News

Carrying a bicycle on a roof rack can be a risky business. As a provider of cycle insurance that covers against accidental damage we know all about the perils of car park height restriction bars when you've forgotten your bike is on top. But what if you don't have a friendly insurance company to put everything right? Raacked is an...

The Covid pandemic may yet leave a positive legacy. Amidst the human tragedy is a growing realisation that we are abusing and depleting the natural resources of our planet. So says Partha Dasgupta, Professor at Cambridge and author of The Dasgupta Review, a major report on the economics of biodiversity commissioned by the UK Treasury....

If you’re a fan of self-sufficient holidays, DIY, and have a bit of spare time over lockdown, how about about building your own caravan? No special materials or skills are needed to build a Slidavan, but you will need to dedicate around 200 hours to the project. If you buy all new parts to build your Slidavan, it may cost around £3000 which...

You can ride 1,000 uneventful miles only for the puncture fairy to strike with a vengeance. Nobody knows why, but punctures, like buses, tend to turn up in twos and threes. But however unwelcome an interruption your next puncture will be, you can ensure your roadside pit-stop runs smoothly by carrying the correct tools. Promising to make...

They say it can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days for a person to form a new habit and an average of 66 days for a new behaviour to become automatic, so could the current travel ban be about to change holiday habits forever? For years now it's been possible to fly from London to Prague for less money than it costs to take a train to the...

What’s the heaviest thing you’ve carried on a bicycle? With the exception of child seats, few people here in Britain use bicycles as a way of carrying stuff. And that's a real opportunity lost because elsewhere in the world, cyclists have become expert at balancing or lashing all manner of cargo to a standard bike. Of course, once you start...

Sometimes it can feel like kids outgrow their stuff quicker than it can be replaced. Now a group of designers from Italy aim to address the problem with a cycle helmet that can be composted. The helmet is made from naturally occurring materials including mycelium and straw, reports inhabitat Mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus....

With Valentine's Day less than a month away, we have the perfect gift for the cyclist who gets your heart aflutter. The TICKR from Wahoo is a chest-based heart rate monitor that also records calorie burn data. This information can then be easily shared, via bluetooth with your smartphone, tablet or smartwatch and platforms such as Zwift,...

When the German-British statistician and economist Ernst Schumacher said “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction", he was making the case for human-scale, decentralised and appropriate technologies. It's a shame car...

Driverless car evangelists rarely acknowledge the transport Elysium they predict is possible now - and with today's technology. After all, what the world needs is fewer cars, not fewer drivers. We're losing count of all the benefits being promised of driverless cars. Motorists are being teased with visions of driverless cars as luxurious...