I had a university friend who could never keep girlfriends, and I always suspected it had something to do with what he did with bikes. I don’t mean to suggest that he was a weirdo. It was just that he insisted on sleeping with his precious racer strung up above his bed. It’s true that the space above his bed was pretty much the only space he had, but you don’t really need a swaying cycle to inform you when the earth has moved for you. Just think of waking up in the morning to the suspicion that, to misquote Diana, Princess of Wales, there will always be three in this bedroom. Except that when there aren’t three, there is quite likely to be just one, as your beloved sets off for morning-after trysts with the open road.
This melancholy little story conceals a serious issue: the majority of urban cyclists don’t have garages or accessible cellars, so what are they supposed to do with their bicycles? The bike in the hall just leads to bruises, while the bike in the garden will mutate over the average winter into one of those distressed iron installations that went out of fashion in the middle of the past century.
So I was intrigued on my way to work to see several rather elegant bike tents springing up in my neighbours’ front gardens. The company that makes them, Front Yard, does other bits of garden furniture, but bikes is its passion (co-founder Dan has the distinction of having broken his collarbone trying to keep his “stop at red” pledge). Front Yard’s BikePort consists of a row of tubular steel bike stands – two to four, depending on your needs – covered with marine canvas in any of 26 colours. In green, it looks rather like a stout laurel hedge, which has the advantage of not shouting “parked bikes” to any old thief who happens to be in the neighburhood.
The snag with BikePort in a very crime-prone area is that you are still basically relying on the strength of the lock with which you chain your bike to it (Front Yard recommends keeping motorcycle chains in situ, but that could add up to £100 per chain to the cost). It’s certainly more robust than the Bike Cave, another tent-based storage solution that the manufacturers supply with sacks so you can weigh it down with pebbles or sand should you decide to screw it permanently to the walls of your house.
If nothing short of complete enclosure will persuade you to leave your bike outside, Trimetals offers a self-assembly bicycle store made of PVC-coated galvanised steel, which is bolted on to concrete and capable of carrying up to three adult bikes. Not much good if you’ve got four, and not exactly a thing of beauty, but I am assured by Mountain Biking UK that it is, in practical terms, “superb”.
All of the above rely on at least a small patch of outdoor space, but what if you have none? I’m amused to discover that several upmarket versions of my old friend’s pulley system are still on sale (they have the advantage of being relatively cheap, though if you really want to save money, you can find out how to make your own from the DIY website lifehacker.com).
It took another cycling nut to come up two years ago with what one green website describes as “the cute and curious Cycloc . . . essentially a plastic bucket that has two opposing ‘lips’ that use your bicycle’s own weight to hold it in place”. I learned of Cycloc’s existence from the US but it turns out that it is made in east London by Andrew, a Scottish product designer, who spotted a gap in the market for a cycle holder that was a piece of furniture in its own right. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given its tradition of loft-living, the first city to take Cycloc to its heart was New York. It comes in four colours, and the black one has the added advantage of being made from recycled plastic.
If Cycloc had been invented when my friend was at university, it might have provided him with a whole new chat-up line. I lost touch with him years ago, but I hope he has found someone who is happy to share him with his hobbies. And Front Yard could provide the perfect present for her: it’s called PlantLock and is a large steel planter with rails to which you can lock your bike. It weighs a hefty 75kg when full of earth, so even if you don’t get round to bolting it down it’s unlikely to travel far – and it comes with the optional extra of pre-seeded compost blocks. Actually, I quite fancy one myself.
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