News round up; Bromptons, drawing, Pashleys and bike polo...

Here's a round up of some of the recent cycling news from around London to start your month of March with:

Pink Bromptons ahoy!

Better Bankside, the business improvement district south of the river, have made a clutch of Bromptons available for businesses in the area to use for business trips.  Painted in Better Bankside's distinctive pink, the bikes were sourced from local bike shop On Your Bike on Tooley Street.  The bikes are available for loan to businesses in the area free of charge and aim to encourage use of sustainable travel.  We like this; any scheme that makes people consider the bike as an easy and sensible transport choice gets our vote!

Cycling in London illustration competition opens!

The Association of Illustrators have a competition for all you creative types out there.  They've joined forces with the London Transport Museum and are mounting a call for illustrations showing cycling as an emerging means of transport in London.  The winnning entries will get a cash prize and may be used in a Transport for London poster campaign, whilst the top 50 illustrations will form an exhibition at the museum to tie-in with the launch of the cycle hire scheme in the city this summer.  The competition closes on May 17th and you can enter here.

Four Guv'nors on their Pashley Guv'nors!

Four riders will be setting off on May 28th on a very special cycle ride from Islington Green to the French Alpine town of Morzine Avoriaz.  They hope to complete this 1100km journey in just 9 days... on 3-speed Pashley Guv'nors and dressed in period cycling clothing.  A Tweed Ride too far, perhaps?  Well, it's all for a good cause...  The gentlemen in question will be riding their beautiful bikes to raise money for the Lavendar Trust in memory of a friend who lost her fight with breast cancer at the age of just 29.  You can track their progress here, and more importantly pledge your support for the brave gents here as they work towards their fundraising target of £20,000, and we wish them all the luck in the world! (Go on, spare them the price of a cup of coffee at least!)  Better still, a private donor has promised to match all of the funds that they raise pound for pound - so the more you pledge, the double they get.  Not a bad way to kick start your month, we think...

London exceeds 2010 air quality quota before sping is even here...

Nitrogen Dioxide levels (most often found in the emissions of diesel vehicles like Black Cabs, buses and HGVs) continue to be the headache that wont go away for London's politicians - before the month of February was out nearly every single air quality monitoring station within the M25 ring had exceeded it's maximum quota of Nitrogen Dioxide levels for the WHOLE of 2010.  You can monitor the London Air Quality Network map here, and follow Clean Air for London's alerts on Twitter here.

Luckily, despite those funny face masks you sometimes see more hardcore cyclists wearing, air quality inside a car is actually worse than outside of it: you're better off by bike!

East Festival kicks off this week!

East London's very own week-long party of culture and arts, East Festival, kicks off on the 4th of March.

The programe encompasses a plethora of events, including 3 free music concerts in different venues across the East End which you can cycle between (I'll see you at the London Gypsy Orchestra performance at Bethnal Green Working Men's Club - they are superb!) on Sunday 7th March.  From the 1908 London Olympics, to the modern hard courts of Brick Lane; there will be a demonstration tournament of Bike Polo on Saturday 6th inside Spitalfields Market from 1PM - if you've never seen them thrashing it out on the court before, nows your chance: I thoroughly reccomend you go along to watch a game or two.  All the festival details are here.

i b i k e l o n d o n gets a facelift!

As you can see times they are a-changin here at the blog: a big apology to those of you who subscribe by RSS feed who have probably had mulitple alerts over the weekend as the majority of the changes took place.  It's quite a big step up from our old style so have a look around and let me know what you think - you can still comment on all posts simply by clicking on the red word 'Comments' at the bottom of every post.