Two doctors rode London to Singapore on bamboo they built themselves
Tom Roberts and Nicky Moore were junior doctors with an idea they couldn't shake from their university days. In September 2014 they finally left London on bikes they'd cut, sanded and wrapped by hand — and didn't stop pedalling until they reached Singapore the following July.
The road
Fifteen thousand miles, twenty countries. London out through Europe, into Turkey and Georgia, across Central Asia and down through India and Southeast Asia to the far edge of the map. (Our own write-up clocks it at 22,000km — the same ride, measured in kilometres.) They rode through a 48°C heatwave in India, sat out the cold further north, and patched their way across border after border. Tom lost sixteen kilos on the road; Nicky pushed on through Achilles tendinitis. As doctors, they rode to raise money for Médecins Sans Frontières — Doctors Without Borders.
What we did
A bamboo frame isn't bought finished. It's made. Tom built his bike at the Bamboo Bicycle Club — in his own words, he'd moved to London and ended up living with the person who set the club up, and the idea just took hold. He and Nicky learned the method and left with frames they understood part by part, which matters more than anything when the nearest bike shop is a fortnight's ride away.
What held up
The interesting thing about a long tour is what breaks. Tyres wear through. Chains snap. Pannier racks shear off. Across the whole journey, not one bamboo frame failed. In words written from the road rather than dressed up afterwards:
"The unrelenting bamboo frame will eat up tyre after tyre, snap chains, break pannier racks — but the frame will always be there, ready, waiting."
That's the whole point of the material, told better by a rider mid-journey than any spec sheet could manage.
Why it matters
People assume bamboo is fragile. A ride this long, on self-built frames, across that much terrain, is a quiet argument to the contrary — and a reminder that the people who build their own bikes tend to be the ones who can keep them rolling anywhere in the world. As Tom and Nicky put it, the spokes you turn are "yours from hours of measuring, marking, sawing, sanding." It's the same conviction behind everything we do: that making something with your own hands changes your relationship to it for good.
Proof and links
- Canonical write-up: London to Singapore on Bamboo: Tom and Nicky's 22,000km Journey
- Riders' arrival interview (2015): Cycling 15,000 miles… on a homemade bike
- Dr Nicky Moore's later profile: Meet Dr Nicky — Great Western Air Ambulance Charity