Category: Blog

19th May 2024

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 354: Enjoy Waltham Forest Turns 10 — Panel at Landor Links’ birthday bash

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Vala Valavan, former Director of Highways at Waltham Forest Council; Chris Proctor, Enjoy Waltham Forest programme lead; David Rowe, Interim Director of Investment Delivery Planning, Transport for London (TfL); Simon Munk, Lead Technical Consultant, London Cycling Campaign; Paul Gasson, Council Liaison Officer of Waltham Forest Cycling Campaign, rider for Zedify.

TRANSCRIPT TO FOLLOW …

21st April 2024

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 352: Laura Laker

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Laura Laker, author of Potholes and Pavements

TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid  0:11  

Welcome to Episode 352 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Sunday, April 21 2024.

David Bernstein  0:28  

The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more. 

Carlton Reid  1:04  

I’m Carlton Reid and today’s show is a chat with like journalist Laura Laker, author of an excellent new book, Potholes and Pavements. This is a travelogue featuring Laura’s travels around the UK, writing on some of the best and worst bits of Britain’s National Cycle network. From jaw droppingly gorgeous looking ancient military roads in the Highlands of Scotland to dark and dingy urban back streets blocked with barriers. As the books subhead warns, it’s a bumpy ride. Um, so you’ve written a book. Is this your first?

Laura Laker  1:46  

Yeah, my first my first book, believe it or not, 

Carlton Reid  1:49  

well done. Congratulations. It’s a brilliant first book. One of many. I’m sure it’ll be one of many. I noticed you’ve got a an agent. Yeah, you say in the back and thank him. So I’m guessing you’re going to be doing more books? 

Laura Laker  2:00  

Yeah, I guess so. I’m not trying to think about it too much. This one was very long in the gestation. I had an idea back in 2017 to do a basically ring around talking to people.

I’d listened to the audiobook of John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie, in which he travels across the US with his big poodle, and talking to people and he says he’s most wonderful conversations, which were later question for their veracity, but it’s just, it’s just a wonderful format. And I love I’d kind of in that trip to America, I rediscovered my love of talking to strangers, which I had as a kid, and I’m kind of lost over the years, I guess, being British, but spending time in the US where everyone is just willing to talk to you and tell you their life story. I rediscovered this just love of cycling, is brilliant for that, you know, just talking to people you’re travelling around, you might stop at some lights, or you might pass someone on a path and just get chatting to them. And it’s wonderful people have the most amazing stories, I think 

Carlton Reid  2:59  

Well, there’s two teachers that you met, hopefully they will read the book.

You weren’t avoiding them.

Laura Laker  3:07  

I know Greg and Norton, they were so brilliant. And the most unexpected encounters and I was up in the Cairngorms and travelling alone and feeling a bit like oh, you know, such a beautiful, it’s ridiculously beautiful up there. I’m always just astounded by Scotland, and how how it’s possible for somewhere to be so beautiful. And the NCN [National Cycle Network] across the Cairngorms is something else, it’s really quite remarkable. A lot of its off road, it’s this dedicated path. It was an old military road. And the rest is on fairly quiet country roads. And I was pootling along on my big pink ebike, which I did some of my adventures on and I saw these roadies coming up behind me and I thought well that they’re going to overtake me in a bit. And sure enough, they did. We said hello. And then I saw them stopped at this bridge and they were looking over and they just had this wonderful kind of whimsy about them this they weren’t they were going a long way actually they’re going from kind of Aviemore back to Preston where they were at least one of them lived and doing it over a couple of days in sort of training one of them’s an Ironman enthusiastic participants,

but on the way they were stopping looking over bridges, that sort of waterfalls over rocks and like looking across the landscape and just enjoying the scenery. And that for me is what cycling is about. It’s about

appreciating the world around us and the people around us and so they said we’ll ride with us for a while and as you know ebike your Aberdeen bought a bike mine included, maxes out at 15 and a half miles an hour which these guys were obviously capable of exceeding quite easily. So but they they rode with me for quite some time and we chatted and they were just fantastic. And then yeah, they they stopped for a week and I had to run inside for a week. And then I came out and they’d gone

Carlton Reid  4:51  

but it’s quite a nice way to say goodbye. Are you are you are you taking notes as you’re going along? So you wrote their names and what they did. And or you

coding stuff. How are you physically? 

Laura Laker  5:02  

Yeah, so I get back at the end of a ride and write stuff down. And I do think it’s best that way, especially with travel writing, because you forget so much so quickly. And the big three Cornwall, I think is, you know, in the early parts of the book, when I first started the exploration, further afield, you know, writing stuff down as you experience it, or very soon after is really important because you lose a lot of the detail and the texture of what you’re experiencing. And I think it just makes for much richer story that way, but also difficult to do because you’re having to memorise and maybe that’s why Steinbeck was getting criticised because he wasn’t writing No, no. As he was going along, he’s remembering it. Well, memories can do. Memory is really interesting, actually. Because we we probably most of us think that our memories are fairly good, or the way that remember things is correct. But actually, it’s very, very subjective. And the longer time goes on, the more we forget, or the memory gets warped, or things get introduced that didn’t exist, maybe and it’s really very, very subjective. I’ve got I don’t know for some things, I’ve got quite a good short term memory so I can remember

to a certain extent, but obviously, as Homer Simpson once said, you know, one thing comes into your brain another thing has to leave it so.

Carlton Reid  6:23  

That’s 100% me though. So this book Potholes and Pavements, a bumpy ride on Britain’s National Cycle network, it comes out May the ninth published by Bloomsbur. £16.99. Excellent, excellent book. I read it yesterday and got up early this morning to make sure I finished it before I spoke with you. Now normally when when I talk to people for this podcast, I always get them to send me a photograph so I can do the you know, the socials and the thing that goes on the show notes. What have you with you, oh, an hour and a half to do that. Because I have ridden with you ridden with you on bits of the ride that you are right that you mentioned in your book. So when you mentioned that, you know the cycle superhighway.

You make an item was like, I’ve got that photograph because I was holding my camera photographing you behind me?

Laura Laker  7:20  

Yeah, with Brian Deegan.

Carlton Reid  7:21  

There’s knowing smiles when I’m reading your books like I was on that ride.

Like I know, Laura. Oh, my word. It’s also like me on that ride. And when you describe windmills, yes. But the windmills and

it’s a cute book for me. Also cute because I know lots of these people who you’re describing. And I know in the book, it says he didn’t want to be described as a hero. But he is a hero. And because it’s about the National Cycle network, then clearly that’s got to be the guy who

not single handedly founded it, but certainly pushed it through with those with those early innovators. So that’s John Grimshaw.

So he comes in, he’s, he’s in at least three or four parts of the book, you’ve clearly gone to speak to him a number of times wonderful. And it’s fantastic that he’s in there, because he really doesn’t get the recognition he deserves. 

Laura Laker  8:16  

Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, he I obviously have to speak to John Grimshaw. Because a lot of people as he points out, and as I tried to convey in the book, a lot of people and probably, you know, uncountable numbers of people were involved in the foundation of and development of the National Cycle network. And then it’s maintenance ever since many of whom are working for very little, in fact, nothing, because they loved it. But John really seemed like, talking to people and talking to him, was the driving this real driving force behind it and his kind of self belief and single minded determination, I think was a major driver and he is such a character. I mean, a bit of a Marmite character, I think, but, you know, it seems like you need people to kind of drive things forward. 

Carlton Reid  9:05  

Cos you need somebody like that. He’s a visionary. Yeah, you know.

I love Malcolm Shepherd. I love Zavier Brice, the people who are in charge now and Malcolm was the guy who came in after

after John.

But Malcolm wasn’t a visionary. Malcolm was an accountant. And when when the organisation any organisation any business gets big, then you very often need somebody else to take over. And there’s lots of faction there at the time. You don’t go into it in a great detail. That was enormous friction there and there’s still enormous amount of bad blood

between people. 

Laura Laker  9:46  

Yeah, and it’s interesting because Caroline Lovatt. Here’s another key figure from fairly early on and still works with John today. On there, they’re still building cycle routes under a different organisation, cycle routes and greenways and

Um, she says that, you know, for for years, according to her, John kept disappearing from the kind of record of that of the history of the NCN on Wikipedia, she kept putting him back in. And um, yeah, I mean, the story was, and that was a difficult part of it to tell. But it was one that had to be mentioned, I didn’t want to go too into it. But obviously, you know, John, leaving Sustrans under fairly strange circumstances, and really against his will, was was part of the story that needed to be told. And it was a different and I spoke to a number of people and nobody really, I think, you know, there were potentially nondisclosure agreements. And so nobody really talks about what exactly happened, which is why I call I mentioned the omerta. Because it really seems like everyone has a slightly different story, or, and I and again, I, you know, it’s memory and it was a painful time. And it was a long time ago. And it’s quite common, as you say, with new organisations, you’ve got this big driving force, but then sometimes they’re not the person to carry on leading an organisation once the first major thing is done, and, you know, they might not be great with people is, you know, having a skill to start and drive something is not the same as being a sort of manager of people and diplomats. And it’s, yeah, it’s quite often it’s a painful process, certainly not unique, I think.

Carlton Reid  11:16  

No, it’s very common for that kind of thing to happen. However, saying that it’s very important to recognise who was that visionary? And I think he lost an awful lot of that. So, so wonderful to see John.

central to that. So that’s really nice part of the book because I, you know, John, John is a wonderful, wonderful guy, and absolutely, this would not have happened without him. I know, there’s lots of other people

you know, David Sproxton, all these kind of people were there at the same time, George Ferguson. So So Sproxton was Aardman Animation. So people who know admire animation, George Ferguson,

Mayor of

Bristol,

at one point, all these individuals were there at the time, but it needed that guiding force that needed that.

Just somebody who woulda just said no, and just went ahead and did it. That was that was the ethos of Sustrans in the early days. So that 

Laura Laker  12:12  

Yeah, yeah, because the status quo then as it is, today, is very much stacked against cycling routes happening. And so you kind of need a rebel who’s not willing, who’s you know, not willing to take no for an answer? Who’s going to be able to make things happen? And I think in a way that kind of, I guess, you know, being from a fairly well off upper middle class background, you have the confidence really the education that kind of gives you that confidence and and then the character and self belief to just to drive that forward. 

Carlton Reid  12:47  

Mmm. That you didn’t mention not even once Cycling, Touring Club CTC cycling UK.

Because the book isn’t in all cycling, you are you are laser focused on the National Cycle network. But there was also friction between those two organisations, you know, stranden effect was an upstart organisation, then it got for £42.5 million with Meatloaf handing that

over on TV or that kind of stuff. And there was there was an awful lot of friction between still is between strands and and what is today cycling UK. So you haven’t got into that at all. What Why didn’t you go into that? Is that just because you wanted to just stay laser focused on the cycle network? 

Laura Laker  13:36  

I mean, I mentioned that not everyone felt that Sustrans was being helpful because they felt that cycle route should be delivered by government and charities stepping in. And taking that role almost allows the government to say, well, you know, someone’s doing it. Now. We don’t need to get involved. But I mentioned the kind of tension between certain types of cyclists. I think I might quote to you, I think I’ve got you in the references on that. But I mean, I don’t know if I just don’t know how.

