are around 20 cycle museums, or museums with a strong cycle element, in Britain. The biggest is the one in Llandrindod Wells in mid-Wales (if you’ve ever cycled the Welsh National Cycle Route from Cardiff to Holyhead, most of Wales seems to be mid-Wales). Camelford in Cornwall (handy for the Camel Trail) has another major collection.

But one of my favourite cycle collections is at Streetlife, Hull’s likeable transport museum, and not just because it’s free.


Their substantial bicycle gallery has the usual range of early machines, from boneshakers (right) through ‘penny-farthings’ to the modern diamond-frame.

There’s an early Pedersen (below), a kind of pedallable Eiffel Tower, a design you still occasionally see in genuine use today.

The information panels and displays show that the social questions raised in the early days of cycling have a surprisingly modern feel.

Folding bicycles for instance (for use in war; presumably the troop ships and trains taking them to the front line had a strict no-non-folding-bikes policy on busy routes).


Or feminism (one Tessie Reynolds, we’re told, caused a scandal in 1893 when she rode from London to Brighton on a man’s bike wearing trousers; sounds like my kind of gal).

Or car conflict. Reckless early motorists were known as ‘speed fiends’ or ‘road hogs’: “they were a hideous sort of thing,” one panel informs us, “and the occupants were generally dressed up in a manner more representing monkeys than anything else. They travelled along at what they considered their legal rate – the supposed 20 m.p.h. - killing and maiming men, women and children, and driving everyone else from the road with their hideous noise and wretched dust...” A century on, little has changed.


Or, indeed, anti-cyclist propaganda in the media. A cartoon is reproduced from the early 1900s showing a mad cyclist (a “scorcher”) mowing down a harmless plod valiantly trying to protect the public from the two-wheeled menace.

That rant was against a cyclist using the road; and we think today’s pavement-cycling hysteria is bad enough...

Bicycling baronet to cycling Speaker?

We already have a cyclist mayor of London in Boris Johnson, and a potential cycling Prime Minster in David Cameron. Now, according to the BBC, one of the candidates to replace Michael Martin as Speaker of the House of Commons is Sir George Young, the 'bicycling baronet' who has a history of positive contributions to cycling legislation.

There are some backbench cycling MPs (such as Emily Thornberry) too. But we'd have to go some way to return to the kind of cycling levels among members of the House at the turn of the 19th century. A column in the Pall Mall Gazette of Saturday 13 August 1898 had this to say about the Parliamentary recess:


Parliament is away, and, to a large extent, awheel. In popularity with members of Parliament the bicycle can give many points to the motor car and yet beat that mechanical atrocity hollow. Nor is the passion for wheeling confined to any section or any party in the House. The Lord Advocate of Scotland is enthusiast enough to essay to travel northwards and homewards from Westminster by this agreeable means, though we doubt whether he will complete the journey in this way; Mr. William Field, whose robust brogue is the delight of the House of Commons, is one of the latest victims of the prevailing epidemic, while Mr. Healy's partiality for the cycle led him to defend the privileges of its riders with quite remarkable vigour in the House the other day. Sir John Gorst's lurid machine, coloured a Post Office red, is an object of daily wonderment in the Session, as he wheels gently down Victoria-street. Mr. Stuart Worley is a constant and careful rider; and Sir Howard Vincent is greeted with a benevolent grin by hundreds of his blue-coated former subordinates as he careers about the West End. The officials of the House, too, have quite taken to the exercise, and one of them, Mr. Archibald Milman, is at this moment covered with honourable bruises sustained in the too eager pursuit of this kind of pleasure. But the cycle is no respecter of the persons of its riders.

Thanks, as ever, to the comprehensive, searchable British Library website of digitised newspapers (it's paid-for with some free content if accessed outside the library, but all free inside).

Stunt riding, 1869-style

Stunt riding is nothing new. Edinburgh BMXer Danny Macaskill has propelled himself to fame with a much-downloaded YouTube video of him doing unbelievable things on trees, street furniture and even the top of iron railings.

But 140 years ago, the earliest cyclists were pushing the envelope. Presumably the one with the details of their hospital appointment inside.

