BBC Radio 4 has today launched a two-week, ten part series called On Your Bike, presented by Martin Ellis and addressing the history of the bicycle chronologically in 15-minute episodes.
All episodes air at 1545 – a handy time to take a quarter of an hour out of the day for to listen in with a cup of tea and spot of tiffin, if you ask us, and if you missed today’s episode, BBC says it will be up ‘soon’ on the iPlayer.
Tomorrow’s Episode 2 looks at “Hobby Horses, velocipedes and penny farthings, the early evolution of the bicycle, and subsequent episodes this week address how “The development of the safety bicycle allows everyone to take to the road,” (Wednesday), “Cycling, suffragettes and socialism, political pioneers of the open road,” (Thursday) and “The new craze for cycling inspires artists, musicians, writers, sportsmen and gamblers.”
The series resumes next Monday, again at 1545, with Episode 6 which relates how “The bicycle goes to war as thousands sign up to join cyclist battalions in 1914,” and the remaining episodes will be aired at the same time throughout the rest of the week, although no specific details are available as yet.
Born in Scotland, Simon moved to London aged seven and now lives in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds with his miniature schnauzer, Elodie. He fell in love with cycling one Saturday morning in 1994 while living in Italy when Milan-San Remo went past his front door. A daily cycle commuter in London back before riding to work started to boom, he's been news editor at road.cc since 2009. Handily for work, he speaks French and Italian. He doesn't get to ride his Colnago as often as he'd like, and freely admits he's much more adept at cooking than fettling with bikes.