Author: laura
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Give the gift of wheel building knowledge
Need a Christmas present idea that’s perfect for the bike enthusiast who seems to have it all already? Look no further. Our Demystify Wheel Building course is the perfect gift! Taking City & Guilds standards and our teaching experience, we’ve developed this 2 day course to take students from minimal prior knowledge to being able…
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5 essential cycling documentaries
A Sunday in Hell (1976) Arguably the best film ever made about professional bike racing, A Sunday in Hell chronicles the 1976 Paris-Roubaix one day classic. The visual equivalent of Tim Krabbe’s The Rider (see our list of great cycling reads) this is about as close as most of us will ever get to riding…
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Don’t just ride to work, ride for work
If the two favourite parts of your day are the cycle ride to the office, and the cycle ride home, perhaps it’s time to consider an alternative career. Here are a few different ways to make a living on two wheels. Professional racer OK, so this won’t be a viable option for most of us,…
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Cycle to work day: how to get involved
Every single day of the year is now National or International Day of something or other. 3 March is If Pets Had Thumbs Day. And 30 April is, I swear on my life, not a word of a lie, National Honesty Day. Squeezing into this busy schedule on 14 September 2016 is National Cycle to…
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Back to school: but how?
September sees about 8 million pupils returning to school, or going for the first time. Around 35% will be driven to and from primary school, a journey with an average distance of 3 miles (significantly less in London where catchment areas are much smaller). Just 2% of primary school pupils and 3% of secondary school…
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Will Olympic success have a trickle down effect?
British cycling enjoyed another golden fortnight as Team GB topped the cycling medal table at the Rio Olympics with 12 medals, six of them gold. The Brits have now exerted a period of sustained dominance, coming out on top in London 2012, and also four years earlier in Beijing. How does this high profile success…
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Changing lives with bicycles
We love cycling as it adds to our sense of freedom, independent mobility and sustainability. For people living in precarious circumstances, these same qualities can make bicycles a life-changing asset, by improving access to basic essentials. Critical Mass to Calais Last year Critical Mass organised an event which saw eighty cyclists ride seventy miles through…
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A guide to buying a second hand bike
This post will look at how to buy a second hand general utility bicycle, as opposed to a high performance road machine, or vintage collector’s item, which is another kettle of (more expensive) fish. Buying second hand can offer the chance to get the best possible bike for your budget, and for London commuters who…
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A nifty new app for puncture roadside rescue
Imagine you are a cyclist with a puncture. You don’t have a spare inner tube or you can’t fix the puncture yourself. You don’t know where you can find a bike shop – maybe they are all closed at the time – and you are going to be late for an appointment… Wouldn’t it be…
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7 cycling myths debunked
Roads were built for cars This one’s reasonably easy to dispose of when you consider that many of our roads were first built in Roman times. A comprehensive rebuttal exists in the form of Roads Were Not Built For Cars, an exhaustively researched book which uncovers the extent to which cyclists were, in fact, instrumental…