I don’t know. It’s yeah, it’s a tricky one. It’s how much to include, and you always have to make these decisions, what to include and what not to include, and I guess I just didn’t feel like that was a key part of the story at all. There was some thinking at the time around that but and I’m aware that there was tension and I know that Mark Strong for one who gets quite a mention in the book, talked about Sustrans being too successful and not successful enough in that, you know, they were doing this job notionally? 

No, they were doing a great job for with what they had and who they were and ie not the government and with not very much money but they were doing enough just to allow the government to just say, You know what, well Sustrans is delivering the National Cycle network, tick, job done. Let’s get back to the serious business of roads.

Carlton Reid  15:01  

because there is there is you meant we will get on to the very positive points, you’ve got like

a bunch of what what do you call it in the book where you’ve got a whole bunch of asks basically? Oh, yeah, the manifesto, the manifesto. There you go.

Number one,

we’ll go through these points.

10 point manifesto. So there’s some positive stuff

to talk about that. But you don’t really mention that there’s this that, you know, you’re talking about, you know, this should be funded nationally, and there is that struggle, bear with you know, this is a charity, etc, etc. But then you’ve also got the weakness of you have actually got to at least have British Cycling as well, three competing organisations, going to government and asking for money for various things. And wouldn’t it be nicer and more practical and may even get more stuff? If there’s only one organisation so there is that there is the absolute fault line running through cycling? That is one of the reasons why it’s very easy for the government to not do stuff because they’re getting told different things by different organisations and one organisation saying don’t back them back us. So there’s that kind of friction there. 

Laura Laker  16:22  

I don’t know if that’s if I see it that way. I mean, Sustrans cycling UK,

and British Cycling, and things like livable streets are all part of the walking and cycling Alliance. And I think what that what that’s trying to do is to unify the voice, because ultimately they want the same thing. I mean, British cycling’s coming at it from a sports point of view. But recognising that its members also need safe roads to cycle on. And that means a whole host of other things, safe protected routes in cities. And that’s popular with members. And then cycling UK, originally a touring group, now a charity that lobbies for Safe Routes, safe conditions, and also delivers stuff for government, such as

what to fix your ride, and a bunch of other things. And then Sustrans is a National Cycle network and behaviour change programmes. So there are overlaps, but I do think they are distinct. And I don’t see I don’t see it as I mean, they probably have internal, you know, perspectives on things and perhaps don’t always agree with what the other one was doing. But I think I think they tend to present a fairly unified front these days. 

Carlton Reid  17:30  

They’re not as bad nowadays. 

I mean, it’s when you get rid of it certainly did not get rid. That’s the That’s the wrong phrase. When individuals leave organisations, it can change because a new people come in, and you know, those alliances are, that’s what you’re just used to. But you know, before that alliance was put in place, they were cats and dogs, they were really hating on each other and slagging each other off to government as well. So that’s why government was able to go up. This cycling is just mad look, these these, you know, what they, these three cats in a sack just fighting each other. 

Laura Laker  18:03  

And then you saw, I mean, I think I talked about, you know, Malcolm Shepherd, who was the CEO after John Grimshaw.

He went to ministers, and he was saying, why aren’t we getting the funding we asked for?

Or why are we getting taken seriously, I think was the question. And he was told, Well, you don’t ask for enough money, basically. So they were thinking and perhaps this kind of historic infighting is also a function of the fact that these were kind of fledgling organisations to an extent for some time, not very much funding. They were run by enthusiasts probably, who all had their own ideas. And of course, let’s not forget that there were also the vehicular ISTS who didn’t even believe that we needed cycling’s of which I think cycling UK early on was one and that might explain why they disagree with Sustrans who were trying to yes, no, there was a whole cohort who stands for that reason, absolutely. 100%. So maybe that, you know, it perhaps is a function of just the whole movement being in its infancy. I mean, it’s been going for a good 40 or so years, but I don’t know, maybe it was maybe it was just run by enthusiasts for a very long time. And that’s why it’s taken

a while to kind of mature but also I think it was going I mean, our cycling lobby, organisations were kind of leading the way for much longer than a lot of European countries in a nice talk about this in the book in countries like France and in the Netherlands and in Denmark, they all started their calls for National Cycle networks or at least safe routes, thanks to charities and voluntary organisations. And then fairly quickly, were all taken on by the government who saw this as a piece of infrastructure firstly, quite often for leisure, but then they realised people were using these routes for commuting trips, and it was it needed to be part of the infrastructure and was taken up with great enthusiasm and in Sweden as well. By the

various local departments and regional governments and delivered quite quickly and at quite a kind of scale. And that hasn’t really happened here. And so perhaps those kinds of just the longevity of those cycling groups being so crucial to anything that happens for cycling, has kind of made this whole, I don’t know, split more important than it would have otherwise been. 

Carlton Reid  20:24  

Yeah. And like in the Netherlands, the the organization’s tried to fight against this, but the government tax cyclists, and cyclists actually paid for the roads. 

Laura Laker  20:34  

They did, that’s right.

Carlton Reid  20:37  

But it’s the very fact and this was a cyclist at the time were fighting against, they didn’t want to be taxed. In the UK, and the Netherlands, they were taxed. And then cyclists became national infrastructure. And that became critical, as you say, and the fact that you know, there wasn’t, there was some national infrastructure, obviously, I’ve done this the 1930 cycleways project.

But the CTC is the British Cycling as of the time fought against all of this, they fought against taxation, they fought against cycle routes. And so there is there is some argument to be made that cyclists have been their own worst enemy. So I know in the book, you’re saying, you know, it’s just such a no brainer. And it is to back, you know, for want of a better word or phrase active travel. Now, in the book, you’ve got various people are saying we should call it something different.

Laura Laker  21:27  

Yeah, Lee Craigie. 

Carlton Reid  21:27  

yeah. Yeah. But, you know, cycling has been difficult, at the same time. And it’s like, what’s happening in Wales, and in Scotland, is inspiring, possibly, because it’s actually coming from above. A lot of it, you know, there’s obviously enthusiastic people working on the ground, etc. But a lot of this is coming from government ministers. So that helps. Yeah. And,

Laura Laker  21:54  

I mean, we have this idea, and I’m sure we’re not alone. And this point you just made and the example of the taxing of the cyclists in the Netherlands, which is something I learned during doing the research for the book, I didn’t actually know about this, but I, you know, the reason we lost the railways that then became a lot of these greenways was because, you know, we see transport as needing to wash its own face needing to fund itself. And the railways at the time, were losing money for most of the routes. And so that was the reasoning. And, you know, with roads, obviously, drivers are taxed it’s not sort of ring fence funding. It’s not a road tax, it’s,

but you know, it is making the Treasury money and cycling has never really done that. And I, I think fundamentally, the way that way of thinking about transport is wrong, because of the benefits, the much wider benefits that transport gives us in terms of, you know, being able to access education and health and social opportunities and for our physical and mental health. And it’s, its benefits span far beyond its own kind of silo. But we don’t really see it that way. And I’m not really sure actually, if anywhere managers to think of it this way, but I think post pandemic, things like free bus services and in different countries has maybe illustrated that people are starting to think about it differently. But ultimately, I think it’s it’s a very tricky one. Because like you say, we in a way we weren’t, we were own worst enemy in terms of our predecessors in the cycling world.

But we were working within philosophy that’s that dictated that actually, if you’re going to build something, you know, who’s making money from it, or, you know, how is the Treasury getting that investment back and not really seeing it as this makes people healthier? Or this gives them opportunities or promotes businesses, local tourism? And all of this? So yeah, I mean, if we’d done it differently, who who knows of cyclists in the UK? So fine, we’ll pay a tax. Who knows? We might have an NCN now, but, and even today, it’s a little bit of an uncomfortable conversation, isn’t it? Because, you know, nobody wants to be taxed.

Carlton Reid  24:02  

So the book is, it’s a polemic in many ways, not not all the way through.

But there are definitely bits in there that are strident. And I cannot argue with at all I’m reading it nodding along.

And certainly the bits about

like the national infrastructure, right, and it’s all being spent on roads. And it’s it’s the so many reasons why that is crazy. Yeah, and why spending even just a fraction of the roads budget on on a national cycle network, you know, genuinely joined up one high quality

would bring many more, many more benefits. And then you’ve got and the irony is, and I did a new story on this is, you have a government minister, who has written the foreword to your book, and he said

This is not government minister, a former government minister, a former Transport Minister,

Jesse Norman, and then it’s like, why don’t you do this when you’re in power? It’s great. You’ve said it. It’s wonderful that you’re saying all these things. But you could have done this, you could have pushed for this. And he was also the Financial Secretary of the Treasury. Yeah, he could have released money. Yeah, let me see what he says. But

Laura Laker  25:26  

it’s so difficult, isn’t it? And it’s, again, it’s kind of facing it’s the status quo. I mean, it’s, I think, maybe important to remember, and I’m not making excuses for anyone. But, you know, he was a junior minister, certainly in his first round is cycling minister. And so he would have had to tow the party line. So I don’t know how easy it is for. I mean, he’s a very intelligent guy. He cares about cycling. But then he’s part of a system, which ultimately,

I guess, maintains the status quo doesn’t want to upset the applecart.

And that’s why, in the manifesto, I, you know, I think it’s so important that people speak up for these things, because I think until there’s an outcry for it, it’s very difficult for any one minister, unless we have a cycling Prime Minister, to change all of this. There’s a lot of vested interests in maintaining, you know, roads for cars, keeping car manufacturing,

going and, you know, taxation on cars is going to be very problematic, because obviously EVs electric vehicles don’t pay, you know, drivers with EVs don’t pay cortex. So what’s gonna happen there? But yeah, I mean, it’s difficult, but I think people need to speak up for this kind of thing. We get a lot of kickback pushback from people when there’s cycle routes coming. But those are the minority. And one thing I tried to highlight in the book is that most people want this once cycling routes, they they want other options and to drive. And, you know, between two thirds and four fifths of people in representative polls say that they’d support this and many of them, even if it meant taking road space away from motor vehicles. But that’s not what politicians listen to. And I think increasingly, politicians are listening to angry people on Twitter. And you know, if Mark Harper’s comments about LTNs and 15 minute neighbourhoods is anything to go by, which was straight out of the kind of conspiracy theorists, Twitter playbook, you know, they’re listening to the loudest voices. And I think until people say, you know, we actually want choice. We don’t want to have to breathe polluted air, we don’t want to have our neighbourhoods dominated by motor vehicles. We want our kids to be able to go to school safely. I think it’s gonna be difficult for things to change. 

Carlton Reid  27:45  

Hmm. So you have mentioned a variety of routes that are actually pretty good. So yeah, Keswick one is one of them. 

Laura Laker  27:55  

Threlkeld, yes. 

