Category: cycling

Copenhagen Feels

October 30th, 2022

Everybody is a type, but does everybody have a type? I’m the type of guy who wishes he could be one of those slim, grey, well-groomed older men. But I like food too much, so I’m one of those wok-bellied, slightly scruffy older men. As to whether I have a type, I’d have always said, not really. Or if I did, I prefer small women with brown hair. But how far would I travel to find out if I do, in fact, have a type?

83.4 kilometres.

That’s how far I walked in Copenhagen between Tuesday morning, when we arrived, and Saturday night, when we left. So just under 17km per day, including the day we hired bikes at the hotel and cycled (in addition to the walking) at least 20 kilometres. This is what you do when you visit a city like this: a lot of walking, a lot of wandering.

The main purpose of the visit was to see Chloé in her natural habitat. While my OH has been around seven times since Chloé moved there, this was my first visit. Why did I wait so long? Pandemic, mainly. Whereas my OH had a robust (and very French) attitude to travel restrictions, I was generally put off by all the admin. Also, I’ve grown increasingly anxious about travel in general, so I don’t need much of an excuse.

We flew Ryanair, no extras, which meant a small bag squeezed under the seat in front. Chloé reported Baltic weather the week before we went and advised that I dress warm, so my packing consisted of four sets of underwear and four long-sleeved thermal vests. In addition, I wore a cashmere sweater that has always been too warm for work and a fleece and a jacket. I also bought some “Nordic” jeans from Rohan, lol.

Inevitably, the late October warm-wave meant that I spent most of the time feeling too hot. I left the sweater for Chloé and wore two layers most of the time, carrying a hat in my bag for the cooler evenings. But, oh, that first day, before we could check into the hotel, the day I was wearing ALL the layers! I was so hot.

The cost of the trip was calculated so that the travel and accommodation wouldn’t come to more than our normal channel tunnel crossing and motorway journey to France. Not including food, of course. So the hotel choice was a cheap and cheerful 2-star called Saga Hotel near the Central train station. It was clean and modern, the way I like it. We paid for a room with a shower/toilet, though most of the rooms in that hotel are ones that share a bathroom. It was poky, but fine for what we needed, and every day began with the same ten minute walk up to the Rådhus square.

Eating out in Copenhagen can be expensive. We ate a lot of sandwiches etc from the 7-11, but we also ate a couple of times at Jagger Burger, and once at Chloé’s flat near Sydhavn. Our plans to eat there a second time on the day we left were baulked because it turned out the S-train (currently?) only runs Monday to Friday. This meant a long walk or more junk food. Oh well.

I’m not a great one for visiting attractions. My main object was to see my daughter, and I didn’t much care what activities, if any, that involved. We went to see an interesting Matisse Exhibit, and dropped in on the Little Mermaid etc. But inevitably, my main interest was in the city itself, its infrastructure. Because let’s not pretend that we need to be particularly different to the Danes. A smallish northern European country, outside the Eurozone? A Germanic language? They are recognisably like us, and yet, and yet, don’t seem to be as irrational in their anti-humanism, in their enslavement to corporate interests.

You know what’s coming. I’m sure capitalism is as shit in Denmark as it is anywhere else. And I’m sure employers can be as awful and exploitative. But Danes seem to care more about work-life balance. And their capital city is designed around people, not cars. Sure, there are cars, and lots of single-occupancy vehicles. But the bikes! And the pedestrian zones! If you stop to think about why Oxford Street and, say, Regent Street aren’t completely pedestrianised in 2022, your head might explode.

I would really like to see an experiment in which every person in Copenhagen who owned a bicycle went to fetch it from wherever it is being kept and stood next to it. My question is, are there more bicycles than people?

Pedestrians have priority. Then bikes. Then cars. And the cycle lanes are mostly segregated and mostly respected. Which means, you don’t see quite so many cars and delivery vans parked on cycle lanes as you do in this country. But you do see some. And there are still too many vans making deliveries that could instead be made by some of the ubiquitous cargo bikes. That aside, Copenhagen is a cycling paradise, bikes everywhere, and the kind of people riding them who would never in a million years ride a bike in the UK.

That’s what strikes you. Everybody is a type, after all, and there are as many recognisable types in Copenhagen as there are anywhere. But in Copenhagen, they all ride bikes, all the time, in all weathers. Floppy haired men in smart suits. Sporty men and women in lycra. Very tall willowy blonde women in long coats. Hipsters. Hippies. Young mums and dads. Middle aged mums and dads. Older people, all genders. Ebikes, old bikes, cargo bikes, trikes, sit-up-and-beg bikes, fat bikes, sporty hybrids, racing bikes, in all the colours of the rainbow.

Anyway, I loved it. What a fantastic city to live and work in. And, it turns out, I do have a type. I love Danish women.
Fitter by degrees

October 2nd, 2022

Rowing with Josh (Apple Fitness+)

Just a couple of weeks into the rowing machine life, and I’m here to check in with myself. I may not look physically different (still on the same hole in the belt loop) but I am feeling better in all kinds of other ways.

It wasn’t too many months ago that I was struggling with hip pain and back spasms and finding it hard to do basic things like putting my socks on or doing up my shoelaces. I feel so much better in that respect it’s almost unbelievable. And not all to do with the rowing machine. This is to do with movement in general and walking in particular.

