Country & Town House: Bamboo Bicycle — The Green Lane
Country & Town House
December 2022 | by Jeremy Taylor, Motoring Editor
“I certainly wouldn’t have managed it without Simon and his friends. The Club does offer video guides to builders plus telephone support — the result is a bicycle like no other.” — Jeremy Taylor, Motoring Editor, Country & Town House
Country & Town House — one of the UK’s leading luxury lifestyle magazines, with a readership of high-net-worth individuals, countryside landowners, and city professionals — covered Bamboo Bicycle Club in December 2022. Motoring Editor Jeremy Taylor built a BBC kit bike with the help of friends, and documented the experience for the magazine’s Green Lane column.
Building the kit
Taylor’s account is honest about the challenge: the BBC home-build kit is not a flat-pack toy but a real engineering project. He acknowledged that completing the build required help from a friend (Simon) and noted that BBC’s video guides and telephone support were essential. The result, he concluded, was “a bicycle like no other” — a description that captures something precise about what a handmade bamboo frame actually is. Not better in every measurable way than a factory bike. Different in every human way.
“Yes, you just have to factor in more time to reach a destination, because every other cyclist will want to know about your gorgeous bike!” — Jeremy Taylor, Country & Town House
The kit build experience
BBC home-build kits ship with all the materials required to build a bamboo bicycle frame: Guadua bamboo tubes (pre-cut and pre-notched), aluminium lugs, hemp binding, bio-resin, and full instructions. The frame can be built in a garage or workshop over two to three days. No specialist tools are required; BBC provides support via video tutorials, a written manual, and direct telephone and email support.
The Country & Town House piece introduced BBC to an audience segment that buys on quality of experience rather than price sensitivity — people for whom the story of building their own bicycle is as valuable as the bicycle itself. Taylor’s observation about being stopped by other cyclists reflects something BBC workshop participants consistently report: a bamboo bike generates conversations that no off-the-shelf frame ever does.
About Country & Town House
Country & Town House magazine has been published since 1965 and covers luxury interiors, countryside living, travel, food and motoring. Its readership includes landowners, architects, interior designers and professionals with disposable income and an appetite for artisan products. Coverage in Country & Town House positioned BBC firmly within the premium craft and sustainability market — alongside hand-thrown pottery, bespoke furniture and heritage travel experiences.