Carlton Reid  27:58  

And that’s why I know,

I know the route well, as good as now, you know, a cycleway there because that was that was long in gestation. But basically, it’s it’s it’s, it’s popular. You know, people say, oh, like, but that’s a popular route now, isn’t it? 

Laura Laker  28:15  

Yeah, yeah, people drive there. And I mean, that was that was interesting for a number of reasons. I mean, incredibly beautiful. It sort of weaves through Greta gorge, which is just this kind of just this amazing landscape, this sort of rocky river which meanders through this very deep wooded valley. And it’s on a former rail line. And it was,

which storm was it was it 2015, there was a big storm, which basically crumbled a couple of the bridges with the sheer volume of water that ended up going through this narrow gorge. And then it was out of action for a couple of years. And that was an important, crucial route and a tourist attraction for local businesses. One pub owner apparently offered the local council, I think it was the national parks something like 30 grand out of his own pocket, reopened the route, but it was actually a sort of 2 million pound job. So that wasn’t going to go all the way. But you know, this was a really important tourist attraction for people and people drive there because there aren’t safe routes to get to and from the ends, so people drive and park and then cycle along it and cycle back. But yeah, it’s popular, it’s really popular. And they when they put the bridges, the new bridges in Sustrans with various parts of funding, they resurfaced it and there was a big hoo ha about putting tarmac on instead of the gravel that had been there before. But that actually opened up it up to far more people, including people who use wheelchairs and mobility scooters, because any sort of rough surface or uneven ground can tip someone in a wheelchair and it effectively makes these routes unusable. And this is something that I really learned in the book and feel very strongly about now. And there was a big outcry nationally about tarmacking this path because it’s in the Lake District and everyone’s

He has an opinion about the Lake District even if they’ve just been there once and we all feel like we own it because it’s such a beautiful place and I guess rightly so. We all care about it. 

Carlton Reid  30:07  

The Lakers.

Laura Laker  30:09  

Lakers, my people. Yeah.

The people who holidayed in the lakes were known as the Lakers. Yeah, which is brilliant. So yeah, they, you know, they held their ground and they tarmac it and you know, the numbers increased drastically. And this story plays out all over the country, wherever there’s a improve surface on a path. Suddenly, it’s open to everyone. And this is what this is what cycle rich should be in, in my opinion, it should be open to everyone. 

Carlton Reid  30:37  

Yeah, it’s like the cinder path.

That’s the Sustrans route national cycling group from from Whitby to Scarborough. That was the one that had a load of of people complaining because Cinder path you know, they were going to be tarmacking just parts of it. And lots of people are saying you know but this this this will you know, destroy it or whenever lots of yobs in and it just never got done. And then it’s it’s impossible for a lot of the year because it’s just it gets just too rutted into mud into too horrible. And this is, you know, we discard it would just be so easy.

You know, between these two conurbations and small conurbations, if you could ride there on an all year round an all weather path? 

Laura Laker  31:21  

So yeah, I do.

I do worry about this, because it’s, you know, they say it’s an effect gentrification. And you’re you’re bringing, you know, urban into the countryside yet. There’s roads everywhere, and they got tarmac on, and nobody seems to be kicking up a fuss there. What’s What’s your problem? Yeah, I know. And I think it’s just we have this idea about what the cycle routes should be or could be, and we see them as leisure routes quite a lot of the time, we have this kind of set idea about cycling, that it’s not, you know, it’s not a commuter option, or, but you know, it is, but it goes beyond that. And it is about who can access these parts. And quite often, having an uneven surface will lock a lot of people out. And you know, we’re an ageing population in this country. And as we get older, we will all have disabilities, and mobility issues. And it shouldn’t be that

you know, these paths are any open to a few people. But yeah, it’s a difficult one. And we would like to say we’ve never think twice about it for roads, we’ve never think about having a road as a dirt path.

And I can you know, visually tarmac is not a beautiful thing, but I think if people understood that actually, it’s it’s not just about the visuals. This is about people and this is what these parts are for they’re for people. 

Carlton Reid  32:34  

Well you can make if you want it to be just that colour, you can make the the asphalt you can you can you can dye the asphalt. So it’s it’s more expensive. But you can you can do all sorts of treatments you can do to make it all weather doesn’t have to look, you know, black. Yeah. So anyway, so let’s go to another assessment. That’s some negative ones.

Where they tried to be certain, but then you point out the Polgate one, between Polgate and Glynde, which is almost happened to you by by mistake. Not mistake, but it’s certainly a by accident. Yeah. And you’re talking about it being just brilliant. So describe that one. 

Laura Laker  33:11  

That’s amazing. Yeah. So I was told about this. And then I know someone who lives in Lewis, which is at one end of it. And so we we we met at the station and cycled along this path. And so it’s beside the A27, which is a national highways road. And it’s right by the sales downs, which is hugely popular with cyclists. And basically, there were so many people cycling on this incredibly terrifying road. It’s one of those narrow and winding A roads with huge volumes of traffic. I mean, I went on a walking trip near Louis the other day, and I had to cross it with no crossing and it was it was genuinely terrifying. I can’t imagine people cycling on it, because it’s, you know, six months. So yeah, anyway, people were being held up in their cars because of people cycling. And so national highways decided it was going to build a path alongside and it’s this this was a real eye opener for me because they had done what needs to happen around the country. They had built a path behind the hedge row, which is wide and tarmac and smooze with lots of planting and culverts and bridges over rivers and and they just laid it you know, very little problem. I don’t know if they owned the land or perhaps compulsory purchase probably a mixture of I think it was a mixture of both. And so they built this amazing kind of 10 kilometre joyful route, which is just you know, it’s just like a road. It’s like no stress. You just carry on.

There was someone on the mobility scooter the day I was there, a couple of people on bikes, but it was basically hadn’t opened yet. And yeah, it was just there. But it’s quite funny because at either end, it just stopped because then that’s the local councils job to kind of deliver it beyond. But you know, it shows what’s possible if you have a national body with the power and the funding, and they have, you know, multi year funding pots which helps plan and

deliver this stuff and they just did it, they just sort of swept aside all of the normal problems that I talked about in the book that usually dog these cycle routes. And yeah, it’s quite, it was quite marvellous, quite 

Carlton Reid  35:11  

I found it fascinating because one of the things you say is, as we just mentioned there, it, it was an effective bill to get the cyclists off the road.

We made enough nuisance of ourselves,

that is 1930s to a tee, you know, the transport, you know, built those 500 miles of cycle tracks in the 1930s to Dutch standards laced around the country.

Some of them weren’t brilliant, but some of them were amazing, you know, 12 foot wide Dutch Dutch level, concrete curbs, you know, perfectly brilliant bits of cycling infrastructure that are now just some of them are white elephants, because they didn’t link up to anywhere. But, you know, the government at the time said, Oh, we’re doing this for the safety. No, they weren’t they were doing it to you know, get cyclists on the road because we’re slowing down motorists, but you kind of almost don’t care if if if you get a really superlative route behind the hedgerows. Yeah. Okay. It’s such a difference. Yeah. That’s the difference. It’s got to be good. You can’t just fob you off with shared route pavement, which is what yeah, the criticism of Sustrans has been is like there’s so many shared route pavement. And that’s why Sustrans got a bad rap, even though it wasn’t their fault. And they were just trying to fill in the gaps. 

Laura Laker  36:28  

That yeah, yeah. And yeah, they just have to use whatever was there, which was quite often a pavement along what would have been a not too busy road in the 70s or 80s. But it’s now a sort of thundering highway and being on a pavement with no barrier between you and or no, no sort of space between you and the 60 mile an hour traffic is far from pleasant, and no, no, no parent is going to choose to cycle on that. If they have any other choice, you know, they’re going to avoid that like the plague because you know, one little wobble or mistake and then you know, it’s horrific there, you know, possible outcomes. But yeah, it’s you know, it’s, it’s fantastic. Because you don’t even barely know the roads there. It’s just cool. It’s just gorgeous. I’d like to go back actually, because it’s been a good year, I think since I saw it. At least actually. Maybe Yeah, I think it’s at least a year and yeah, let’s see how the trees are bedding in and because it was brand new at the time it just been done. But yeah, it is. Ultimately it is possible. And regardless of the motivations it just goes to show what’s possible. I liked recently because Andy Streets and his Walking and Cycling Commissioner Adam Tranter he’s on my podcast. They announced they’re going to deliver the HS2 cycleway alongside in and around HS2 between Coventry and Birmingham. And when they get to Kenilworth, they’re basically connecting up to one of their 1930 cycleways into Coventry.

So I quite like that, you know, it’s sort of linking something that’s already there. And

Carlton Reid  38:01  

yeah, and that’s also a John Grimshaw project, wasn’t it? 

That was that was a John Grimshaw. 

Laura Laker  38:05  

Yeah. He cycled the whole thing. Yes. Yes, he’s been he’s been trying to get that one, you know, for a lot for a long time. And yeah, it does stand alone. No, you need really, you need the HS2, of course, just stand alone without it.

Carlton Reid  38:21  

It does. Yeah, saying that, it would have absolutely been put in at the same time, that would not have been the difference. So that is point three. So in your 10 Point manifesto, that’s basically work together a behind the hedgeroq Act, compulsory purchase orders, all these kinds of things that only government can do. Yeah. needs to be brought in into play. Yeah. And then you you’ve said and it’s very ambitious. But when you think about it’s like, yeah, you could do this easily. And that is you know, if if this was done and if money was provided, and compulsory purchase orders were put in like you would do for roads, you can have an unbelievably fantastic truly superlative national cycling in four years. 

Laura Laker  39:02  

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, Brian Deegan active travel England reckoned reckoned on this, because, you know, they have such a huge amount of power and to take go to build a cycle, which basically takes three years generally you do you have a year to kind of plan it a year to consult and tweak and then a year to build it. And for that you need multi year funding, because without that, you can’t plan anything, basically. And that’s why we’ve ended up bits and bobs of improvements, because it’s like, you get the money, you have to spend it pretty much immediately.

But yeah, I mean, the amount of funding a body like national highways has would be enough to you know, link these existing routes. Sometimes there are quiet roads, you know, I guess, in the Netherlands, you have through roads and access roads, things like low traffic neighbourhoods, in the countryside. That is a that is a kind of measure that you can do.

And some of it it doesn’t all have to be

Are these sort of high quality pieces of massive engineering cycle routes, either behind the hedge row or on main roads? Some of it can just be tweaking kind of existing infrastructure so that it’s not not every road as a through road. But yes, it’s some it’s amazing. And I kind of did a double take when I heard this. But when we put our mind to something, it’s amazing what’s possible. 

Carlton Reid  40:24  

And potentially, we will see the fruits of this in Scotland, and Wales, Scotland, Wales are putting in some really ambitious stuff. And Mark Drakeford going, you know, will they backtrack on the 20 mile limit? And will they, you know, reverse a lot of stuff that Lee Waters that all this kind of stuff is potentially up in the air? We don’t know yet. Yeah. But Scotland does seem to be, you know, putting their money where their mouth is, you know, that the amount of money that’s going in there, per head, dwarfs what we see here in England. So the potentially you’ve got, you’ve got like, in five years, you could have something incredible. In Scottish cities in Glasgow. Yeah. You’re talking about Glasgow?