As if all that isn’t embarrassing enough, I’m ashamed to report that according to my Apple Fitness app, I only ‘worked out’ (meaning a walk or a ride, or whatever) eight times in June. No wonder I couldn’t reach my feet to pull my socks on. The count in July was 31; in August 28; in September 33. So the prescription is clear: move, move, move. You’re not necessarily going to lose weight; that’s never the way with exercise. But that sense of feeling old, stiff, immobile, that can be addressed.

I’m just back from a bike ride. I dumped Strava months ago, so there are no metrics on pace and speed. All I have is a kind of mindful sense of what hurts, how much it hurts, and so on. Another measure I have is what gear I’m using.

My ebike has 8 gears. I generally ride between 5th and 6th, in the zone where the assistance from the electric motor is actually tailing off to nearly nothing. In 5th, I’ll be doing around 25kph, or the legal upper limit for assistance on a pedal powered electric bike. In other words, I’m fit enough that the tiny bit of assistance I get at that speed is all I need. In 6th gear, you’re doing between 26kph and 29kph, with the assistance often cutting out altogether. All of which preamble is just to note that today I spent a lot more time in 6th gear than usual, and looking down at my bike’s display, I could see I was often charging up hills at around 26½ kph. All pretty good for me, and nothing was hurting too much.

I’m not sure how accurate my Apple Watch’s estimation of my VO2 max is (it’s only an SE, so doesn’t have all the available sensors), but it’ll do as a measure because I don’t want to do the maths. My Health app has been telling me my VO2 is low for ages now. At it’s worse, it was down at 19 (at my age, anything under 30 is poor, according to what I’ve read). I don’t really believe I’m that unfit, because I’m not that sedentary, but this estimate from the Watch is all I have. Anyway, two weeks of rowing has seen the Watch’s estimate rise up to 21, so things are looking up.

When my OH uses the machine, she just does it steadily for 15-30 minutes, because that’s what she enjoys. But I’ve been using the Apple Fitness+ workouts. I’ve surprised myself here, because if you’d asked me I would have said I would hate them. But I actually really like Josh of Rowing with Josh, and so I’ve been following his workouts of various lengths, which include “all out” intervals. Again, I’d have thought I was totally against this kind of thing, but I suppose I’ve always known that (outdoor) cycling had natural intervals, because you go up and down hills. So I’m sticking with Josh; apart from anything else, I can feel it working.
Stretching the point

August 29th, 2022

Twelve weeks or so ago, last half term, we were here in France and, as is my habit, I went for a walk around the village almost daily.

My wife’s house is halfway up a small mountain, and as I’ve said before, whichever way you turn (on foot or on a bike) you end up climbing fairly steep hills either immediately or soon thereafter.

The right turn out of our house takes you onto the steepest bit of the road up to the top village. It’s about a kilometre, all uphill, and most people would find themselves out of breath in fairly short order. The kind of out of breath where you cannot carry on a conversation.

Last half term, walking up that hill was hard. I would have to stop to breathe every couple of minutes, and you do find yourself breathing hard. Sometimes I run the first few tens of meters, because the cat will try to follow if you don’t sneak away from him, and then you really feel it.

My fitness has plummeted over the past year, largely because there was something up with my hip, a pain that wouldn’t go away. It took months, because of course it did, to get a doctor’s appointment and an x-ray and then a follow-up appointment. I was convinced that my bone spur, which I’ve had most of my life, had finally worn out my hip joint and that – at 59 – I was going to need a new hip.

Turns out, according to the doctor and then the physio I saw afterwards, there was nothing wrong with my joint. And, anyway, the bone spur is in the other hip. Oh. No arthritis in evidence. Oh. No, the problem was muscular. Ohhhh.

So now the problem was that during the months of feeling almost continual hip pain, I had not been moving enough and I was really unfit. Being unfit and in pain, I had also barely used my bike. I’ve properly fallen out of love with cycling over the past couple of years.

The solution, as with so many things in life, is stretching.

But I am really bad at stretching. I forget, or I can’t be bothered. No matter that I know it’s good for me, I very often – like right now – think about it and still don’t do it because I hate it. You’ll be shaking your head, wondering why someone can’t take five, ten minutes, to do a few stretches. I’ve got this really stupid mentality: if the results aren’t instantly beneficial, I don’t want to do it. There was one physio visit a couple of years ago that ended up being a good ol’ massage of what the therapist said were extraordinarily tight muscles. The effect was immediate: I felt like I was floating on air when I walked home. But have I tried to see a massage therapist since then? I have not. I am my father’s son.

It’s really pathological, and I won’t embarrass myself by listing all the reasons I can come up with why I won’t at least do stretches at any given moment.

While my relationship with stretching is problematic, one thing I have tried to do throughout this summer is move. Apple Watch users will be aware of the rings. One is for standing up at least 12 times a day; another is to notch up at least xx number of minutes of exercise per day (my setting was for 30, and now 35 minutes); and the third is to burn a certain number of calories through activity.

It’s during holidays that I sometimes struggle to close these rings, because I’ll often sit down to read in the shade on a stupidly hot day and I won’t move much.

I’ll confess that I haven’t used my bike much this summer – a handful of rides, none enjoyed. But I have tried to walk every day: either around the village, or on a loop through the woods, or around the lakes at Malsaucy. I did do one big hike over the mountain, too, but I really hated that, especially the coming back down. The issue there was that recent flash flooding has absolutely destroyed the traditional mountain paths, to the point where they’ve become steep and hazardous.

