I seem to have got into the wonderful habit of doing a cycle tour for a week or two each summer – this year was no exception. In late August I packed up my tent and sleeping bag and cycled off to Portsmouth and thence to France. It was a glorious 8 days of cycling which took me through Normandy, Brittany, the Atlantic coast of Payee de la Loire and finally into the high and hilly Limousin for a nice sit down/ sleep before training back. Here are a random collection of thoughts I had and things I learned:

1. Men’s and women’s saddles are in fact different for a reason. No, its not just a Victorian throw back or an attempt by cycle companies to get more money out of us as I had previously thought. We ARE anatomically different (surprise surprise) and I would NEVER cycle 800km (or even 50km) on a men’s saddle again, it was VERY uncomfortable and I spent much of my time trying to find new and inventive ways sitting or not sitting on my saddle. I am now in the market for a women’s version.

2. Dijon mustard goes with everything. Yes, everything, it is a wonder food.

3. Oringina is cycling fuel, and taste a lot better in France than it does in England.

4. I have finally understood the point of cleats – and (mostly) got over my fear of being clipped in to something with wheels. Going uphill (and there were a lot of hills) with a loaded bike and getting the forward trust with the up-pull of the pedal stroke as well as the downward push makes you go a lot faster. I’m converted.

5. Two tips on cycle touring in France – if you plan to take any TGV trains with your bike (and this is pretty easy and not stressful) book cycle spaces when you book your ticket. You can do it here (www.raileurope.co.uk). Michelin 1:150,000 road maps are the best I’ve found for route planning (I always bring a highlighter so I can mark my route as I go along and feel astonished how far I can go on a bike).

Turns out this is my 5th cycle tour in France, and its quiet roads and diverse scenery (not to mention the good food and cheap ferries) keep drawing me back. But I think I’ll spread my wings go somewhere even more exotic next year, like, I don’t know…Germany!

Join us at OARC on March 9th to hear Emily Chappell, 2012 Travel Blogger of the Year speak about women and bicycles around the world.

Then stay for “Racing is Life”, a film about the irrepressible Beryl Burton.

Men, women, children, and teddy bears are all welcome!

The Broken Spoke Bike Coop has been a labour of love for the past 9 months and we’ve definitely got to know our city in that time by organising nomadic bike workshops and maintenance courses. But on Feb 1 we launch our new permanent space right in the heart of the city with more tools and spares than you can shake a stick at. It will be a home for cyclists, bike lovers, creatives, mechanics, environmentalists and everyone who ever wanted to just want to just grab a spanner and have a go. There will be maintenance courses and open workshops galore; our ever popular women and transgender evening Beryls’ Night will relocate to the new gaff; and of course there will be copious amounts of tea and biscuits. So do pop in and say hello if you happen to be biking past.

We run a tool club where people can come once a week (Wednesday evenings) and use our workshop, tools, books and get support from us to repair their own bicycles. The tool club is run on a voluntary basis and so members only have to pay only £10/£15 to become members for a year. We’re also a workers co-operative hoping to raise enough money to give a decent wage to the three of us. To that end we run a repairs service, sell parts and accessories, deliver maintenance workshops, offer Dr. Bike services and soon will offer Bikeability – with a focus on empowering adult women to feel confident and assertive on the roads. We run women-only maintenance courses and tool club sessions for all those who identify as women. We find that cycling is often a very male dominated activity, not only in numbers (more men than women cycle), but also in attitudes. Too often it seems you have to be aggressive, over assertive and over confident to ride your bike. We find that this affects both women and men and whilst offering women-only specific activities, we hope to be friendly and approachable so that men that don’t conform to the male cyclist stereotype, and that may not have experience with mechanics or might also feel unconfident welcomed in our space.

So far our experience has been very positive. We’ve had more and more people interested in our space and even though numbers are not quite adding up yet to pay ourselves a salary, we feel we’re on the right track! The best bits are the interaction with people, seeing how excited people get when they start seeing the bicycle as being made of different parts and how you can learn to take care of it. Even discovering how hard tyres inflated to the right pressure are supposed to be makes people feel so excited about their machines and makes them engage and love them in a different level.

For us feminism is deeply needed in the cycling world to make cycling inclusive, approachable and available to all. We believe cycling is not intrinsically feminist or sustainable and so we feel we need to create and facilitate a truly feminist, inclusive and sustainable cycling culture. For that we need to reflect on the attitudes surrounding cycling – like we said above – and on the cycling industry and how and where our machines and the parts that make them run are produced. We’re committed to make people think of their bicycles as valuable objects that are worth repairing and maintaining and that can last for a life time if we invest in them. This is a reflection we need to make to many customers. Often people ride their bikes for years and years until they are completely knackered. Then, bringing them up to scratch can be slightly expensive and they think they’re better off buying a new bike. Explaining that if you maintained your bicycle regularly you may spend no more than £30/£50 a year, often makes them see that keeping a good frame and investing (time and/or money) on it is worth it.