Laura Laker  41:09  

Yeah. And yeah, Glasgow was amazing. I mean, that was the first time I’d been to Glasgow, on that trip. And I was blown away, actually.

So they’re developing a city wide network of routes, they’re lowering in bridges across, they’ve got this very kind of,

I guess, I guess they had this, at the time, they were building roads, they had a very ambitious programme of building like highways. And maybe that’s about the culture of the city that when something comes along, when an idea comes along, they kind of embrace it. Whereas Edinburgh has historically been much more conservative. And so when, when highways when sort of urban highways came along the bond level load of those, and now cycling is seen as this big sort of saviour of health and climates and all of these important things, they’re going all out on cycle routes, which is fantastic. And yeah, I was really blown away by what they’re doing really high quality protected routes with planting alongside, you know, for extreme weather, it’s really important to have permeable and green planting on tarmac.

And, yeah, and these beautiful bridges and this massive bridge that I saw, and you know, they’re really, really ambitious, I think,

I’ve got a piece coming out about Edinburgh in the next week or so. And it talks about the difficulties that Edinburgh has faced very, very different than the city very conservative. But similarly, it’s had a huge amount of funding. And I think they’re finally getting to the tipping point there where they’re starting to deliver real change, you know, hopefully.

But yeah, it’s, you know, the money’s there, I think there’s still difficulties with politics. So they’ve got these active freeways, which would be a kind of National Cycle network for Scotland, these rural routes,

you know, the plan is there, or at least the idea is there, but it’s not being rolled out yet. So who knows what’s going to happen with that, but definitely, the funding and having that long term funding does make it much easier. I’d really love to see Scotland, you know, doing big things. And I think Scotland and Wales have been very, very forward thinking and a lot of things got maybe Scotland particularly, and more consistently than Wales, because as you say, there’s a bit of a question mark. Now over Wales, they’ve, you know, they had the active travel act, they arguably took term coined the phrase active travel

with the active travel act about a decade ago.

And yeah, but stuff, you know, they have the policy, they had the money, but again, it’s very, very slow to change. And I don’t know, maybe they maybe if Westminster were a bit more proactive and supportive, it will be easier, who knows, but you’re always going to come up against these kinds of

difficulties, local politics and stuff, but I think money talks, you know, the money’s there for it local investment, which Council isn’t going to want public realm improvements, and you know, health. 

Carlton Reid  43:49  

Money is number one, in your manifesto, so it’s funded, and okay, we get the money from it. Here’s what you say, stop expanding road capacity, and we have delivered a comprehensive network of cycling and walking routes. Hallelujah. Yeah, exactly. It’s just like, you know, we’ve got so many roads, why can’t we have more and more and more and more, as we know, it just fills up with traffic if we’re gonna have build it and they will come Okay, let’s do it for bikes. Now. You know, roads have had eighty years of this, let’s have 10 years for for bikes, but walking and .

It’s just, it’s a no brainer. And the LTNs thing kind of like it’s so frustrating.

Because we’re only talking like a few streets. We’re not we’re not talking. That’s when you hear you know, the the shock jocks you’d think is every single road in the country is going to be catered and you’re going to hand it to cyclists. That’s, that’s how it’s portrayed. And we’re actually

you know, maybe maybe a fraction of 1% of roads. really, genuinely is all too

Talking about

is currently got anyway. Yeah, having safe cycle routes, you know, don’t get it get blown up by us people like us journalists, Laura, we’re to blame for misrepresenting this. That’s that’s, that doesn’t say good things about our profession, does it? 

Laura Laker  45:22  

No. And I think I think I mean, it speaks to the kind of economics of journalism that, you know, people want eyeballs on stories nowadays because it’s that’s what makes advertising revenue funding for journalism is fallen off a cliff. And I think this is sort of desperation about the industry at the moment. But, you know, I think it’s important to remember that the people shouting against this stuff are a minority, and most people want this stuff or are willing to try it and see, and most of us want quiet, safe streets, we want our kids to be able to play out in safety, we want clean air, we want, you know, peace and quiet. And

I think because we haven’t seen it, a lot of cases, it’s difficult to imagine. But you know, ultimately,

these things happen. There’s, there’s a pushback from a handful of people who are noisy, but I think if we have conversations about, you know, what we could, what we could get from these improvements from these schemes, then it’s much positive way of talking about it. Of course, that’s not how news works. And I think that’s why we need leaders who are willing to sort of look beyond that short period in which a lot of journalists are shouting, and a few people, some of whom have genuine concerns and need to be listened to a shouting and listen to them. But you know, this is something that people want actually, and, you know, the benefits so enormous. 

Once it’s happened, I don’t think people would want to go back. 

Carlton Reid  46:46  

Yeah, this is the thing. It’s like, a good example is Northumberland Street and Newcastle, which is a pedestrianised street used to be the A1, you know, really the central state through the centre of Newcastle. It’s I think, outside of central London, Mayfair on Oxford Street. It’s the highest grossing per square foot retail zone in the country, because it was pedestrianised. And it just made it easier. And nobody in their right mind would say, we need to make that the a one again, guys, you know, let’s get the cars and buses soaring and you just wouldn’t do it. But Newcastle spent the best part of 20 years doing this, it wasn’t an overnight thing. We had to spend a long time, a lot of angst getting it done, but nobody would wish it away now. And that’s what when we’re not getting with all these LTNs and all these cycles, if only if we put them in, nobody would complain about them. Not really not once they see it, it’s just if people don’t like change.

Laura Laker  47:47  

yeah, none of us like change just a thing. And it’s hard to picture. And I think it’s easy to dismiss people’s concerns. Because you know, it’s normal for us not to want change, it’s normal to be concerned about something if you can’t picture it. And you’re, you know, many of these are genuine worries about businesses, and how will I get from A to B and, and all of this, but yeah, I think what’s been lacking in this conversation is just some sort of grown up honesty about, you know, this is going to be a change. But ultimately, it’s going to be one that’s positive for these reasons. We, you know, we are going to listen, but ultimately, this is a an agenda that most of us support. And we know it’s beneficial for these reasons. And I think we’ve I don’t know, I think there’s too much government in this country, and in many English speaking countries, kind of almost government by fear of what the Daily Mail might say, in response to this policy. And even the

the recent announcement by governments about

you know, stopping anti motorist measures was all caps. You know, it was like almost a Daily Mail headline.

Carlton Reid  48:52  

Yeah, it’s quite scary and sad. Yeah. But then, you know, like you say, if you know, for the ones that hold their ground,

you know, stuff dies down, people say actually, that actually is much better. So

you know, where I’m coming from, I know where you’re coming from.

And you’re saying people want this, but I’m gonna play devil’s advocate here and say, Well, no, they don’t people want to drive around.

And if you’re a woman at night, and you describe a lot of the routes, the Sustrans routes, the Nationals, you wouldn’t want to go there at night, and probably no matter how much lighting security whatever you put in, you probably would still feel that way. In.

Yeah, yeah. On a bicycle, you’re not protected. Whereas a car, a woman, a single woman can get into a car can lock the door, can maybe have, you know, dark windscreen even so nobody knows who’s in there. You then become this powerful individual who can get around in safety at the end of the day.

But bicycles aren’t like that, Laura. So you’re you’re basically making it more insecure for women to go about as independent beings. 

Laura Laker  50:11  

Well, so as a as a woman who cycles on her own at nights

that that route from Arnhem to Nijmergen in the in the Netherlands, so I ended up leaving that event and it was dark and cycling home on my own however far it was, it’s a good hours ride along these routes, but because you don’t have to stop, you actually feel safe. It’s only when you have to stop that you start to feel unsafe in my experience. I mean, there’s certain routes like along the canal, I live in East London, along the Li River that I have cycled at night, but wouldn’t do now. Because you know, that is very isolated. And people have been known to jump out with bushes. But I think for the large part, if they’re well designed, and other people are using them,

then cycling at night for me isn’t a problem. You know, you’re moving you’re

Yeah, I don’t Yeah, I very rarely felt in danger of cycling through London at night, for example. I mean, it’s been the odd park where I felt a bit sketchy, but I think if you design them, well, not every path is going to feel that way safe at night. But I think in urban places where a lot of people will be cycling to and from at night, it will probably be fine. I mean, you probably feel quite safe. It’s about kind of eyes on the streets in a way having people they’re with you.

Yeah, and I think if a route were well used enough, and don’t forget, you know, if you’re,

if you’re, you know, you’re not going to necessarily, you’re not going to drive home after a night out if you’ve had a drink. And so you will have to sort of walk a section of your journey. Most likely, if you’re in a place like London, you hate taking public transport, maybe you take a taxi, but

I feel I don’t feel like if I’m on a busy road, walking alone at night that I am safe with those other people around me because I don’t feel like people who are driving through again to necessarily stop and help me if something did happen. So I think kind of busy streets can feel unsafe, even though they’re very highly populated. And, you know, theoretically, and this kind of, there’s been research on this, you know, people who live on quiet streets, no more of their neighbours, this sort of social safety element, and people start looking out for each other. Whereas if you have a traffic dominated environment, it’s people tend to turn away from the street. 

Carlton Reid  52:28  

Yeah, I don’t disagree. But

if it is looking at the motivation of many, many people,

I mean, humans are generally lazy. Yeah. They generally want comfort. They want their own things, and they want security, all of those things you have in spades in cars. The downside is, because everybody wants that. And everybody’s in a car, it means you don’t get anywhere. 

Unknown Speaker  52:57  

Yeah, I don’t think that’s a whole story. I mean, I think a lot of the time people drive because the alternative is either aren’t there don’t feel possible, or they don’t feel safe. So cycling on the road wouldn’t feel safe, you wouldn’t even most people wouldn’t even consider it. But we’ve seen I grew up in rural West Somerset, and you had to learn to drive as soon as you turn 17, you would take your test, you buy a car, and you drive everywhere, because the buses mean the buses are even worse. Now. They were okay at the time, but not great. But they just took longer, and you couldn’t get everywhere you needed to go my friends as a teenager lived in variable kind of communities. And so you had to drive there was just no other option I would have loved to cycle. And you’ve seen in London, where we’ve got a growing network of roots, suddenly, all these people from all walks of life, all kinds of demographics.

Laura Laker  53:48  

genders, you see a much better one gender split, but also all types of people cycling. And that kind of speaks to the fact that actually, people do want to do this and they may want to convenience but they also want to enjoy their journey. They also want to save money.

Cycling can be incredibly convenient, no parking worries, it’s so much cheaper you know you don’t have to stress of finding a parking space or you know, paying vast amounts of money. I think something like

I forget the number who in transport poverty in this country because of cars basically.

They spend something like 19% of their income on their car with finance lorry, using facts to convince me that’s

Carlton Reid  54:36  

Anybody can convince with facts, come on.

At that juncture, I’d like to go across to my colleague David in America. Take it away, David. 