But as you can see from the screenshot above, I’ve done pretty well closing my rings over the past couple of months. I know there are a few days without the green dot, but they are few, and were usually on days where something prevented me following my normal routine. Airport runs, pizza nights, violent thunderstorms. My hip still hurts a bit, but a lot less than before, and now I know it’s just tight muscles, I’m not that concerned.

At the beginning of the summer, I would have to stop to breathe half a dozen times on that long kilometre up to the top village. For the past week or so, I’ve been able to walk up at a steady pace without stopping even once. Which is good, right?

I’ve just got to keep this up for the next 30 years.
Vuelta Skelter by Tim Moore

August 14th, 2021

Steven Appleby’s illustrations adorn each chapter

I’ve been feeling tired all day, weak legs, stiff all over, aching feet. It’s warm, 29ºC, the kind of muggy heat that makes you feel a bit sick. All of this following a 26km bike ride this morning. I’d wanted to set off early, but insomniac daughter was slow to get going. I offered to go on my own, but she wanted to come, so it was gone 9 o’clock by the time we set off down the hill. And the cool air on the way down, in the shade of the trees, was the last cool air we’d feel – all day, but certainly until the last painful grind up our hill, on wobbly legs and with my right foot burning, as usual.

And that’s my limit, an hour or so in the saddle and I’m done, and more or less useless for the rest of the day. Exercise! It’s good for you! It was the kind of ride that has you throwing your bib shorts in the bin as soon as you get undressed for the shower: those are too uncomfortable, you say, slamming the lid of the bin down.

That being my limit: the weak legs, the burning feet, is why I like to read Tim Moore’s various books of cycling adventure. There was his hilarious Tour de France opus, French Revolutions, and more recently his vintage Giro d’Italia travails, Gironimo! And now comes Vuelta Skelter, his retracing of the route of the 1941 Vuelta d’Espagna on a 40-year-old bike sold by the shop run by that race’s winner, Julián Berrendero.

Moore, as a man of a certain age, makes me feel better about my struggles on the bicycle, because he details his own struggles in such an entertaining way. It’s one of his great gifts as a writer that he can find 300 different ways to detail his pain and exhaustion without boring you. But whereas he is deliriously hungry and puking after 140km over mountains in the Spanish heat, I feel that way after 26km. He achieves feats of endurance that are really quite incredible, especially for a lone cyclist, and his various misadventures in hotels and bars and petrol stations around Spain are all part of the fun. A favourite passage:

…I wobbled into the first petrol station in a state of some disarray. There, in the shadow of a refuelling tractor, I struggled to ingest four bags of cheese puffs. It was all the apologetic attendant could offer me to eat, and as I wanly crunched through smelly handfuls of air and yellow dust, it felt as if the process was expending more calories than it replaced.

Moore’s refusal to take nutrition seriously is very funny, when you consider all the column inches dedicated to gels and electrolytes in the cycling press. He needs around 7000 calories a day, but these take the form of whole bottles of red wine, humungous sandwiches and unappetising chocolate pastries. He does have the odd gel, but what the (all right, this) reader envies is his ability to sit down of an evening and eat two whole pizzas – and still lose about 7 kilos over the 6 weeks of his ride.

All of this was taking place against the backdrop of the pandemic, as he manages to arrive in Spain and complete his adventure in the brief hiatus between the first and second lockdowns. More seriously, the 1941 Vuelta was only the third in that race’s history, and the first after the devastation of the Spanish Civil War. This lends the book a different tone to the others, as it’s impossible to escape the grim, brutal history of that conflict – especially as the race’s winner spent the previous 18 months in a concentration camp. Only 32 riders started the race, and less than 20 finished, in an era when the race organisers would confiscate drink bottles because of their belief that real athletes didn’t need to hydrate and when half the country was starving.

It still brings me up short to remember that Spain was a fascist dictatorship well into the 1970s, in the era during which many Brits experienced their first foreign summer holidays. So the darker sections of this book are a stark whiplashy counterpoint to Moore’s usual self-deprecating buffoonery.
Weak

August 2nd, 2021

Texting her sister: “Dad’s dying”

Oof, but the cycling has been harder than usual this summer. I do not have climbing legs at the best of times, but this year I have really not enjoyed my rides.

I do not get a kick out of suffering on the bike, I hate hills, and I do not have the power to weight ratio to manage big climbs. I don’t even belong in the same company as proper cyclists, which is one reason why I mostly ride solo.

But this year is particularly difficult, and I find myself making more excuses than usual not to ride.

I think there are a number of factors, starting with the wet spring and early summer. On top of everything else, I’m a fair weather cyclist, so when it rains as much as it has this year, I don’t get out. I’ve only commuted to work a handful of times. Towards the end of the summer term, when the weather was okay, I still didn’t cycle to work because circumstances dictated that I needed the extra hour in the morning to get things done.

On top of this, I haven’t ridden my road bike in France for a whole year. Normally, arriving at the end of July, I’d have had Whitsun half-term week and Easter to put some proper hill kilometres into my legs. But when I took the bike out on the first day of this holiday, it had been eleven months since I tackled a serious climb.

The legs are bad, but the lungs are worse. I’d gotten pretty good at keeping my breathing steady and under control when climbing hills, but this year I keep having to cry halt so I can get my heart and lungs under control. A couple of minutes is all it takes, but I’ve lost my faith.

