8,288 Miles on a Bamboo Bike: Kate Rawles and the Life Cycle Expedition

Kate Rawles needed a bicycle that could carry her across South America and carry a message at the same time. She chose bamboo.

The Mission

Kate — an environmental philosopher, outdoor educator, and author — set out to ride 8,288 miles from Colombia to the tip of Patagonia over thirteen months. The journey was designed as a living investigation into the biodiversity crisis: what are we losing, and how fast? The route took her through Colombia's cloud forests, the Atacama Desert, and the legendary headwinds of Patagonia.

The bamboo was not incidental to this mission. A carbon fibre frame would have been faster and lighter. But it would have carried a contradiction. A bike built at Bamboo Bicycle Club from bamboo grown at the Eden Project in Cornwall — the UK's first home-grown bamboo bicycle frame — was the vehicle that matched the message.

Woody: The Bike That Held

Kate named the bike Woody. Over thirteen months and six countries, Woody never failed. Every other component on the bicycle required attention at some point — chains, tyres, cables. The bamboo frame was, as Kate put it, "the argument, made physical." In 2023, she published The Life Cycle (Icon Books), bringing Woody and BBC's work to an entirely new audience of environmentally conscious readers.

The Sustainability Case

Bamboo sequesters carbon as it grows. It requires no fertiliser or irrigation. It can be harvested without killing the plant. The production carbon footprint of a bamboo bicycle frame is a fraction of an equivalent carbon fibre or aluminium frame. Kate's journey made this argument visible in a way that no white paper could.

"Starting with a pile of canes in a corner of the Bamboo Bicycle Club's workshop… it was an adventure in its own right."
— Kate Rawles, from The Life Cycle

Outcomes

• 8,288 miles (13,000+ km) completed across 6 countries in 13 months
• Zero frame failures across the entire expedition
• UK's first home-grown bamboo bicycle — Eden Project, Cornwall
• Book published: The Life Cycle (Icon Books, 2023)
• Coverage: The Times, Lonely Planet, ELM Magazine, Swoop Patagonia

"On a bike, you are really in the landscapes you travel through."
— Kate Rawles

The Life Cycle expedition is the clearest demonstration of what a bamboo bicycle can mean when the choice of material is itself an act of integrity.