David Bernstein  54:45  

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Unknown Speaker  55:00  

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Carlton Reid  56:04  

Thanks, David. And we are back with Laura Laker the Laker people. And she’s the author of potholes and pavements a bumpy ride on Britain’s National Cycle network. It’s not actually out yet, isn’t Laura. It’s actually middle middle of the next month, middle of night. Hmm. Yeah. So you having a launch day what you’re doing? 

Laura Laker  56:28  

Yeah, I’ve got some. You’ve got like, You got speaker a bank and tell us tell us what you’re doing? Yeah, so I’ve got I’m having like a bit of a party for some friends and family.

And then I’ve got a talk in Stanford’s in Covent Garden.

I’m speaking in Parliament. But I think that’s more of a parliamentary event. And I have got an event at Stanfords in Bristol with Xavier Bryce, we’re going to discuss the future of the NCN.

I’ve got one I’m speaking in Oxford, at a bookshop. I’m going to be interviewed by Emily Kerr, who’s a green Councillor there. I have got a there’s a literary festival in Wantage in November. And we’re looking at other events as we speak.

Carlton Reid  57:16  

Excellent. And this is two hundred and …. All right, I’m going to deliver the end of the book. We’re talking 264 pages, and then you’ve got references back. I mean, one of them. Thank you very much.

Laura Laker  57:32  

Yeah.

Carlton Reid  57:34  

Thanks. as well. Yes, at the back there, but there’s, there’s lots in this.

So who’s gonna be? Who’s your audience? Who’s gonna be reading this? Who do you think will be reading this? And what might actually could it start something big with with in politics? Can we could we get this like your manifesto? Can it get out there? What do you hope to happen with your book? 

Laura Laker  58:00  

Yeah, well, obviously, I want everyone to read it. I mean, my editor at Bloomsbury was saying, you know, it’s probably going to be cycling enthusiasts, people who I guess already, maybe listen to your podcast, my podcast, read our articles about cycling. But I would like to think that you know, these people, these two thirds to four fifths of people who want more cycling people who think, you know, why do I have to drive everywhere? Why aren’t there safe cycle routes? Why can’t my kids cycle to school, and see that might see this book and think, Oh, this is going to tell that story, this is going to explain it to me. And so I hope that it’s going to give people a sense of kind of why we are where we’re at, with the history of the NCN and the stories, but also, you know, how wonderful it could be if we had this thing, this network of connected routes, if it were possible for all of these people who say they want to cycle and more who maybe don’t even know they want to cycle

could do so. And I hope that, you know, my perhaps naive hope is that people will read it and think, you know, this could be such a wonderful thing, why aren’t we doing it? And how can we get it to happen and I hope policymakers you know, we’ve got an election coming up

I think this speaks to you know, forget the culture wars. I think this speaks to all sides, you know, of politics, I think, you know, individual freedom and choice is a conservative value, right? Cycling, cycling delivers on that. 

Carlton Reid  59:26  

Cycling is so libertarian is a

form of transport I’ve had many conversations

This is freedom. Why is this left wing? Why do people always assume it’s just

this thing? 

Laura Laker  59:42  

Yeah, it’s become a cultural thing. And it’s only for I think, you know, certain factions of the right perhaps see this as a wedge issue. And a way of you know, rallying people around them on based on kind of outrage like false outrage really, untruthes.

and you

You know, in terms of the left, this is, you know, great value for money, the Labour Party is very, very keen on showing they’re working and proving to people that they can be trusted with the economy. It delivers on the green agenda, it’s so beneficial in terms of cutting carbon emissions, it delivers on health, pretty much every department that we can think of this offers people access to work, you know, so many people who are out of work, especially in rural communities can’t even afford to go and find work or stay in a job because the transport is too expensive, or it’s too patchy doesn’t go in and they needed to go. So there’s like barely a thing that this doesn’t touch. And I really hope that you know, along with kind of griping, which is, I hope not too much of the book, and the polemic side that this shows actually, you know, this is great for tourism, this is great for our mental health. This can bring us together, you know, it’s about in Scotland, I saw that a cycle route can be a linear park, it can be about artwork and community. It can bring people together from different walks of life around a space. And, you know, cycling delivers on these things. And, you know, if we kind of dropped the culture was narrative, which is nonsense. You know, we could see all of these benefits fairly quickly and for very little money, and have a far better country for it. 

Carlton Reid  1:01:18  

Many people would baulk at having Boris Johnson back. And you do mention this in the book of what he and Andrew Gilligan were able to do. Hopefully, it doesn’t seem like I want him back. But will it that that is what you need. I mean, you do talk about having a cycling Prime Minister, we had a cycling Prime Minister, we had a Prime Minister who said it was me a golden age for cycling. So we need we need him back. Laura, that we just we need we need Boris back. No, we don’t like that back there. Are there other other politicians are available? We just need people to believe in it. And you know, I hope that people read the book and think, actually, this is something we can believe in, but don’t need one of the good things about Boris Johnson. Not only did he you know, talk, the talk, walk the talk, all that kind of stuff. But he was right wing. So he could he just instantly takes away that that part of this oversight is a left wing things like well, here’s this right wing politician who’s pushing for this Andrew Gilligan, Telegraph writer. These are not left wing people in any way, shape, or form. So is that what we need we actually need and then we’d like all politicians to do this, but by the same thing, you need somebody almost on the opposite side to be doing this, they’ve got more chance of pushing this through. So that’s why Boris Johnson did so well, because he was right wing and the Mail isn’t gonna, you know, rail against what Boris Johnson was doing. They never did. 

Laura Laker  1:02:46  

They did though. They did. They totally did. I don’t think they discriminated against him because he was towards their political leanings. I mean, it’s unlikely we’re going to have another conservative government, right, when we’ve got the election coming up, it’s going to be Labour by all likelihood.

And so they’re going to be the ones in power delivering. So I don’t know, 

Carlton Reid  1:03:09  

But they backtracked over their green policies. I mean, what hope do we have? 

Laura Laker  1:03:12  

I know I know. I know it’s incredibly disappointing. And the thing is this this stuff like the green agenda, more broadly investment in insulating homes, for example, is such great return on investment and if they’re thinking about finances and showing they’re working insulating homes is just a total no brainer. You know, we all pay far too much for our energy bills. We live in draughty leaky homes. So many houses are mouldy because of the cold walls are damp

Yeah, I just think you know, and green technology, huge growth industry.

Solar and wind where you know, we’re windy little island, but a lot of coastline. Offshore wind is fantastic. 

Carlton Reid  1:03:55  

But in your in the book, you show how national highways basically is an organisation set up to build roads. And once you’ve done something like that, and that’s their raison d’etre. Guess what they’re going to build roads. Yeah. So yeah, it’s that oil tanker you know having to put the brakes on and change a whole culture so we’re not talking about you know,

Cuz your manifesto is saying you know, stop funding this and yeah.

Laura Laker  1:04:28  

Wales did this basically with their no more roads or no more roads and less they increased active travel and public transport policy. They basically have kind of repurpose their national highways body around this agenda, you know, fill in the potholes. We’ve got a road in a dreadful state

and, you know, develop use all their skills and power and funding for active travel. You know, public transport in this country is drastically underfunded. Buses are so important, especially in rural areas, especially people on low incomes, especially for women and

Do you know buses are so important? We’re really, really not kind of reaping the power the massive power of the bus.? 

Carlton Reid  1:05:08  

Yeah, that’s in your book as well, because you’re talking about

how buses, you know, need to be able to carry bikes. Yeah. And that’s, you know, that’s a small part of what they could do but the broader transport perspective that’s that’s so important

right Laura? Well, we could we could obviously go on and talk for many hours and we have done in the past because we’ve we’ve we’ve done podcasts.

Now, when I ask people to mention where they can get hold of them, I’d like you to do that and feel free to mention Streets Ahead. You have sort of done anyway.

But tell people where where they can hear more from you where they can read your stuff. Give it give us the whole I am about

Laura Laker.

Laura Laker  1:05:57  

So yeah, so my book will be available from the ninth of May in all good bookstores. I’ve also narrated the audio book, so if you like sound, my voice, even if you don’t, I’m on the audio book, which I believe will be out at the same time as the regular reading book. And then I am freelance. I’ve got a column in Cycling Plus magazine. I write for various outlets. I’ve been doing some stuff for City Lab. I’ve got a piece coming out with them soon. Do bits and bobs for The Guardian. Gosh, there’s so many places I kind of forget. But yeah, and then I’ve got a podcast Streets ahead with Adam Tranter and Ned Boulting.

Carlton Reid  1:06:35  

Never heard of them. 

Laura Laker  1:06:40  

I know, I’m like the least the least famous trio. But they’re great. It’s great. Yeah, I think that’s it. I think that’s me

Carlton Reid  1:06:49  

That’s it for today’s show, thanks to Laura Laker for that bumpy ride along the best and worst bits of Britain’s National Cycle network. And thanks to you for listening to Episode 352 of the spokesmen podcast brought to you in association with Tern bicycles. Shownotes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com Listen out for episode 353 next month, when I may reveal details of a certain bikepacking project I’ve got cooking … meanwhile, get out there and ride …

8th April 2024

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 350: AA’s Think Bike Redux

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Chris Boardman, Jeremy Vine, Edmund King

TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid 0:12
Welcome to Episode 350 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Monday 8th April 2024.

David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:04
I’m Carlton Reid and on today’s super short show we hear from Chris Boardman and Jeremy Vine, plugging that from today, the AA is relaunching its 10 year old ‘Think Bike’ campaign. This nudge-like promo encourages drivers to fit small Think Bike wing-mirror stickers to remind them to look out for those on two wheels. Back in 2014 the AA printed a million of these stickers and distributed them to members promoting the giveaway with a YouTube video featuring a good-looking naked cyclist appearing in wing mirrors demonstrating that if people chose to truly look before manoeuvring, there’ll be fewer casualties out there. Did the campaign save any lives? Impossible to prove either way, of course. And some might argue that 10 years down the road the feral attitude towards cyclists in particular from some motorists is worse than ever. But that a motoring organisation is still going out of its way to promote a critical road safety message is something that’s to be applauded.

The concept for a wing-mirror sticker came from AA patrolman Tony Rich after his friend was killed in a motorcycle crash. The idea was then championed by AA president who’s not only an arch motorist but also travels around London on a folding bike. Edmund cycles recreationally, too … I know that because he often sends me photos of him riding his mountain bike wearing the ipayroadtax Lycra jersey that I sent him ages ago … So before the sound bites from Chris Boardman and Jeremy Vine here’s Edmund King …

Edmund King 3:01
It is now 10 years since we launched our Think Bike sticker campaign. But unfortunately, the message is still as relevant today as it was a decade ago; far too many people are being killed and seriously injured on two wheels, whether cyclists or motorcyclists. So we will be spreading the message again, to all drivers to think bikes.

Chris Boardman 3:26
It’s hard to believe the Think Bike sticker campaign launched 10 years ago, and I was there when that happened, the idea to make drivers just a little bit more aware of the vulnerable road users around them. Really glad to see that the AA is reinvigorating the campaign. And I’ll be glad to join in and help.