This morning, the kid and I rode up to the St. Antoine forest, which is one of our favourite rides. Instead of climbing up the Planche des Belles Filles, you take a left turn towards the Ballon de Servance and ride up to the Goutte des Saules waterfall at St. Antoine, which is quite enough of an effort for me, thank you very much. But before you get to that left turn, you’re climbing up a false flat of about 11 kilometres – which means you’re travelling steadily uphill even before the road kicks up into the forest. And when we paused after that first 12km or so, I was coughing like a tubercular poet who’d been living on a diet of absinthe and opium. Felt so bad, sick with it. My daughter was texting her sister with her concerns. Please don’t let me conk out on her in the middle of a ride.

After that I rode on for a few hundred metres on wobbly legs before walking up a short steep bit, which rested my legs enough to get me the rest of the way to the waterfall.

And things turned around from there. We sat around for a decent interval, knowing we were stopping at my in-law’s on the way back, and waiting till my wife texted to say she was on her way there in the car. Elodie suggested I stick the bike in the back of the car to avoid the last climb, but I was feeling better.

The pleasure of this particular ride is the 12km all the way back down the valley, on a road that’s mostly not steep but always pointing slightly downhill. It’s fairly smooth, too, so you can get in a high gear and put some speed on. My legs are fine going down like that. I’m not a fan of steep descents, but this is my kind of road.

So we reached the in-laws and stopped for a while, some apple juice, some popcorn (!), and then we rode back up the hill to our place. And it was fine, really. No hyperventilating, knees and hips hurting (as per), but the road never seeming particularly steep. The apple juice got me there.

I choose to think that this mixed bag of a ride is a bit of a turning point. We have ambitions to ride around to Fresse and the Col de la Chevestraye, which is my absolute upper limit when I’m at my fittest. But maybe I’ll wait a couple more weeks to try that.
Hövding – the airbag for urban cyclists

June 11th, 2021

We all hate wearing masks, don’t we? And yet we wear masks to protect other people. I think it’s true also that we kind of hate (or at least used to) wearing seatbelts in the car. And yet we wear seatbelts because it is the law, and because we know it might save our lives one day. Young children often struggle with the need to be strapped in, and many parents I’m sure have struggled with a squirming toddler in the child safety seat.

When it comes to cycle helmets, I am that squirming toddler in a safety seat. I look across the water, at civilised countries like the Netherlands and Denmark, and I note that people ride bicycles in regular clothing, usually without a helmet. They do this because the real threat on the road is the car, and if you segregate cyclists from cars, everybody is safer.

I was on my bike and setting out from work the other day and – no more than 3 metres away from me – an elderly driver just pulled out of a junction into my path. I was wearing a helmet and I had my (bright) front light on, and he actually did see me. His window was down and he apologised as he continued to pull out in front of me forcing me to apply the brakes and stop in the middle of the road. ‘Sorry,’ he said, before driving about 15 metres down the road and turning right. ‘Are you though?’ I shouted after him, knowing he could hear me through his open window. ‘Because you still pulled out, didn’t you?’

He saw me and could have stopped but decided not to. Why? Because, in his mind, he didn’t want to be behind a cyclist. For 15 metres. He didn’t want to be delayed, in case I was slow at covering that 15 metres? And ignoring the fact that there were hundreds of schoolchildren around, and coaches and buses, and loads of other cars trying to pull over and pick up kids too lazy to walk. But none of that mattered. None of those other vehicles or hundreds of people were going to get in his way: no, it was the cyclist he needed to get ahead of. For 15 metres.

That’s one incident in a lifetime of watching motorists behave like dicks, especially when bicycles are around. Pass me like you’d pass a horse, I always want to say. But people on horses are worth more than people on bicycles, and I don’t make the rules.

I always wear a helmet when cycling to work because there are young people around, and I wouldn’t want to be accused of setting a bad example. Also, I never want to have the were you wearing a helmet? conversation when a white van driver knocks me into a ditch. But I hate it, and I only feel vulnerable around motor vehicles. But–but-but cyclists are always in the way. Yes we are, just like children and dogs and horses and tractors. You share the road, you do not have exclusive rights, and the law does not recognise your desire to drive fast in order to arrive home 45 seconds quicker than you otherwise would.

All of which leads me to this: the world’s safest cycling helmet isn’t a helmet. Furthermore, most of the helmets available to buy in the shops – even the very expensive ones – are more or less useless in a crash.

Among helmets rated as below average in performance by Folksam Insurance are the £130 Kask Mojito and the £100 Lazer Urbanize. Then there is the distinctly average Poc Kortal at £220. Among those who come out at decently above average are helmets costing as little as £45 (Specialized Align II), so buying a helmet is a complete crap shoot unless you do your research.

Which brings us to the safest of them all, the one that is not just twice as good but eight times as good as the average bike helmet: Hövding, the airbag for your head.

The independent French testing institute Certimoov at the University of Strasbourg has said that,

‘The airbag’s protection against brain injury is better than any other helmet ever tested by the testing institute.’

I liked the idea of this, wearing something around your neck rather than on your head. I liked the idea of my head not getting hot, and I liked the idea of not looking like a dork, and of not dealing with the over complicated fiddly strap arrangements. Most of all, I liked the idea of something that was actually going to do some good in a crash.

