Welcome to the first post of the new LondonCityCycling blog. You can expect wit, humour, romance, mystery, satire, love, danger, lust, action and adventure galore! But, mostly just cycling.
We start with the biggest thing ever to hit London cycling. Bigger than when the Olympics came to town. Bigger than when the 2007 Tour de France started with a London time trial. And even bigger than the return of Le Tour this summer...
What I’m getting at is the arrival of the limited edition Barclays Bike. You may have been blessed enough to have seen one. They are the yellow (gold) ones dotted (sprinkled like dust) around the city, which despite celebrating the 101st Tour de France and its first three stages in Britain, are currently overshadowing these significant events with their flawless good looks.
Mayor Boris thinks people will go mad for them, explaining that he expects the demand to be “much like the clamour for the golden tickets in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. And he is absolutely right. I for one have been clamouring since the day they launched, in the very same way as when I clamoured the day Wonka Chocolate UK released golden tickets in their bars back in 2013. But that was a fake Wonka promotion; the golden bikes are real.
No doubt money changed hands somewhere along the line, this is cycling after all. But while the Tour de France is a mammoth commercial operation and cycling is unapologetically fuelled by the big cash companies spend to get their brand seen on the finish line, I see the ‘Maillot Jaune-ing’ of the Barclays Bike – perhaps sentimentally - as a sweet, innocent piece of creative advertising. The style of the bikes (no Barclays logo), the growing excitement they will whip up for the Tour (they were launched 100 days before the start) and their limited numbers are all part of it.
There are 101 bikes out there to be found, which gives you roughly a 1 in 100 chance of discovering one at your local docking station. But be warned, after finding one within the first few days of their release I was left deflated – it was just like Wonka-gate all over again.
Having ridden one I realised it was all wrong, they should have made it close to impossible to find The Yellow Beauty (we'll call it). They should have released a single yellow bike. And they should have given a place leading out the Peloton in Yorkshire this July to the first person to find it, ride to City Hall, do a skid and ruffle Mayor Boris' hair. That would have been a match for the glorious resplendence of The Yellow Beauty. But isn’t that just the way with cyclists: we covet, covet, covet and when we get what we want we’re already looking for the upgrade.
If you find one, chapeau! Let me know in the comments. Happy clamouring.
