Cycling record holder Kate Strong in bamboo bike ride challenge

Jul 21, 2023

A record-breaking cyclist is poised to embark on a 3,000-mile challenge on a handmade bamboo bike.

Kate Strong, 44, plans to cover the circumference of the UK to raise awareness of the climate crisis.

Ms Strong already holds three cycling world records and a triathlon championship.

She will set off from Westminster on Monday, cycling to Norwich for her first official stop before Edinburgh, John O'Groats, Glasgow and Liverpool.

Ms Strong, who works part time for Climategames and is a performance coach, then plans to cycle along the coast of Wales, through Cardiff and Bristol, before reaching Land's End in Cornwall.

She will then head back to London to complete the feat on 2 September.

"It's been three years in the making," said Ms Strong, who is based in London. "I've never cycled more than five days in a row, so I've got 90 days in a row.

"Apart from the physical wear and tear, just mentally I'm unsure how I'll feel, and that's why I've opened the route up for people to come and join me."

Ms Strong aims to complete the challenge on a handmade bike built partly out of bamboo from a kit bought from a company called the Bamboo Bicycle Club.

She originally filed the bamboo and connected the pieces with hemp fabric dipped in resin to hold the frame in place.

"It was unrideable," she said. "There's no way it could have managed 3,000 miles."

Her bike will now be bound with pre-set steel to help keep the parts together. "Everything else is normal bike components and my seat is my old seat from when I used to race triathlon."

As part of the ride, she plans to visit around 40 innovative climate projects across the country.

In Cardiff she will visit Keep Wales Tidy where she will address a youth climate panel in July.

Ms Strong said while she is taking camping gear with her she will also be "relying on strangers with a spare room".

"By camping, it's a way of saying we need to get more out in nature and get curious about it and start protecting it, otherwise we won't care.

"If the weather is super wet, that's when I will start knocking on strangers' doors, going 'do you have a spare room?', or 'could I sleep in your shed?' - just something to soften the misery a little bit."

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