But the price is a bit eye-watering, especially if you’ve never spent more than £50 or £60 on a helmet. But you acknowledge that you’re wearing it to protect your brain, and then have to wrestle with the idea of spending almost as much as some people want to spend on a bike—for a helmet. The Hövding web site has it at £349, but the (sole) UK reseller has it for £249, at least for now.

So I’ve been thinking about it for a couple of years. And just last week, I was prompted by the latest research to bite the bullet.

The first surprise/disappointment when the Hövding arrives is how heavy the box is. Out of the helmet frying pan into the fire of a heavy weight around your neck? Oof. More on the weight to come.

The first step is to charge it up using the supplied USB cable. The connector appears to be non-standard, so don’t lose it! Once fully charged, you adjust the circumference to your particular size. Then zip on the cover – other covers are available, including one with glass beads to shine bright white in the dark. This is so that motorists have an additional thing to ignore when they pull out in front of you.

You then zip up at the front of your neck (something I found quite tricky, because you can’t really see what you’re doing.

The Hövding needs to be activated to work, which is something you don’t do until you are in situ on the bike and ready to pedal off. Activation is a simple matter of pulling a tab across and clicking it in. A reassuring sound plays.

There is of course an app. You can connect the Hövding to your phone and it will report on the battery charge (it supposedly offers 15 hours of run time) but also text home in the event of an accident.

This sounds useful but I don’t really want to run this app when I ride if it means not running Strava. I’ll have to give it some thought. The Hövding app does track your rides, but if you’ve invested time and effort into Strava, it’s a decision.

Which brings us to the riding experience.

The good news is that the weight of the thing seems to disappear when you are on the bike and in the riding posture. The centre of gravity seems to work in its favour. I wore it first on a fairly muggy but grey day, and I have to say I felt conscious of it around my neck the whole time. On the other hand, it was a novel experience and I was bound to feel its presence.

It’s important to note that Hövding is designed for urban commuters and leisure riding, and is not going to be for road racers and mountain bikers. I was somewhat concerned that the heavily potholed roads of my commuting route might set off the airbag, but that didn’t happen (🤞🏻). The centre of gravity effect I mentioned above would not work for a road rider in the drops, and the shocks and jumps of a mountain bike ride might be too violent.

I wasn’t sure how much freedom of movement I’d have, so that’s something to get used to. Leaning down for my drink in the bottle cage felt odd, with the increased weight of the Hövding on the back of my neck making itself known as I bent forward. And looking over my shoulder to check the closeness of traffic felt awkward. Except that it often does, and I have got a trapped nerve in my shoulder at the moment, which doesn’t help.

In the end, this feels like more to get used to than I was hoping, but I am going to persevere. Faced with a choice between a possibly ineffective and uncomfortable bike helmet and a slightly uncomfortable neck collar airbag that actually works, it’s a no-brainer.
Why you don’t need a kickstarter to buy an ebike

May 11th, 2021
Here’s something I need to get off my chest, so much so that I caved in and gave this post a meaningful title. Older readers will know I am an advocate and owner of an ebike, but one of my pet hates is the gimmicky ebike Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign. For one thing, there’s no need, of which more below. For another, yuck. I hate capitalism and I hate entrepreneurs, so I don’t feel any more warmly towards a business just because it’s (claiming to be) indie. Petit bourgeoisie, whatever. You’re designing a thing and then getting it made where the labour is cheapest (at some mega factory, no doubt) and trying to make a profit. Excuse me if I don’t worship at your capitalist feet.

This story alleging that a funding campaign appears to have been flogging an already-available bike from China is an emblem for me. The thing that makes Kickstarter/Indiegogo etc kick when it comes to ebikes is simply the kind of person who doesn’t do their research, and therefore backs something because they either think they’re getting a bargain or thinks that there’s something unique and clever and innovative about the ebike in question.

Smart phone connectivity is often a thing that attracts people, I reckon, or some kind of anti-theft feature. But both of these things are available on the market, and all you need to do is research.

The market is broad. And, yes, there are some large companies involved — but relative to other businesses, no bike manufacturer is really that huge. In fact, even without Indiegogo or whatever, there is a healthy competition in the bike and ebike market that puts other sectors to shame.

Most bikes use similar components. But the remarkable thing about cycling is that there is still competition even for those. Gears and shifters etc. could come from Shimano, SRAM, or Campagnolo — even Rohloff for hub gears. Motors could come from Bosch, Shimano, Fazua, Bafang, Brose, Kalkhoff and more. With this open market in components, anybody can come along with a frame design and put together a bike. And plenty do! All of the main manufacturers, from Bianchi and Giant to Specialized and Trek offer ebikes with a variety of setups and systems, and even the smaller/elite players, from Ribble and Scott and Pinarello and Williers and beyond all offer systems. Then there are the folders, the cargo bikes, and the ebike specialists, from Moustache and Riese and Müller to Kalkhoff, the latter of whom made the bike I ride. Then there are your out of town big box stores like Halfords and Decathlon, who offer their own brand bikes, or sell household names like Boardman and Raleigh.

In other words, it’s a healthy market with an already bewildering range of options and configurations: if you’re a fan of free market capitalism, it’s working – probably – better with bicycles than it is with, say, mobile phones. Prices range from the low end (around £1000 for an ebike) to the you-could-get-a-car kind of money you’d pay for a carbon frame from an elite manufacturer or a useful cargo bike with a belt drive and an extra battery. And while I accept that it’s a lot to wade through, I still don’t think that’s a reason for backing a kickstarter which offers nothing over and above the main market (and – whispers – might even be a bit shit). There is already something for everyone, from the couldn’t-tell-it-was-an-ebike lightweight road bikes to the specialised, whether you’re looking for a commuting bike with built-in lights and a frame lock or a fat bike for an alpine hire scheme.

