Cycling is set to take a centre-stage role in London’s East Festival, which starts this Friday, with bike polo and a the Cycle East series of concerts, in which people are encouraged to use bikes to hop between venues, among the featured attractions.
Cycle East takes place on Sunday, and features three concerts in different locations – The London Gypsy Orchestra at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, Sweet Billy Pilgrim at the Toynbee Studios, and Soweto Kinch at Rich Mix.
Each artist plays three sets, starting at 2pm, 4pm and 6pm, meaning that you can visit the venues in whichever order you please, with guided rides taking cyclists between the concerts.
East London is, of course, the UK spiritual home of bike polo, with no fewer than 17 teams now competing in the London Bike Polo League, although the sport dates back to the 1890s when it was dream up by a retired cyclist in County Wicklow, Ireland.
On Saturday, Spitalfields Market hosts a bike polo demonstration tournament to tie in with the East Commonwealth Games – bike polo is a big thing in India, hence its inclusion as one of the sports connected to India being showcased at the festival ahead of this year’s Commonwealth Games, which take place in Delhi.
Other events that will be featured along with bike polo at Spitalfields Market on Saturday are Kabbadi, which dates back a mere 4,000 years and is said to combine wrestling with rugby – although from the write-up on the Spitalfields wesite, British Bulldog also springs to mind – and the board game, Carrom.
The magazine Time Out has produced a full guide to the festival, which gives details of these and other events, and you can download a copy here.
I'd agree there are a lot people who want no change whatsoever (or rather just don't think about change, busy getting on with life). Until...
I like how drivers make the case for making monitoring covert, not overt.
She seemed a bit upset about a minor misjudgement that could have killed someone and is going to cause months of stress and inconvenience.
No we don't agree, personally I would take primary, even if only for a short period although I can understand why some riders might not want to...
And which looks very like the bag produced by indy bag manufacturer Wizard Works…...
If it was a 'no vehicles' sign (all white circle centre), it would mean cyclists could ride in the hours that HGVs and disabled drivers are allowed...
The bit at the start and end looks like a cycle lane, but the bit they drive on looks just like a patched filter lane for traffic lights.
Hey, you 4 execs helped run a company into the ground and have no jobs anymore... Come work for us because you have great experience in the...
£11.5k for a bike weighing over 8kg that's 2 fingers to customers let alone UCI
I'm going to show my bike a picture of this shed and tell it, "If you don't behave..."