Cycling Weekly: Cyclist rides eye-catching bamboo bike in 3,000-mile UK tour

“It’s a good business card. I’m getting into a lot more conversations with people purely because the bike is eye-catching.” — Kate Strong, triple world record holder and BBC kit builder

Cycling Weekly covered Kate Strong’s 3,000-mile circumnavigation of mainland Britain on a Bamboo Bicycle Club home-build kit as she set off on World Environment Day, 5 June 2023. Strong — a triple world cycling record holder and triathlon champion — built the frame herself from a BBC kit. Cycling Weekly focused on the bamboo bike’s unusual role as a conversation catalyst: everywhere Kate rode, people stopped to ask about the frame.

Why bamboo, why now

Strong’s choice of a bamboo frame was deliberate and layered. Her expedition — named Climate Cycle — aimed to visit around 40 innovative climate projects across Britain over 90 days, from Norwich to Edinburgh to John O’Groats to Land’s End and back to Parliament Square. The bamboo bike was not just transport; it was a material argument. A carbon-positive frame ridden across a country in climate crisis.

“It’s a way of saying that we need to stop just doing a little bit. We need to take the time to go all the way back to zero and build up from there. My efficiency output is exactly the same, but the frame actually locks carbon into it. The frame’s carbon positive.” — Kate Strong

Building the bike

Strong built the frame from a BBC home-build kit — her first attempt was unrideable; she rebuilt it using pre-set steel bindings. She retained her existing triathlon saddle and standard components, resulting in a bamboo-framed hybrid suited to long daily distances. The BBC kit is designed so that no specialist tools or skills are required; Strong was not a framebuilder before the project. Cycling Weekly’s coverage reinforced a key BBC message: you do not need to be an engineer to build a bamboo bike that completes a 3,000-mile national challenge.

The expedition launched from Westminster on 5 June 2023 — World Environment Day — with BBC News covering the departure. Cycling Weekly covered the story as it developed. Kate Strong completed the full route on 2 September 2023, returning to Parliament Square.

About Cycling Weekly

Cycling Weekly is the UK’s oldest and most widely read cycling magazine, with a readership of professional cyclists, enthusiasts and commuters. Its coverage of Strong’s BBC-built bamboo bike placed the home-build kit concept in front of an audience that takes frame quality seriously — and reached the same conclusion the BBC workshop has been reaching since 2012: a bamboo frame, properly built, is a genuine cycling tool.

Read the full article on Cycling Weekly →