And there’s no real trick to knowing where to start with all this information. Just look at countries where cycling is safe and culturally accepted (Holland, Denmark, even Germany) and see what’s available. Check out ebiketips or the Electric Bike Review YouTube channel.

My final tip is to check out particular manufacturers who offer a wide range of models and styles.
1. Kalkhoff really specialise in bulletproof, practical ebikes, although you won’t find a lightweight road racing model in their range.
2. Riese and Müller offer cutting edge designs from touring and commuting through car replacements and some configure-to-order options, although always pricey. They’ll do you a cruiser but not a racer, but if you want something that looks like it might be a Kickstarter design, look here.
3. Moustache have a good range of attractive designs, including road and gravel bikes, in step over and step through frame styles. They can be pricey and there are a lot of configurations with some fairly frustrating component choices. For example, Shimano 105 in one place but Tiagra elsewhere on the bike. In the end, you’ll get the one that fits your budget.
4. Trek have a great range, and offer some excellent commuting options, on the one hand, and some decent lighter weight road bikes at the other. The latest Trek road range are fairly typical of what you can get elsewhere. The big advantage with Trek is that they do have showrooms.
In terms of the latter, your location will dictate what you can easily see. A trip to Milton Keynes for example, and you can see the range in the Trek shop, but also visit Rutland Cycles and see other options. There’s an Evans too, but they always seem to have a limited range of ebikes — though this situation might have changed since I was there. Away from the town centre, there’s Phil Corley cycles, too, though again I don’t know how much floor space they dedicate to ebikes. Anyway, one trip to MK, and you can visit three or four different bike shops, plus a Halfords and a Decathlon, which means at least five locations in one day.

You will have to pay for something decent. Electric bikes add at least £500 over the price of a regular bike, so a £500-ish model becomes £1000 as an ebike, with lots of compromises in terms of equipment and components. Down at the low end, you’ll be lucky to get a range of more than 50km on the ‘Eco” setting. My own bike has a range of about 70km even on the highest, “Turbo” setting, but this will set you back considerably more.

As with all bikes, it’s worth thinking about (and upgrading) your contact points (handlebar/grips, saddle, pedals) but it’s also important to think about practicality and quality. For example, if like me you have no mechanical aptitude, consider hub gears and a carbon belt drive. If you want to be able to put it on the back/roof of your car consider how much it weighs. If you want a bike that weighs less that 15kg, you’re looking at at least £2400, I reckon. If you want a kind of car replacement with lights, a good battery, and some way to carry panniers/bags, you’re probably looking at something closer to £3000.

And not a scam in sight.
Through the Arched Window (boring cycling post)

February 20th, 2021

I have written a great deal over the years about my various aches and pains on the bike, and my ongoing search for shoe nirvana. Short version: My right foot has some arch issue (fallen, or just too high?) and is painful when both walking and cycling. In terms of cycling, I get a numb, burning sensation that grows steadily worse until, about an hour into a ride, I need to get off the bike and take my foot out of my shoe. This happens when walking, too. Over the years, I’ve tried multiple shoe/insert/pedal combinations, and I’ve occasionally even thought I’d cracked the problem, only for it to recur later on.

The best cycling shoes I’ve found are Shimano SH-CT80 which I don’t think are available any more, which is a shame because I’d buy them again. I got them in a size 44 which might be why they’ve been better for my over-high arches. They’re not proper road racing shoes, but in this case comfort trumps correct kit. Anyway, I prefer to ride my bike(s) these days wearing clothing that at least looks like everyday wear. I don’t mind a padded undershort or technical materials, but I like it to look as much like I’m wearing regular clothes as possible.

But in these shoes I’ve tried a variety of insoles and footbeds, none of which have been entirely satisfactory. Having stood on a tiled floor with wet feet, I’ve established that my arches are either “high” or “very high” — and that one of my problems might be that my footbeds are actually too cushioned. That what I probably need is a footbed that’s as thin as possible, to give my feet more wiggle room.

So no more gel insoles or extra cushioning. For this season, I’m introducing the Sole Active Thin, which is an eye-watering £38. But it is specifically designed for “tight fitting” sports shoes (and, frankly, all shoes are “tight fitting” on my deformed feet). It’s also heat-mouldable, so you can speed up the process of it shaping itself around your foot by putting them in the oven for three minutes and then standing in the target shoe for a while. This is all very counterintuitive if you’ve spent years thinking that you needed more cushioning in your shoes. It also adds considerably to the price of a pair of sneakers or shoes. It’s not as if cycling shoes were cheap in the first place. £100 is more or less mid-priced. Sole also do sandals, if you like that kind of thing (I don’t).

