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Carbon fibre is so old hat. 2013’s must-buy Christmas bike is wooden – and comes in a flat pack.
The Sandwichbike is the brainchild of Dutch designer Basten Lejh. Its curious name comes from its construction method: a sandwich of two pieces of weather-coated plywood.
In true Ikea style, the flat pack includes all the tools needed to make the bike – and, indeed, the diagrams have more than a touch of Ikea about them. Assembly is claimed to take just 30 minutes.
The beech plywood comes from a forest just outside the German factory where the bikes are made. Four aluminium ‘smart cylinders’ provide the links between the two halves of the frame and the wheels. Wood might not sound like the most robust of materials, but the designers claim: “Enormous weight was put on the seat, frame and wheels, and the bottom bracket was tested up to 100,000 times, all to simulate a bike’s life on the road.”
A singlespeed bike with a ‘coaster brake’ (pedal backwards to slow it down), it’s intended principally for urban use. It comes in one size, 51cm.
The Sandwichbike costs €799 plus €25 delivery – around £680 at current rates. Find out more at sandwichbikes.com.
Busy employment sites around Cambridge are to become easier to access by bike, with the construction of three new cycleways in the New Year.
The three routes, funded by the Government’s Cycle City Ambition Fund, will run:
The three routes are all designed to serve hi-tech business estates, and make it easier and safer for people to commute to work by bike.
All three cycleways will be 2.5 metre shared-use paths. However, Cambridgeshire County Council admits that the Granta Park route will be compromised where the A11 crosses, with limited space under the bridge. To begin with, it plans to provide advisory on-road cycle lanes and a footway – “which, due to physical constraints, will be rather narrow”. In the longer term, the Council is considering making the slip-road one-way for motor traffic, and giving half of it over to cyclists and pedestrians.
Work will start on all three routes in February 2014, with completion between May and August.
London’s Cycle Superhighway 2 has been hastily ‘unpainted’ at Bow Roundabout, after a coroner described the route as “an accident waiting to happen”.
CS2’s terrible accident record has dominated cycling news for weeks, following further deaths and the inquest into Brian Dorling’s death at Bow Roundabout in 2011. Most recently, Venera Minakhmetova was killed by a lorry at the roundabout on November 13th.
According to London blogger Diamond Geezer, TfL has now removed the blue paint at the roundabout that gave the illusion of a dedicated cycle lane. Coroner Mary Hassell expressly criticised this at the inquest, saying “Motorists and cyclists are confused about who has right of way and the lane lulls riders into a false sense of security.”
Andrew Gilligan, the Mayor of London’s ‘cycling commissioner’, wrote a Guardian article in response to the media attention in which he claimed “We should not assume, as so many have, that the latest fatalities were the fault of the road design”. TfL has yet to announce any concrete plans to improve safety at the roundabout.
For one of Britain’s premier cycling cities, York has been strangely bereft of a cycling café – until now.
Your Bike Shed, next to Micklegate Bar, opened this month promising “a comfortable and friendly meeting place for food and coffee enthusiasts whilst supporting cycling culture and the experience of riding”. Curiously, the inspiration came not from the Netherlands, Denmark or even London – but from Bangkok, where according to founders Adele Procter and Martin Harman, “cafés and workshops of this kind are the norm”.
As well as the essentials of coffee, beer and cake, YBS has a basement gallery which doubles as a showcase for local art (and arty bike frames) and a meeting space. The on-site mechanics offer bike repairs including a fixed-price ‘menu’ for the most common work.
Your Bike Shed is at 148/150 Micklegate; their website is www.yourbikeshed.co.uk.
Hereford’s new cycle bridge, one of the Sustrans Connect2 projects, is to open to the public on Tuesday 10th December.
The bridge over the River Wye at Rotherwas will link the east of the city, around Tupsley and Eign Hill, with the Rotherwas Industrial Estate – providing a safe way for cyclists to get to work. But it also forms part of a wider ‘Greenway’ from the city centre, starting at the eastern gate of Hereford Cathedral.
The ultimate intention is to continue the route as National Cycle Network route 44 to the village of Holme Lacy, and from there along country lanes towards Ross-on-Wye and the Wye Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Sustrans’ local manager Henry Harbord said:
“This project is all about giving people the opportunity to make ‘everyday’ journeys by bike or on foot. Once open, it will help us towards our ambition to double the number of journeys under five miles made by foot, bike or public transport.”
New paths are being created on either side of the bridge, though those on the southern side won’t be fully open until 20th December.
You can follow construction of the bridge at its unofficial Facebook page.
Made in the Cotswolds. Published by Éditions Système D Ltd.
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