GCN explores bamboo bikes with the Bamboo Bicycle Club
When you think of materials for bike frames, bamboo is not one that would immediately come to mind, but as a popular construction material throughout history and one of the most sustainable plants on...
Global Cycling Network (GCN), one of the world's largest cycling channels, turned its attention to bamboo as a frame material — and the Bamboo Bicycle Club features in the story.
In the GCN documentary "Are Bamboo Bikes Actually Any Good?" (also released as the longer film Bamboo Bike: Fad or Future, 2021), presenter Si Richardson follows ultra-endurance racer and author Emily Chappell as she sets out to understand whether bamboo really belongs in a modern bike frame.
Her journey takes her to people who already ride and build bamboo. She meets Kate Rawles, who rode roughly 8,000 miles down the spine of the Andes on a bamboo bike she built herself — a frame she made over five days at the Bamboo Bicycle Club's east London workshop, learning to cut, shape and join the canes by hand. Emily also meets BBC founder James Marr, hears how the workshop teaches people to build their own frames, and learns about bamboo's properties from engineers at Oxford Brookes University.
In GCN's own words:
"Si meets with Emily Chappell, the creator of this amazing bamboo bike, to hear
why your next bike should be made from bamboo."
— Global Cycling Network
Watch the GCN film: Are Bamboo Bikes Actually Any Good? — Global Cycling Network
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