But I’ve been out three times on my bike in 2021 and so far (🤞🏻) these Sole footbeds seem to be working quite well. Now, I’ve had false dawns before. But today I deliberately pushed myself to my usual upper limit (25 kilometres, at which point my right foot is usually on fire), and although I had some mild pain, it was nothing like as bad as usual. So impressed am I that I just ordered another pair for my Ecco walking shoes. I like to think that, during lockdown, I’ve kept the economy afloat singlehanded, or in this case single-footed.
Updates and Observations

September 20th, 2020
1. I’ve written about my problem thumbnail before. It’s probably no surprise my ageing fingernails have grooves in them, but that one of them grows with a groove so deep that it splits every time is distressing. And I’ve tried so many products over the years in hopes of a miracle cure, including Miracle Cure. Five or six different Nailtiques products, including oil, moisturiser, protein formulae: none helped. Treatments for ageing nails, base coats, groove fillers, nail therapy liquids, Sally Hansen’s aforementioned Miracle Cure, and three different Eveline Cosmetics therapies: none helped. I reserve particular contempt for Eveline’s “Diamond Nail Professional Therapy” which stands out as the most useless of them all, chipping hopelessly within 24 hours of application. My current treatment is Nail Envy strengthener. I have no hopes: I’m simply applying a coat to glue the two halves of my thumbnail, which I keep short so it can’t catch on things, together.
2. This year’s Tour de France, against all expectations, has been great. There was very little British interest (one of the Yates brothers finished in the top 10) following the withdrawal of G and Froome. Earlier in the summer, I watched re-runs of 2018, which was oddly comforting at the height of lockdown. I was convinced that a September Tour would be beset by bad weather, but the only ironic rain was right at the beginning, down in Nice. While we’ve all been tutting the gathered crowds on some mountain stages (particularly those horrible people who scream directly into the faces of the riders as they pass), for the most part it seems to have been well-run. And when there haven’t been crowds, you really didn’t notice. The truth is the face screamers are horrible at the best of times: it’s just another way that the sociopaths who live among us reveal themselves. Yesterday’s stage, passing very close to home-in-France, over hills I’ve ridden myself (though not the last one) was actually one of the most exciting and dramatic I can remember.
3. The ITV television coverage of the TDF here in the UK has been excellent, as ever. Although the team were based down in Kent, instead of following the tour, they still managed their usual informed and informative discussions. Chris Boardman was back, which was great, and his short films were excellent. Whoever edits the musical montages at the end of the highlights show deserves an award, and I’d love to see a Director’s Cut of their whole-Tour-in-two-minutes clip. I could do without the rider interviews, however. The word “yeah” does a lot of heavy lifting in these mostly content-free interviews, and without a personality like Wiggo or Cavendish, nobody has much else to say. The International Cycling English lexicon mainly consists of short bursts of staccato boilerplate, peppered with ummms and punctuated by yeah. And that includes the British riders. Only Green Jersey winner Sam Bennett moved the needle, and that was just because he sobbed instead of speaking.
4. And, oh, the humanity, but the advertising! As I said, ITV do a good job, but Jesus Christ the advertising is dire. In the evening, for the highlights, you get a break every 8 minutes or so, which is bad enough. The Zwift music is playing on a loop in my head, perhaps forever. But it’s during the afternoon live coverage that you encounter the absolute worst that this industry has to offer. Adverts for life/health insurance interspersed with charity advertising so distressing it really ought to be banned. All of this presumably aimed at an assumed audience of fixed-income shut-ins who are easily manipulated by heart-wrenching scenes of sick children and abused donkeys. Needless to say, none of these charities is ever going to get a penny of my money.
5. Meanwhile, of course, the virus in France is now peaking higher than it did in the Spring. And, just like then, the UK is not far behind. And although the death rate is not all that high yet, you can’t help thinking that all the scoffed-at predictions of the Nudge Unit types – who argued that we’d all get Lockdown Fatigue if we jumped too early – have come true. It’s hard to know what will be best. Every trip out that involves wearing a mask is horrible, a situation not helped by completely irrational and onerous mask-wearing policies at work. I’m sure we’ll all be instructed to have open windows in classrooms this winter, even though that might be counter-indicated by the science. According to a recent edition of the BBC’s Inside Science, humidity matters a lot, and it might be better to keep windows closed and use a humidifier (about 50% humidity is what you’re aiming for).
6. I keep forgetting to call the chimney sweep.
Four wheels good – two wheels better?

July 28th, 2020
Yes, an e-bike fairing could be a Thing

While I’m not quite at the stage where I change my mind about Johnson and the Tories, I am slightly heartened to read about the proposed investment in healthy travel and “Ofsted for cycling infrastructure”. If I don’t think about the proposals too much I could almost believe something might really… happen… this… time.

I wrote a couple of months ago about all the column inches that had been filled with the tappety tap tap of journalists transforming our society after Covid-19. And here at the arse end of the pandemic, with the roads filled with cars and pollution back to normal, we finally see the faint twitching of the corpse of British Society (1945-1979), and the kind of joined up thinking that has been sadly lacking in the higher echelons of government of late.

Public health crisis you say? Matters made worse by pre-existing conditions you say? Pre-existing conditions less likely if more people shift their arses and move, you say?

Hmmm…

It all seems very hopeful, but just visiting Abroad makes you realise that the UK has problems that can’t be fixed by a promise to invest in safer cycling.

I was in Basel today, just across the border to Switzerland from France. It’s a proper European city, an old town on one side of the wide and green Rhine, and a modern city on the other, complete with bold architectural strokes and a fully integrated public transport infrastructure, in which trams, buses and trains share space with bicycles and, oh, what’s that thing? A car? Oh yes, cars: last, and least.