We’d like to see the British cycling industry alive and kicking again, not only to make the production of bicycles and bicycle parts more local and sustainable but also because that could create much needed local and useful jobs. That’s why we’re committed to try to stock British made and ecologically sound products – such as Carradice panniers or Green Oil. However, the processes of production and distribution are in the hands of big companies that have a lot of power and make it difficult to access the products we’d like to purchase or that we’d like to see produced. But, whenever possible, we’re committed to work with smaller companies that are more local and work at a more human scale. We dream of a co-operative of bike projects and co-operatives strong enough to work towards that change. For that, we just need to hang on in there and try to spread our ideas and hope that the local cyclists and cyclists to be trust us and come to us.

The historian responsible for this project is Sheila Hanlon and last Friday night she gave a talk all about it to a packed out lecture theatre at the Women’s Library. The crowd felt like a real cycling sisterhood with people I knew or recognised from plenty of bike/ activist projects and even the grandson of a cycling suffragette. Sheila gave us a fascinating insight into how the suffrage movement used the bike as an organising and protest tool in its own right: from forming ‘bike brigades’ who cycled to country towns and villages recruiting new members, to blockading politicians cars, using old bike parts as fake bombs, organising cycling parades and even a nationwide pilgrimage involving bikes (not unlike the ‘caravans’ used in environmental campaigning today). Unsurprisingly, loads of prominent women’s right activists, such as the Pankhurst’s, were avid cyclists. But while the development of men’s cycling as mode of transport and leisure pursuit went without much public comment and certainly no moral outcry the same was not true for women. From the very begining, the acceptability of women riding bikes was an issue of public debate. This intensified in the Victorian and Edwardian era’s when the bike came to symbolise the ‘new women’: independent, mobile, confident and therefore dangerous to the social order of things. So much so, that the organisers of an anti-Suffrage rally in Cambridge burnt an effigy of a women on a bike. This goes to show it was not just that bikes were practically useful for campiagning for women’s rights but also that the very fact of riding a bike gave women such new power that it frightened the patriarchal order.

Sheila’s research is so important because is shows that bikes can and have enabled women to challenge and change their place in the world even when efforts were made to discourage and de-legitimise our right to ride. She put it perfectly when she said ‘the bike shows the connection between the physical and the political in the history of women’s liberation.’

Women are still a small percentage of the cycling population and more prone to accident and injury on the road than men but rather than blame this on negative assumptions of feminine behaviours like timidity and passivity ‘Cycling to Suffrage’ highlights the historical nature of the social prejudice which has contributed to our secondary position on the road. It was brilliant that London Bike Kitchen’s Women and Gender variant (W.a.G) night and Breeze women’s network got a shout out at the end as examples of projects which have taken up the baton for the next generation of women cyclists (of course I’d like to add Spokeswomen and Beryls’ Night to that list!) building the skills, confidence and acceptance of women on the road. I left with a sense of connectedness to all the pioneers of women’s cycling and Suffrage campaigners who have got us this far and reminded that every women on a bike is a trail blazer.

Don’t miss this exhibition! (it finishes Sept 8 2012)

When? 1st-4th June 2012

Where? Arts at the Old Fire Station, 40 George Street, Oxford, OX1 2AQ.

Sometimes its hard to imagine that ordinary people can change the world. But just look at the history of the car and prepare to be empowered and astonished.

The year is 2042. Discover the car: legendary machine that nearly ruined our planet – but didn’t because people like us kicked the petrol addiction.

Ever wonder how we achieved the sustainable society that we are lucky enough to live in now? Step back in time to 2012 to discover where it all began.

Introducing: ‘Museum from the Future’ a pop-up exhibition with real artefacts from the bygone motoring age, an interactive history of the downfall of the car, and a programme of events exploring Oxford’s role in the global transition to a post-oil, post-car world.

Featuring all your favorite bicycle technology such as bike-chariots, bike-cinema, bike-sound systems and more.

Get a taster of whats in store: The rise and fall of the car – a film from the future

6-9pm Mondays, starting 2nd April

Monday night at London Bike Kitchen is W.a.G. night (Woman and Gender-variant). WaG is a dedicated space for women and gender-variant people to fix their own bikes, with mechanics on hand for help and advice. We also run (mixed gender) introductory courses (on other days) for people who are very new to bike mechanics, or want to refresh their skills. WaG includes a taught element every week, including adjusting gears, brakes, puncture repair and bike checkover.

What do we mean by ‘women and gender-variant’?
Anybody who identifies as a woman, or anybody who has a non-normative gender identity. This could mean transgender, genderqueer, ftm, mtf, transwomen, transmen, or any of the many other various identities which are not ‘male’ or ‘female’ in the traditional sense.

Why ‘women and gender-variant’ only?
Growing up, women aren’t generally encouraged to fix bikes or given access to knowledge about mechanics in general. As a result, women can feel like they can’t fix stuff themselves, or think it’s a man’s domain. All this can also be true for people with gender-variant identities. When most mechanics are men, there is a kind of heirarchy of knowledge, whereby the men fix the bikes and teach the women, and the women watch the men fix the bikes (and learn little), or are taught by the men. We want to do away with all this, and create a space where you are empowered to learn about your bike, share what you know (or just get on with it yourself!), all without the pressure and machismo that sometimes exists in male populated spaces. We offer a stand and tools, and some help and advice when you get stuck. If you’re really new to bike mechanics, you might want to take one of our introductory courses to get started.