Bring on the Bikes

Bike hire scheme comes to London next summer

As anyone who has ever cycled through Richmond Park or down the Thames path knows, London is better by bike.

Even if you don't have your own Brompton, by this time next year we'll all be able to see the city from behind the handlebars of a bike. Yes, Londoners, the good news announced this month is that we will get our very own bike hire scheme - along the same lines as the hugely popular Vélib in Paris - next summer.

An even better comparison is Montreal's BIXI scheme - who've been sub-contracted to supply the bikes and docking stations. TfL announced it has awarded the contract to Serco who already run the Dockland's Light Railway and the Woolwich Ferry as well as looking after the traffic signs for Transport for London. Serco has teamed up with BIXI and if the Montreal model is anything to go by, we can hire bikes for around £3 for 24 hours, subscribe for a month or a year, and lock them up in a different location from where we started.

Details of the London scheme already revealed indicate there'll be 6,000 bicycles available to hire at 400 cycle stations, all within Zone 1, an area covering approximately 44km squared. A total of 10,200 docking points should ensure users can return bicycles to the docking point they want to. This all sounds very sensible.

No doubt helped by the fact that 'Boris Loves Bikes' (he turned up to cut the ribbon of the relaunched and uber upmarket Langham hotel looking slight wind swept from his bike ride there), there's a major push on biking from the powers that be. Their aim is to increase cycling in London by 400 per cent by 2025 (compared to 2000 levels). That's good news for anyone who wants to see more cycle paths, better bike parking and more inspired ideas such as the bike hire scheme.

Another annual biking highlight is coming up next month. The Mayor is hosting the London Skyride (formerly the Freewheel) on Sunday 20th September, when the roads around central London will be closed off to cars and thousands of cyclists replace petrol with pedal power. It's free but you need to sign up if you want to take part. I've got my place already.

More good news comes in the shape of planned Cycle Superhighways due to open next year and set to improve commuter routes from outer to central London. The first two routes, due to open in May 2010, will run from Barking to Tower Gateway and from South Wimbledon to Bank. By the end of 2012 a total of 12 clearly marked, easy-to-use routes will link up the suburbs and the city.

I'm a lady who likes to bike but I must admit an aversion to the prevalence of Lycra that seems to occur among those who take cycling seriously. There's really no excuse to wear quite such tight fitting, shiny fabrics - 40-something men, take note.

Seems I'm not the only to take offence. Just lately, The Observer ran a cycling special, with the focus on bikers who "wouldn't be seen dead in Lycra". Some had taken this abhorrence of stretchy sportswear so far that they would prefer to wear, well, nothing at all. This year's World Naked Bike Ride in London saw 1,000 people peddling through the city's streets with nothing but their bike helmets - or perhaps some body paint - on. Quite a sight when you're innocently walking down Oxford Street, expecting nothing more outrageous than some serious bargains at Top Shop.

The Sunday newspaper feature also introduced me to the brilliant CycleChic.co.uk gals. These plucky women have some excellent advice on how to travel on two wheels while avoiding anything skin tight, (thank you, thank you). With their useful website blog and shop they have proved that you can look stylish and cycle at the same time.

Encouraged by friends who've been serious about cycling for five years and more, I've invested in a lovely Giant mountain bike which lives in my spare room (too precious to leave on the street). I like to take a leisurely bike ride around Richmond Park, and sometimes pluck up the courage to brave out-of-city off-road tracks.

But these friends have taken cycling one step further. They've reached new levels of biking enthusiasm and have left me far behind in terms of kit, investing in not one but three types of bike - mountain, road (essential for triathlon training, they say) and now the latest love, a fixie. Not cheap, mind. Their growing bike families cost an average of £1,000 for a 'decent' bike. But they're happy to spend their hard-earned cash in this way. Once you've got the biking bug, it seems, you're hooked. No matter if you're forced to buy a bigger house to put a roof over all that expensive kit.

I'm not quite at that level of obsession yet, nor have I mastered the daily commute by bike - I'm more of a fair weather cyclist with a healthy fear of brutal red buses bearing down on me. So it's good to see the lovely people at Transport for London and the London Cycling Campaign have come up with a solution for wobblers like me. Cycle Fridays, running every Friday morning between now and October, give nervous novice riders the chance to be chaperoned into town by experienced cyclists who'll show you how to survive on the open road.

But if you really want to see how the professionals do it, mark Saturday 19th September in your diary - that's when the Tour of Britain comes to the streets of London. Starting from Whitehall, the final leg of the eight-day tour sees the best cyclists in the country speeding around London landmarks including Big Ben and the London Eye as they complete ten laps looping around the Tower of London. Now that's how to cycle in the city.

Broadway, The West End, Kingston...?

Dame Judi Dench is a national treasure – slightly above the Queen, as you occasionally get to glimpse her around the West End, y'know, when she's starring in something fabulous at the Donmar. But the actress is swapping the bright lights of Theatreland for the street lights of suburbia as she arrives at the Rose Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames next year. In a theatrical coup, Dame Judi is starring as Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream in a theatre modelled on the original Elizabethan playhouse The Rose, all wrapped up by directing from the illustrious Peter Hall. The luvvies will go wild!

Lites go out at London Paper

Healthy competition between rival newspaper groups has been swept from London's streets by the closing of thelondonpaper. For three years, it has gone head-to-head with London Lite in a battle to thrust the day's (celebrity) news into the hands of unwilling commuters, who can pick up a copy of either - or both, if they get really desperate for reading material – on the Tube. The free sheets, and their persistent distributers, have become something of a London trait; they may just be something to dodge on your route home but, like red phone boxes, black cabs, Starbucks, they've become part of the furniture.

London rises from the Ashes

There were the Profits Of Doom (PODs) who were saying Australia could still do it, even though 546 runs – a record target - seemed an insurmountable task on the eve of the fourth day. But England's cricketers did do it, and oh what jubilation! Here, in London, England won the Ashes when an Aussie called Hussey (decent batsman, apparently) got caught out by Alastair Cook off the bowling of Graeme Swann, but details, details... it was time to party in the capital and if you couldn't get a beer around Kennington, 10,000 cricket fans (and some non-cricket fans) were going wild in Regent's Park – giant screen, boozy picnics, even some cricket nets to rival the professionals. And we thought cricket was a very proper, English game...

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