Even compared with most of France, you can tell you’re in another country. From gnomic road markings to apparently eccentric behaviours and a different font on the road signs, you know you’re somewhere Foreign. You see bikes sharing the road (and pavement) with pedestrians, trams and cars in cities like Strasbourg and Mulhouse, but a place like Belfort? A bit behind. And Paris? Forgeddabahtit.

We went into a multi-storey car park. It was Tuesday, about 10:30 in the morning. In most cities, you’d expect to struggle to find a space. Nope. Why drive when you can take a tram or cycle?

Your first taste of knowing Basel is different comes when you approach a junction and you can’t work out if you have priority. It’s like prices in shops: if you have to ask, you definitely can’t afford it. You don’t know, so you slow down, and then a cyclist just breezes out from the side street right across your path. You notice that cyclists seem very, um, confident. Hardly any of them wear helmets (a sign of cycling confidence: the fewer helmets you see, the safer the cycling). They barely seem to even look at junctions, so sure are they that they have priority. Because of course they do. People who are under their own power ought to have priority over those who can just stick their foot down and have an engine do all the work.

You see cyclists riding alongside trams, with very little road space, but at the same time secure in the knowledge that the tram isn’t going to do anything unpredictable. It’s not even what I’d call segregated, in the way that so many people in the UK want it to be. I’d like it to be segregated in the UK, but it doesn’t have to be, as long as everyone has the right attitude.

There are bikes everywhere, so many bikes. New bikes, old bikes, e-bikes, recumbent bikes, trikes, e-scooters, cargo bikes, bikes pulling trailers, being ridden by everyone from beautiful 20-somethings to grizzled veterans. And they’re lined up everywhere alongside the road, not secured to lampposts, nor cycle racks, just locked to themselves. Nobody seems worried about theft. What?

Ugh. So I see at least ~~three~~ four major problems in trying to introduce This Kind of Thing to the UK.
1. A Distinct Lack of Trams. We used to have them, oh yes. And some places, like Manchester, even put them back. But most places got rid of trams when they got rid of the branch lines of the railway. What was the reason, again? Something something greedy cunts lah-de-dah. Something like that.
2. Class. There have already been (not even) post-pandemic objections to temporary cycling measures becoming permanent. No surprise that it’s Tory councillors rolling back the years. The problem with the UK is always that people in cars think they are better than people on bikes and on foot. And people in better cars think they’re even better than everyone else. People driving luxury cars are less likely to stop at zebra crossings, and you know they’d be a lot less likely to give priority to a cyclist. I can’t help but be hyper-aware of this kind of behaviour. I live next to a school. For years, the school has been trying to persuade school run parents that irresponsible parking blocks access to emergency vehicles. But still that white Maserati comes all the way up to the school gates and gets plonked right where it shouldn’t be. Walk? Moi? Have you seen my car? It’s Italian, you know.
3. Theft. The UK has a problem with bike theft. As long as some people are happy to buy “second hand” bikes at bargain prices, there’s a market in stolen bikes. And because most people don’t value cycling (see 2), people resist proper security, which (I’m afraid) costs. You cannot get away with a simple cable lock, because those are precisely the locks most targeted by thieves. Manufacturers could help, by incorporating frame locks and even tracking devices. Employers could help, by offering secure sheds and cages; councils could help, by giving over some car parking space to better cycle parking; and everyone could help by replacing their shit cable locks with something Sold Secure. Anything that requires special tools, or more than about 30 seconds to break is going to help. But really: why should people have to think about this stuff when the citizens of Basel obviously don’t? Whisper it: there’s something wrong with us.
4. And finally: the weather. We live on a rainy island in the North Atlantic. We have two days of sun, declare a heat wave, rip off our shirts, and get third degree burns. Anyone who commits to cycling as a lifestyle is going to be rudely awakened by wind, rain, flash floods, and more. Of course we’re talking about this wonderful cycling future in the middle of summer. Come November, there’ll be a meeting and everyone bar one hardcore geezer with a dewdrop on the end of his red nose will drive to get to it. I’m personally amazed that the fairing isn’t yet a thing on ebikes at least (see picture above). Any motorcyclist will tell you that even a modest fairing will offer protection from wind and rain while improving aerodynamics. Perfect, I’d have thought, for eking out the range and the battery life of an ebike. But no. Because there’s the other problem: there’s too much of the macho in cycling culture; people are hard.
Green shoots? I don’t want to end on a pessimistic note. Let me instead mention something that is new. Here in France where we stay, they’ve made efforts recently to improve cycling infrastructure. And, thanks in large part to regular visits by the Tour de France, cycling round here is ubiquitous. There’s a little bit too much branded/sponsored lycra, not enough people in ordinary clothes, but you see lots of people on bikes tackling these hills. A lot of them are wiry and obviously very fit older men. And this year, something new: the old men have been joined by old women. I have seen, this year, a lot of much older women out on bikes. Sometimes with their wiry old man, and sometimes on their own. It really is a sight you almost never see in the UK.

Hopeful, no? Do these people feel safe on their bikes? Clearly, safe-r. French motorists are notoriously psychopathic/suicidal, but nobody expects to drive around here and not encounter solo cyclists and group rides. It’s a fact of life. The roads are in much better condition (and much more frequently upgraded) than in the UK, so cyclists face fewer pothole hazards. But they are mostly wearing helmets, so we’re not there yet. When people start leaving their helmets at home, like they do in the Netherlands and Denmark, then we’ll be safe.