Jeremy Vine 3:43
And I’m so pleased to see that the AA is doing this because if you’re on two wheels, you do feel quite vulnerable. And I always think when you’re in a car, and I drive too, you don’t always see that that person on the bicycle is a mum, a sister, somebody’s son, someone’s grandfather, maybe even their great grandfather. So thank you AA for thinking bike.

David Bernstein 4:07
This podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more. This podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern understand that while a large cargo bike can carry oodles of stuff, many of us prefer something a little more manageable. That’s why they’ve come up with the HSD e-cargobike for folks with big aspirations to go car free, delivered in a compact size, with its rear shock, 280 kilos, and a combined hauling capacity of 180 kilos. The robust new HSD is stable and easy to manoeuvre, even when under load. And with its Bosch eBIKE SYSTEM tested and certified to meet the highest UL standards for electric and fire safety you’ll be able to share many worryfree adventures with a loved one whether it’s your kiddo or Nan. Visit www.ternbicycles. That’s t e r n ternbicycles.com to learn more

Visit www.ternbicycles. That’s t e r n ternbicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 5:06
And that’s it for today’s show. Thanks for listening to episode 350 of the Spokesmen podcast, brought to you in association with Tern Bicycles. Show notes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com. The next episode, a rather longer one, will be a chat with cycling writer Andy McGrath, author of God is Dead and other cycling books …. meanwhile get out there and ride …

10th March 2024

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 348: Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett of Komoot

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett

TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 348 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Sunday 10th of MARCH(!) 2024.

David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:03
I’m Carlton Reid. And this is the fourth in a five part series digging into bike navigation apps. There have been shows with folks from Ride With GPS, Bikemap, Cycle.travel, and today it’s the turn of Komoot.

although as you’ll soon hear, in this nearly 90 minute chat with Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett, we also talk a great deal about travelling the world by bike. And that’s before, of course, there were smartphone apps to guide you.

Jonathan, welcome to the show. And presumably you’re you’re in London,

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:51
thank you very much for having me. It’s a real pleasure. And yeah, I’m in London, South London to be precise on a very beautiful sunny February morning.

Carlton Reid 2:01
It’s kind of nice in Newcastle as well. So we’re blessed. Now the reason I said that was because a your name. So we can get looking we can discuss that in a second and you can show me how you’re you can tell me how to pronounce your, the Danish part of your name correctly. But also because cuz because we’re talking here about Komoot and Komoot is a German company. But first of all, how do i pronounce your name correctly?

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 2:29
My name is pronounced Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett.

And it’s actually not a Danish surname. It’s a Faroese surname from the Faroe Islands. So I am I a half British, my father’s English my mother is Danish, but my mother is half Faroese, her grandma, my grandmother’s from the Faroe Islands, and the Faroe Islands for anyone listening who isn’t sure exactly where they are, is a bunch of islands about halfway between Scotland and Iceland. And on the southern most of those islands, called Suðuroyu. There’s a kind of like a mountain ridge, behind the village where like my gran and her family are from called CamScanner. And that’s where that name is from. So yeah, it’s it’s ferries surname via Denmark. Wow. Okay, good explanation.

Carlton Reid 3:26
And because I didn’t know any of that, I then didn’t go back and check on your, your global world. Crossing cyclist. So I noticed that you went from Iceland? Did you go via the Faroe Islands at all? Yeah.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 3:45
So many, many years ago. Now, I spent three years cycling around the world, which was a whole kind of story in episode in itself. And at the very end of that, I wanted to go and seek because my great grandmother was still alive at the time, and she was alive and kicking the pharaohs. So towards the end of this, this, this free journey, I really wanted to go to Iceland cycle there wasn’t particularly advisable in the depths of winter, but had a wonderful time nonetheless. And from there, you can take a ferry to the pharaohs. So I did go. I did after sort of not really seeing any family for about three years. I did go and see my great grandmother, which was amazing. It’s an incredibly beautiful place. By that point, I had seen an awful lot of devote the world and the pharaohs. You know, just like truly spectacular. And it was really wonderful that I got to go and see my great grandma because she passed away a few months later. So it was all kind of perfect. A really nice kind of like final stop before I returned to the UK. So

Carlton Reid 4:52
I will admit I haven’t read every single one of your blog posts from back then but I’ll go backwards and I’ll go back and read that one because I’m sure that Under brilliant because I hadn’t spotted the Faroese part.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 5:04
Yeah, it was a really lovely thing that I got to and then at the very beginning of my, the very beginning of this huge cycle, I left home said goodbye to my dad, my mum lives in Copenhagen. So I started that cycle around the world. I mean, at the time I had, I had no idea. It would be that big a cycle. I was just trying to see how far east I could get. But I wanted to go and visit my mum in Copenhagen. So that was kind of the beginning of the journey. So it was quite nice that I had like pitstop early on, you know, visiting family and it was quite nice that again, towards the very end, I also had a pit stop visiting fan for going home.

Carlton Reid 5:42
That’s your mum also came out and visited you like you as your beach bumming whether that was in somewhere in Indonesia or was in Thailand. Yeah, that’s

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 5:50
right. She came and visited me in. I guess I was in in Thailand, often having seen her for probably a year and a half at that point. So we had a little, very nice, relaxing beach holiday, catching up, and most importantly, not doing any cycling at the time.

Carlton Reid 6:07
And I’m sure she’s treating you as well. It was, yeah, yeah. Know that for a fact, because we treated our son when he was doing stuff like that. Right. So let’s get back to what we’re meant to be talking about here, Jonathan, that is Komoot. So before we do that, I mean, give us the history of Komoot, because, you know, would you have used it on your? So yeah, this is 2015 to 2017. Yeah, yep.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 6:37
So I think I was unfortunately, I was a little bit too early. Cuz it’s been around the apps been around for about a decade now. Set up by six, six friends from Germany and Austria. They have, I guess they will kind of united by a love of both tech. And also nature, they will come from the fringes of like, beautiful parts of Europe. But a very clever bunch. Yeah, excited about like the future of tech and where it intersects with, like, you know, all aspects of reality in our day to day lives. So Komoot is a German company. But going back to your your opening comment is a German company, but we consider ourselves very much a global or at least a European company, people, the people who work for Komoot are spread out across all of Europe. So we have quite an international outlook on the world, I would say.

Carlton Reid 7:39
Was that right from beginning? Or was it very localised to begin with, and then only gradually did become international?

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 7:45
Definitely, it was a gradual thing. I think Komoot I can’t quite was before my time, the point because Komoot’s fully remote. So one point switched and thought, Well, why not sort of recruit from across the entire continent instead of one country. And for a good number of years Komoot has been conscience consciously, international. So like had the app, the product translated to English a long time ago, we now have it available in half a dozen languages. So like, that obviously takes time and resources, but it’s quite important for us to allow as many people as possible around the world to like, understand and interact with and interact with the app. So in terms of my own journey in cycling, I was kind of a bit too early on in the process is quite, it’s quite funny actually, when I, when I first left, I really was not a cyclist. In 2015, when I left home, it all came together very quickly. And this was sort of the blogging, end of those blogging, glory years, I think around 2010 to the mid teens. So anyway, I found some resources online, and people were saying, Oh, you can buy a cycling computer and use that. I didn’t really have much cash at the time. So I picked the cheapest cycling computer that looked like it might do the job. And it was this. This Garmin device, I can’t quite recall what it was called. But you couldn’t load base maps onto it, you could create a route somewhere and export a GPX file and then you could have this line to follow it. And I I was just following the North Sea coast coastline, on the way up to Scandinavia. And I spent a lot of time getting very lost. And after about three weeks on the road, I met someone who was was like, you know, you can just use your phone for this. And I didn’t have mobile data across Europe. It was like before, it was quite so easy to connect to everywhere. But it hadn’t even occurred to me that I could use my phone as a GPS device that it had this functionality, which feels a bit silly in hindsight, but why would I have I lived a sort of normal city life where I was always online at the time. And I hadn’t realised that I could download load these map files from Open Street Map. And so I could kind of work out where I was at all times. So when I had that revelation, it was kind of blew my mind and things became a lot easier. And as we might discuss later, fast forward almost 10 years, it’s now even easier than ever to have this these good quality maps offline and also to sync them with devices. But it’s funny to look at where computers now, compared to my very rudimentary experiences, yeah, almost a decade ago.

Carlton Reid 10:30
So the first time I came across, Komoot in certainly, you know, seared into my consciousness when my son was cycling back from China. Yeah. And I had all sorts of other ways of doing routes. But he was insistent that he was using Komoot. So all the way back from from China in some pretty hairy paid places, but parts of the world some of which I can see that you’ve cycled through as well. He was using Komoot and I need to ask him why he was he was using it but he did found it find it very valuable and certainly very valuable in those hairy parts of the world because it was drawing down some pretty ok maps. And it was giving him obviously really good information. So here’s the pitch. Jonathan, why why use komoot? Why Why would world tourists use Komoot and why would that non well tourists want to use Komoot just you know, bumbling around the the Yorkshire lanes or the Norfolk coast towards why those two users might might wait. They want to use Komoot.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 11:41
It’s really that’s really cool to hear that just used Komoot for that. I’ve watched his like video of that long journey. It’s so amazing. And they’re very nice to Komoot was able to help that little bit. And I know that you’ve travelled a lot by bike as well, I think is funny. You know, especially with bikes, and especially with bike touring, it’s been around, you know, it’s been a thing for a very long time. It wasn’t really that long ago that people were relying on paper maps. But that’s in the same way that people used to, you know, drive around with British people with A to Z you know, in the car. And that already feels like such a such an outdated thing. I think a lot of very young people will this is probably a fact that a lot of young people don’t know how to read maps in the same way that older generations do. So I would say for bike touring, it’s, it’s kind of like I sometimes why would you not embrace the technology that we have now, when I was cycling around the world, I did not really do any complex route planning on my phone. But now, we have commute and some similar apps and products. It’s incredibly easy. The commute app is really intuitive, the algorithms are very sophisticated, it’s very easy to find multiple options, but to find very suitable options, from A to B, even in parts of the world, where some of the map data is, is less comprehensive. And you can do all of this from your phone really easily. You don’t have to drag paper maps around, you can very easily forecast how long it will take to get from A to B, you can very easily find out where might be a nice detour to take. There’s just a lot less guesswork involved. So for the bike tour, it’s a really powerful tool. But I would also say for the recreational user popping around the local lanes in the British countryside, for example, or a beginner, we have, we have a lot of tools that make it really easy to find a suitable route based on your ability. So while we have the route planner, which is great for finding ATV rides, whether that’s like 100 miles, or whether that’s 2000 miles across a continent, for the casual users who are doing like, you know, regular recreational loops. On our discover interface, we have, within just a few clicks, you can find routes that are based on your preferred sport type, whether you’re gravel riding or road cycling, if you like hilly, hilly routes or flatter routes, or whether you’re a hiker as well, because we accommodate for, you know, hiking as well. So you have these options that are tailor made for your needs within just a couple of clicks. And you can go and someone who’s cycling across a continent probably understands how maps work probably enjoys looking at them, probably enjoys the process of, of stitching a route together. But for a lot of other users. That’s not a priority for them. They just want to spend the time outside, having a good time without anything to worry about.

