Why do cycle rates vary so much across English cities? A look at why some cities may have high cycle rates, but in others a cyclist is a rare sight.

  Cities / boroughs with the highest rates of cycling. Measured by cycling at least once a month. The top three Cycling Cities / boroughs are Cambridge 50% , Isles of Scilly 41%  Oxford. 33% The areas with lowest rates of cycling in England are Barking and Dagenham 8% Hillingdon 8% Blackburn with Darwen 7% […]

Way back in 2008, I started a series on the advantages of bicycles . Like many good intentions, such as training on a turbo, doing ‘core  strength exercises’, stretching e.t.c. this series of bicycle benefits fell by the wayside. But, better late than never – after a gap of four years, I’ve decided to publish, […]

I was furiously blogging away today – ‘Warming up on a turbo’  in the morning. The French austerity budget for my economics blog in the afternoon. What a life. Everything was going very well. Except my astute cycling readers may have wondered what the French national debt has to do with improving your cycling fitness. […]

One of the biggest motivations for transport choice is simply – which is fastest? When the train came along, you could suddenly travel from London to Bristol in four hours – rather than a couple of days travel by stage coach. No matter how much people complained about trains (and they did even in the […]

It seems every  month (or every week if you read the Daily Mail) there is some comment piece in a newspaper along the lines of: “I don’t mind cyclists – I watched a bit of it on the Olympics. But, really cyclists a bunch of smug, lycra clad tofu nosed urban terrorists who drive my […]

In 2003, Tyler Hamilton, a former teammate of Lance Armstrong,  finished 4th in the Tour de France – despite having a broken collarbone. It was one of the most gutsy rides in the history of the sport. He was widely regarded as a nice guy, a great athlete with a supreme capacity to endure pain. […]