For example, in the Penny Illustrated Paper of 1 May 1869 under the snappy heading VELOCIPEDE ENTERTAINMENT, there's an account of some mid-Victorian Danny Macaskills wowing the crowds at Liverpool Gymnasium with what was called "fancy riding, in which the riders performed a variety of manoeuvres upon their machines". (It's on page 2 of that link, not the one first displayed.)

Bikes were much heavier, so we can't expect aerial loops or bus-driver handlebar-twizzling. Today, people try to text on the move; but in that letter-writing era, things were more scholarly. "Mr. Franghiardi, while his machine was proceeding at full speed, took a piece of paper and a pencil, and wrote for about a minute, guiding the vehicle unerringly during the time", we are informed.

"Another gentleman stood upon the saddle, holding the handle, and retained that position until the machine came to a standstill"; also "several others raised both feet upon the frame which projects on each side of the front wheel", proving that those footstand things on BMX front wheels have a long pedigree.

As at any modern BMX event, such as the one we cycled past in Peckham on Sunday, there were plenty of tumbles, all of them shrugged off: "During this rapid circulation of bicycles in all directions, two or three general collisions occurred, which brought about a dozen riders and their machines pellmell upon the floor; one was accidently hurled among the spectators, but in no case was any personal injury done, or any sustained by the machines, some of which were very valuable".

As we say in English, plus ça change... All this comes from the British Library's excellent British Newspapers site, which has just gone online to the general public. It offers text-search access to thousands of papers from the 19th century, covering the early days of velocipedes to the high point of the Victorian bike boom.

Most access is paid for, but there's also loads of free content (such as that trick-cycling item). If you can come to the British Library, access to the entire site is free (including the otherwise paid-for content). If you do come to the British Library, come by bike, but please don't try to write while doing so.

Lessons from history (don't cycle from Wolverhampton to Birmingham)

This morning I've been testing one of our new websites here at the British Library. It gives you paid-for access over the Internet to millions of digitised British local newspapers from 1800-1913.

The Times already has a huge searchable digital archive of all their editions, going back to 1785. You can access that online for small charges (five quid for a day pass, for example), or if you're from Yorkshire like me, come into the British Library and use it for free.

Our local newspaper site (due to go live at the end of the month) will work similarly. In fact it's already available free inside the Library, and we're just testing the payment mechanism for when it goes live to the world.

So, of course, I've been doing lots of searches on bicycles and cricket, purely to test the system you understand.

And it throws up some fascinating local stuff. For instance, the Bristol Mercury of 22 May 1819 has a feature on the cool new must-have gadget for the young and trendy: the velocipede. For the benefit of bewildered readers, it supplies an illustration (right) suggestive of extraordinary male discomfort.

"On a well-maintained post-road, it will travel up-hill as fast as an active man can walk", it notes in wonder. "When roads are dry and firm, it runs on a plain at the rate of eight or nine miles per hour, as fast as a courier. On a descent, it equals a horse at full speed."

Terminology is yet to evolve: it has a 'saddle', but is steered by a 'rudder... in the same manner as a Bath Chair', and the wheels are connected by a 'perch'.

The Mercury notes that a new velocipede would set you back six or seven guineas. A pint of beer cost you a halfpenny then, making the velocipede cost as much as 3,000 pints; on the other hand a craftsman would earn about a pound a month, making it around six month's wages for our fashion-conscious artisan.

By 1869 pedal-driven velocipedes were the cool new thing. They had a variable number of wheels, especially after an accident, but the two-wheel version (direct-drive pedals and solid tyres, of course) was proving popular for touring.

The Birmingham Post of 31 Mar 1869, for example, talks about what was claimed to be the longest bicycle journey undertaken in the country so far – Liverpool to London, in four days:

The bicycles caused no little astonishment on the way, and the remarks passed by the natives were most amusing. At some of the villages the boys clustered round the machines, and, when they could, caught hold of them, and ran behind until they were tired out. Many inquiries were made as to the name of "them queer horses", some calling them "whirligigs", "menageries", and "valparaisos".

But it wasn't all pleasant: "Between Wolverhampton and Birmingham attempts were made to upset the riders by throwing stones." Some things don't change.