On yer bike

ROBERT PENN is a British journalist and cycling enthusiast whose quest to assemble the perfect bicycle is chronicled in his new book, It’s All About The Bike: The Pursuit of Happiness on Two Wheels.

As he sources the frame, steering system, driver-train, wheels and saddle over several months in Europe and America, Penn encounters a series of master craftsmen whose enthusiasm for cycling is, if anything, even greater than his own. He also recounts the illustrious history of the bicycle and its supporters, outlining its contribution to social change in the early 20th century, as well as its role in the world of sports.

Penn is eminently qualified to write about cycling; he has traversed 40 countries on five continents on a succession of bikes and he continues to cycle daily in his native Wales. In all, he has owned 19 bicycles – excluding those he has had stolen or has passed on in less than a few months – and it was almost inevitable that he would one day commission the ride of his dreams.

But which came first, the bike or the book commission? Penn laughs. “The idea for a book like this has been gestating for years,” he says. “I wasn’t sure if there would be a market for it, but when I mentioned it to my literary agent she thought it was well worth pursuing. Over lunch one day, she ran the proposal by an editor at Penguin, who went for it straight away; she’s a cyclist herself and had noticed the upsurge in cycling around London.”

To Penn’s mind, we are witnessing a renaissance in cycling, an activity that only really took off in the late 19th century, when an affordable ‘safety bicycle’ entered the market and the number of cyclists across Europe and America soared into the millions. No longer was the bicycle a costly hobby for the upper classes; it became, quite literally, a vehicle of liberation for the working man and, more importantly, for women.

“Socially, the bicycle changed everything for working people,” says Penn. “It was the first form of transport that was affordable to all. When you look at the golden age of the bicycle, from around 1890 to 1910, and the effect it had on a place like Wales, you’ll find all these public buildings from the same period. Thanks to the bicycle, and the mobility it gave them, working people were able to organise themselves better; they subscribed to build libraries and other institutions as part of a drive towards personal betterment. They wanted their children to be better educated and not have to do menial work like coal-mining.

“It was the same with the women’s movement. Before cycling became popular, what few sports there were for women required them to dress in heavy petticoats and buttoned-up collars. But it wasn’t possible to dress like that and ride a bicycle. In many ways, cycling emancipated women. Certainly, by the time of the Suffragettes in Britain, women were cycling just as much as men.”

Among those whose adventures Penn recalls in the book are the Englishwoman Tessie Reynolds, who caused a sensation in 1893 when she cycled from Brighton to London and back on a man’s bicycle, forsaking petticoats for a pair of cropped pantaloons; and the American Annie Londonderry, who, the following year, set off from Boston to cycle round the world, bringing with her a change of clothes and a pearl-handled revolver. No wonder the historian Robert A Smith called the bicycle ‘the freedom machine’.

Penn marvels at how the basic design of the bicycle has changed so little since the 19th century. The first prototype bicycle was created in 1817 by the German aristocrat Baron Karl von Drais de Sauerbronn whose ‘laufmaschine’ or running machine – popularly known as the Draisine – promoted the principle that one can balance on two wheels by steering.

The Draisine was brilliant in many ways and cumbersome in others. So too were its successors, the velocipide and the Penny Farthing, though they at least had cranks and peddles.

John Kemp Starley perfected the machine when he produced the Rover Safety in Coventry in 1885. The Safety’s wheels were the same size and the rider’s centre of gravity was over the centre of the bike, so his or her feet could touch the ground. And the frame was diamond-shaped, as it has been ever since; indeed, most improvements to the bicycle in the intervening years have merely been variations on a theme, with vast improvements being made to the workings of the gears and brakes, as well as to the lightness of the bicycle, but very few to the design itself. As Penn points out, there are over a billion bicycles in the world today, and almost all are based on Starley’s Rover Safety.

The mass production of bicycles has facilitated their everyday use all over the world, but most riders are quite clueless as to how their machines actually function. However, Penn belongs to that elite group of enthusiasts who are familiar with every nut and bolt on their mounts, and his quest for perfection in assembling his new bicycle leads him to engage with craftsmen such as Brian Rourke in Stoke-on-Trent, who made the frame, and Steve ‘Gravy’ Gravenites in Marin County, California, who made the wheels.

Both men are obsessed with customising bicycle parts to the height, weight and body shape of the individual cyclist. Penn was impressed not just by their vast knowledge of bicycles, but also by their rude health and vivacity. “That was a thing I noticed, that so many of those involved with cycling look so healthy. It certainly keeps you sprightly. Brian and Gravy; they’re both bright-eyed men in their 70s and they’re inspiring in so many ways.”

Penn paid around £3,500 for his bicycle, all told, and has already road-tested it to his satisfaction on trips to the Pyrenees and the Alps. “It may seem like a lot of money,” he says. “but you could easily pay £5,000 for a specialist pro bike, and mine is bomb-proof. I expect to pass it on to my children. It will need work along the way, of course, and parts will have to be replaced, but the frame will certainly last 40 or 50 years. “And the book should pay for it anyway,” he adds.