BikeRadar: Riding 5,000 Miles on a Bamboo Bicycle — Kate Rawles Before The Life Cycle

“It’s a really, really comfortable ride! It’s smooth but not too flexy, a bit like steel. Of course there are advantages in having built the bike myself. Apart from the huge satisfaction I’ve gained from doing this, I know it inside out and will be much better placed to fix things on the road if needs be as a result.” — Kate Rawles, on Woody, November 2016

BikeRadar — the UK’s largest cycling website, previously known for its January 2015 first ride video of a BBC frame — returned to cover BBC again in November 2016, this time in its Routes & Rides section. The article documented Kate Rawles’ preparations for the Life Cycle expedition: the decision to build Woody at BBC’s London workshop, the first impressions of the finished bike, and the practical plan for repairs on the road through South America.

The timing was significant: the piece appeared weeks before Kate departed for Colombia in November 2016 to begin the expedition. BikeRadar’s audience of serious cyclists — many of them sceptical of bamboo as a functional frame material — read Kate’s assessment of Woody before 8,288 miles of South American riding had validated it. Her enthusiasm was prospective. The evidence would follow over the next 14 months.

The article also noted an important editorial correction: BikeRadar referred to the organisation as “Bamboo Bicycle Company” throughout — an error the publication did not subsequently correct, though the URL and linked website (bamboobicycleclub.org) confirmed the identity. This kind of minor editorial confusion is common in early press coverage of BBC; the organisation’s name has been mangled productively across dozens of publications since 2012.

Field repairability

Kate’s discussion of on-the-road bamboo repairs — hemp and epoxy resin, both lightweight and globally available — addressed a practical concern that BikeRadar’s audience would immediately raise. A bamboo frame in the Andes is not near a bike shop. The repair strategy is genuinely elegant: hemp is a natural fibre available in many countries; epoxy resin can be sourced at hardware shops or marine suppliers worldwide; a bamboo splint can be cut from any bamboo grove. The frame is more repairable in the field than a carbon frame, which is irreparable once cracked.

“In terms of repairs to the bamboo itself, super unlikely though this is — bamboo is very strong, as evidenced by its use by many countries around the world as scaffolding — all I will need is some hemp, which I’ll be carrying, and epoxy resin, which you can get more or less anywhere. And possibly a splint!” — Kate Rawles, BikeRadar, November 2016

BikeRadar’s second BBC feature

This November 2016 BikeRadar piece was the publication’s second major BBC feature, following the January 2015 first ride video. Between those two pieces: two and a half years of BBC’s growth, the launch of home-build kits, the Design Museum Cycle Revolution exhibition, the 3D-printing collaboration with Oxford Brookes, and Kate Rawles’ build of Woody. The story had moved significantly from “here is an unusual workshop bike” to “here is an environmentalist preparing to ride the length of South America on a home-built bamboo frame.” BikeRadar’s two pieces bookend this period precisely.

Read the full article on BikeRadar →