Carlton Reid 14:55
There are a number of navigation apps some some of which seem to you know, be very popular in North America. Akka and some that are more popular in, in Europe. So that ecosystem seems to be very, very healthy. There are a number of apps going for the same kind of thing you know, from, you know, including one man bands like Cycle.travel. So, all of these different apps that are out there, how are people choosing? Do you think people are going through a list? And they’re gonna go, Oh, I’ve tried that one, try that we’re all like this one? Or do you think they just find one? And then they just keep on using that one come? What may? How do you think this ecosystem works?

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 15:39
Gosh, that’s a very good question. And a very big question. I think for a lot of people, it’s probably a question of what they used first. And that’s, that goes beyond just these, like app based kind of routing platforms, if someone is very used to using was successful, use paper maps for decades, or if someone in the UK is, you know, swears by Ordnance Survey. And they’ve always had, you know, good experience doing that, there’ll be unlikely to change unless you give them a very compelling argument or a good example. So I think a lot of people, what they first start using, becomes the thing that they become familiar, familiarity is so important, same of a lot of like tech or products that we use day to day, we’re quite hesitant to change our routines. I also think within that ecosystem, people’s preferences probably change quite a lot based on if they have a bad experience as well. Same with all types of different, you know, products that we consume, you know, there’s probably many things that you’ve used day to day for years, and suddenly when it breaks or something goes wrong, you decide I want to try something different. And then I would also say the local element probably plays a significant part in it. You mentioned in like other regions, or for example, North America, the market is in a different, like perhaps different status for us or you know, different other products that are available for people, I think a lot of it depends on the local side of it has to do with your peers. So like who you explore with you trusting your your recommendation of those you go out with, or the people who give you a great experience outdoors. But also whether or not the product is is localised and translated into your language that also makes a big difference people find rightly so it’s reassuring when the product is as easy to understand gives a different level of trust. So I think those are a few of the factors, that that kind of changed the state of play. But overall, I would say that it’s really, it’s a good thing. There are a lot of incredible, incredibly bright minds and have great innovative companies in a kind of overlapping space, often with a slightly different objective. And, you know, that’s, that’s just great for the consumer, because it means that we’re all kept on our toes, constantly looking for ways to improve those

Carlton Reid 18:08
variety of companies out there, some are chosen by for instance, you know, cycle travel companies. So when you go on a on a cycle holiday, they will, they will choose to partner with a navigation app company, and then they will send you all the routes on that. So you’re basically you’re almost tied in on that particular holiday to that particular navigation app. Good thing, bad thing. So is that something that it’s incredibly important to discover who are actually giving these links out and and calm them? Because you know, you go on a North American owned psychology company in say, Italy. And even though you’re in Europe, you’re using in effect and American app, because it’s an American company that’s leading those tours. So is that something that you are you as in Komoot? Or your your, your your colleagues and commute are actively trying to partner with these key companies? Yeah,

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 19:15
there are. I mean, there are a lot of ways that we might sort of acquire new users. And by that, I mean, like reaching people and giving them their first experience on commute, those kinds of partnerships. I guess they probably represent like a smaller percentage of the ways to reach people. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not important. Particularly because if that partner whether it’s a tour operator, or you know, a hotel or someone who’s running a hotel, or even an event organiser, if they trust in Khumbu, and you know, I would say in Europe is you’re far more likely to find that stuff that information presented to you via commitment than anyone else. That’s great. because it’s just reassures the, you know, the user that people look for that kind of reassurance from those those kind of places of authority. So those partnerships are really important to us. And we do work with a lot of tourism organisations, maybe even like hotels, tour operators, we do have quite a lot of active partnerships. And it’s great for us because we reach that audience. But it’s really good for us, we put a lot of effort into the people that do choose to work with us on educational tools, so that they understand it coming inside out, and can then give their users good experience. And that remains like super important for any of those types of partnerships

Carlton Reid 20:39
can notice. If you get a bradt guidebook, a cycling guidebook, and it’s you know, to the lanes of East Anglia, or whatever have you Yeah. Well, you’re flicking through this, this book. And there’s a little QR code. You open that up, I know, there’s your route in Komoot via the Bradt guidebook. So what else have you got? Who else are you apart from Bradt, what else you out there in like a published terms?

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 21:10
Well, it’s just a good question off the top of my head. And when I struggle to think of them, but quite a lot of I mean, of course, is difficult because we are so you know, across the whole of the continent. There are some amazing publications and magazines that we’ve partnered with across Germany, France, Italy, Spain. And I think one thing that’s really nice at the stage that commutes that is, particularly within certain segments, in Europe, we are, it would almost be strange for the user to have the route presented to them in a different way. Because they’re so familiar with commute. That’s what they use for their group rides. That’s what they use for the events they sign up to. That’s what they do for their day to day riding. And so a lot of those partners like they will present stuff on Komoot, regardless, like we’d always like to help them present the stuff in the best kind of best way possible. But they’re still going to be reaching out and using Komoot, simply because it’s a really nice, easy way to share and present routes with your kind of users or participants.

Carlton Reid 22:16
And what do you do for Komoot? So what is the community part of your job title? What is what is? What does that involve? Yes, so

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 22:25
I’m the global community manager komoot. The global part is, well, global, but it’s in particular, it’s about the gaps between. So we have a team of community managers spread out. In some of the markets where we have more kind of community oriented stuff going on, we have more people. So there’s, there’s a couple of two or three people in Germany, we have a couple of community managers in the UK, I’m kind of filling in the gaps between a lot of the markets that are growing for us, but aren’t quite at the same same kind of stage just yet. And then the community, part of it is kind of two things. One thing is our external partnerships. So that could be with events and event organisers that could be with the kind of inspiring individuals that we work with, because they have, you know, a great platform, or they have a very inspiring story to tell, or they’re great at motivating people that that follow them. And then on the other side of that, I have a lot of focus, particularly these days on our core community. So Komoot is, while we’re really lucky that we have such a huge audience, audience, we’ve got about 37 million users. So there’s a lot of people. And not all of those people are, you know, active every day or using commute to connect with other people and share their stories within the community. But we have millions of people who are and I spend a lot of time, as do my colleagues on how do we give these people? Like how do we reward them for their contributions? How do we motivate them to share more? How do we make sure that people are getting fed the right inspirational content based on their preferences? So elevating our kind of, and looking after our core community is also a significant part of my role.

Carlton Reid 24:22
So can you is it gonna kind of go slightly backwards into your background as well, if you if you are going to set out on a kind of track that you started in 2015? Are you going to do that now? For instance, could you open up Komoot and say, you know, do me a route from London all around the world back again? Or do you have to do it in stages? How would you use if you’re going to be doing it again? How would you use commute?

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 24:55
I think I think doing a route around the world probably possible but That’s an awful lot of information for for one file. So I will probably break it down into smaller segments, which is to be fair, exactly what I did when I cycled around the world, and what most people probably would. And so when I when I left home, and sometimes thinking about cycling around the world is quite kind of overwhelmingly big kind of concept to navigate. But I would break it down into really small parts. So I knew that I wanted to cycle from London to Copenhagen. I knew that I wanted to visit a friend in Amsterdam, for example. So to begin with, I would focus on how do I get from London to Amsterdam, that’s a kind of more sensible, you know, if you break it down to blocks, the whole thing becomes a lot more manageable, both in terms of logistics, but also mentally. So I will do the same on Komoot. One thing that sets you apart from some similar, some similar platforms is that we have a variety of different sport types you can choose from. So if you go on the route planner, you’ll see that even for cycling, there’s a few variations. There’s like road cycling, gravel riding, bike touring, mountain biking. And that’s really important because well, even even within bike tours, people have different preferences. If someone wants to get to Amsterdam, in you know, two or three days, on a road bike, credit card, touring, staying in hotels, they might want to be thinking, you know, they want to have the mindset of a road cyclists, they want to choose quick, efficient routes, they’re on 25 mil tires, they don’t really want to be going down toe puffs, no matter how they’re graded. So these different algorithms think slightly differently, which I think is is really important. I would personally I would, for the way I was touring leisurely, I would be on the bike touring mode. But no, that’s it’s just important to point out there’s different types based on your kind of bike and you’re writing preferences. We have a tool called the multi day tour planner, so I could pick from London to Amsterdam. And then I could divide it up into let’s say, I want to do it in four days, or I know that I want to do about six hours of cycling a day, I can divide it up and it takes into account the elevation on the way. So it has like a kind of consistent breakdown, which is really helpful when you’re trying to forecast when you might get to a certain location. The other tool that I would definitely would be using on the route planner. One of our features is the sport specific overlays. And then you can overlay the long distance or National Cycle routes, which is super helpful. I do this and I’m always toggling between these wherever I’m out hiking or cycling, it just means at a cursory glance, I can see the long distance routes. So for example, I was at the time following loosely one of the EuroVelo. The common which number is the one that goes up along that coast. Well, I can see that overlaid on the map. And so I can compare that against the route that I’m plotting, I can make sure that I’m like loosely following it that that makes a real big difference. Both when I’m long distance touring, or if I’m even just kind of out exploring in the south of England. So those are a few of the main tools that I would use. The final thing I would add, I wouldn’t have such a rudimentary cycling computer, I would still have, I’d still have one. The Garmin that I have now is far more modern and has base maps. And we actually have an app designed for Garmin specifically. And with that, I can create the date the routes on my phone. And I can just press one button send to device and I can load up the IQ app on my Garmin device. And the route will just go bing. And here it is. And if I want to change my route, halfway through the day, I can now just update it on commute on the app on my phone and press updates. And I’ll get a little notification and my route will be updated. So if I wanted to cut my day short, we’ll go to a different hotel or campsite an evening. And that feature is so cool. And I think if I’d had that all those years ago, there would have been a lot less faffing involved, which would have been wonderful.

Carlton Reid 29:14
Yeah, I use that the other day, in fact. So I had a Garmin unit and I had I was navigating with Komoot hadn’t actually changed the route because I just got on my bike after 70 miles because the wind was about 50 miles an hour ahead of me. But still, I was using it and it was neat that so I agree. So the map, I’ve got the app open here now and in other apps, you have a choice of quite a few maps. But here I don’t I see the the Komoot map. I see a satellite map but then there’s no like Ordnance Survey for the UK. So because your is that because you were an international brand and that’s just what on market, yeah, there’s no point just offering an OS just for one market. I mean,

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 30:03
you could obviously you could argue for it. And in the UK, a lot of people aren’t really familiar with and put a lot of trust into Ordnance Survey, commutes sort of core foundation revolves around OpenStreetMap, we are such committed believers of the Open Street Map Project. And it’s really at the core of everything we do. And we are constantly looking for ways that, you know, we can help to enrich the data that’s there or help to facilitate improvements to it. And you’re right, I think, because we are active in so many different countries, we could protect, we could try and add all of these different national maps. But the the user experience would become quite convoluted. You know, if I travel a lot using commute, I quite like knowing that I can get my head around the commute render of OpenStreetMap, which is our like, primary map, and then we have satellite map. I like being familiar with it, I like knowing that the sort of routing algorithms will give me consistent results in different places. And that’s quite important to ask that we still give people like a quite a not simple, but like, you know, familiar user experience that doesn’t become overwhelming or confusing for them. But we really, we really, I should stress that we like, especially in the markets where we are most active in the quality of the OpenStreetMap data is is really amazing. And it’s always improving. And it always is, yeah, enough for us to give people a really good experience.

Carlton Reid 31:40
Maybe it’s it’s an age thing then because I mean, I grew up with OS maps, maybe people who are younger than me and not so hide bound, you know, as you could you have seen before, you know, people are no longer using paper maps, if I’ve grown up as a user of paper maps, and I no longer use paper maps, but I use the Ordnance Survey maps on my, my phone, it generally tends to be if I’m like trying to visualise an area, then me will as somebody who has grown up with that kind of Ordnance Survey mind map, I would I would default to Ordnance Survey as that’s how I explain, you know, my, my where I am. So to me that’s like, wow, I need I need, you know, I need iOS to know exactly where I am. It’s great to have the Open Street Map. It’s lovely. And the commute version of it. But still like, Yeah, but where am I? And I need that something’s very familiar. But that might just be you know, people have an older generation. And that that is obvious to my son to Josh, that had zero relevance. And he probably wouldn’t know his way around and OS map, but you don’t know his way around, you know, the Komoot map really well. So do you think that’s just telling me Jonathan, is this just me? Is it just me because I’m very, very old?

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 33:00
If I frame my answer, as well, to be careful, I think your Ordnance Survey specifically as a very particular place in the British sort of, well, the psyche of how we spend how we map the country, is equivalent in other countries. I’ll give you an example because I sometimes almost feel like as a outdoorsy person who likes Grim Adventures and is British and spends a lot of time exploring the British outside. I, you know, I should be more familiar with Ordnance Survey I confess, I have grown up in London. I didn’t kind of do much outdoorsy stuff at school. Honestly, I’ve never really used Ordnance Survey I am, when when I started to explore, there was sort of these phone based solutions available for me right away sort of 10 years ago, revolving around OpenStreetMap. I do spend a lot of time hiking and walking for leisure. And I’ve just never found that I that I needed it. I’m super familiar with OpenStreetMap. I’m now an expert in how Komoot works. And so it’s just funny, I think it’s like different types of people, for sure, especially in the UK, but I would say also globally, is just very different, like different generations who have grown up, especially have the sort of, you know, even for example of Google Maps is sort of omnipresent in our exploring of the world and navigating I’m talking about everything now from public transport to driving. And even like the sort of sat nav, the satnavifacation, I’m sure that’s not a word, but how we drive a car around the world has now had a massive influence on on people hiking and cycling. A lot of people would prefer to hike with turn by turn instructions on their phone and find that far more easy to get their head around than navigating from a paper map and pen The people could argue that that’s, that’s not as good. But I think if you embrace, you know, the quality of the map data and you embrace it, this actually helps a lot more people explore because there are less boundaries or sorry, less. Yeah, sort of less friction points. So less obstacles for them to to get over to outside. I’m not sure that’s necessarily such a bad thing.

Carlton Reid 35:23
And let’s go slightly backwards in that. The name Komoot is a pun on commute. So when it was originally developed, was it as an internal city thing? Or was it always, you know, this is meant to explore the world with or was that explore the world with just something that came afterwards and is the name a bit of a misnomer,

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 35:56
is actually a bit of a misnomer, partly because it’s actually like a Komoot is derived from, I think it’s called the Valsa dialect, which is the region that the founders are from and it’s just like as far as I understand it, a casual greeting means something like simple and practical. And so it’s a it’s actually slightly misleading, because that’s the origin of Komoot, obviously, was

Carlton Reid 36:22
Nothing at all to do with commute. Well,

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 36:25
I don’t, I mean, it’s not sure if it’s a good or a bad thing that they’re so similar, but that’s the origin of the name Komoot. It doesn’t, and the sort of the product and the philosophy doesn’t come from commuting at all, it’s about spending time outside. Of course, you could probably interpret that in many ways. Perhaps this is an alternative way of you know, commuting in nature. As it happens, many people use commute as part of their commute within town because they want to find a more scenic way of getting from A to B. But that’s not the that was never the objective of the company and and still that isn’t the case.

Carlton Reid 37:05
Right? Interesting. So I got that wrong that Well,

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 37:10
I also had one for a very long day if that makes you feel better.

Carlton Reid 37:15
It does Thank you very much.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 37:17
I’m afraid now that you’ll really struggle to pronounce Komoot without saying Komoot because it’s only a matter of time before for that becomes a riddle itself.

Carlton Reid 37:26
Well, of course Google isn’t I think it’s a mathematical term isn’t it? So would have been familiar to some people but most people it’s not it’s not familiar terms. It’s just these unusual term. So anything that’s slightly unusual is better for a website you know name so the fact that you kind of spelling this and you people think it means there’s but doesn’t but they remember anyway so that’s that’s the trick just remembering it. So if it’s if it helps some people doing all that must be Komoot Oh, yes, he spelt with a K. And other people’s know it as a, you know, a greeting in a certain language. That’s also okay. So it’s however you get your name remembered?

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 38:03
Yeah, very much so.

Carlton Reid 38:06
So at this point, I’d like to actually cut away and let my colleague take over and we’ll be back in a few minutes. So take it away, David.

David Bernstein 38:16
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Carlton Reid 39:17
Thanks, David and we are back with with with Jonathan of Komoot we’ve discovered that it doesn’t mean commute and that’s it you want it to mean commute. It can mean whatever you want. But Jonathan is he’s the community Global Community Manager for Komoot and he’s if anybody’s going around the world on their bicycle or wandering around the world on the bicycle and they wanted to use commute then then clearly Jonathan would be a good guy to to learn from Andy certainly in a pretty good job for for the kind of company commute is because Jonathan, you went round the world well, we have touched on this but now let’s let’s explore this in in greater detail. So we’ve got the Komoot out of the way. Let’s let’s, let’s talk about what where you’ve come from and why are you working for for Komoot? So we laughed before. Could you mention the fact that when you started, you were much of a cyclist? And I was kind of thinking, Yeah, that’s right, because of what the amount of kit you took to begin with is the kind of the classic. And I made this exact same mistake when I started my cycle touring adventures many, many, many years ago, you take too much kit. So you had an enormous amount of kit. And you had a kind of an old school bike, you were you on steel, you’re on a bicycle that I would have been familiar with in the 1980s, you know, a Dawes Super Galaxy, classic touring bike of a while ago. And then you you you’ve, you’ve clearly learned a lot. In that time that you’re away, but you started reading your blog, you basically picked this bike, you didn’t seem to know much about cycling, and then like, a week later, you’re, you’re off touring the world. So describe it. Have I got that? completely correct, you were pretty much a novice, and then you went cycled around the world.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 41:18
That is, that is pretty much it. It’s almost embarrassing to admit how little preparation or knowledge I had prior to leaving, but I think I was just blessed with youthful naivety time, and I didn’t have high expectations at all, I just wanted an adventure. And there are very few simpler ways of finding one than grabbing a bike and kind of just heading off without a plan.

Carlton Reid 41:44
Or when it’s classic, absolutely classic, the way the way that kind of developed. But let’s let’s find out what were you doing at the time? How long were you expecting to do? You didn’t have any plans at all. We literally tried to go around the world, we didn’t know how long was going to take? Or were you just going to cycle and see where you got to and then just what you might give up at some point. What What were you doing? How old were you and what were you doing at the time.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 42:08
So if I rewind a little bit further, we touched upon it at the beginning of the call. I grew up I grew up in London, but my my Yeah, my father’s British, my mother’s Danish. We never cycled or I never cycled for fitness. I never cycled for leisure or for exploring. However, I did grow up riding bikes, it was just very much like a functional tool to get around. London is not bike friendly city. But it’s a very practical city to get around and manoeuvre by bicycle. So I grew up cycling. I studied music at university. And when I returned to London, I wasn’t entirely sure what to do next, like I’m sure plenty of young people. Now, early 20s have the same sort of existential crisis. I was quite fortunate that I’d been working the whole time I was studying and, and while I had an awful lot of debt, I had somehow ended up with, you know, a few grand in the bank accounts saved up so I kind of had this incredible, I was in this incredibly privileged position where I could kind of yeah, go and explore a little bit without having to take the next the next most serious steps in life. I had always travelled a lot that had been a high priority for me, I had done a bit of long distance walking, I was kind of prepared for another long hike. And then kind of had this this moment, this epiphany I suppose, where I thought well, what about cycling that could be I was really interested in human power, not human powered, rather, I was interested in overland travel. So I became kind of fixated by this idea of, of cycling and then bike touring. And, and these were, I think, a wonderful period on internet where you could find all these incredible blogs that were so relatable and so inspiring and so informative as well. And so the sort of recommendations I found online, people said, those galaxies a good bike, found one on on eBay bought it was a good pannier to take Balsam or leave panniers from Argos and got all of this around Christmas. And I left two weeks later and the plan at the time, I’d been sort of telling my peers and family I was gonna cycle to Australia, but it was it was a it was a pipe dream. But it was kind of a joke as well. It was a good way of like picking something so outlandish that people wouldn’t take it seriously at all, which was fair enough given that I had never cycled further than about 10 miles. And so I I set off as I said to go and visit my mother, and I said if if this goes well, I will continue heading east and I had a fantastic first month and I continued writing to Turkey. I became very good at living, I would say extremely cheap on the road. I realised that I could probably get quite a long way. And, and yeah, I ended up going all the way to Australia, by which point I was completely broke. But I got a job and worked for a few months there. And then at that point, I, it became very clear to me that I wanted to continue and make it around the world cycle. And so I did that. And Nick got home, just under three years after having left probably having clocked around 50,000 kilometres, which is kind of a mind boggling number when I say out loud,

Carlton Reid 45:32
huh? There’s some people kind of do that in three weeks. I’m exaggerating a little bit, but they do it fast. And, you know, some Komoot users, Markus Stitz, for instance, did on a single speed, etc, etc. But you took three years. Now, it’s not that you weren’t doing some big mileages, you know, there was there was, you know, I read on your blog, you know, some days you’re doing 145 kilometres. And then other days, clearly, you’re, you’re just doing nothing, because you’re just enjoying the location. So you never had any plan to do it in a certain amount of time, you would just basically ebb and flow. It was just whatever the live through it you you kind of did that.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 46:17
Yep. And thank goodness, I personally like that. Because otherwise, I think it would be overwhelming to think about and those people who cycle around the world planning on it or trying to break records, I think it must just require so much. That’s no fault and pressure, I really was just kind of going for a ride, there was never any pressure, no expectation. If I went home, whenever I was bored, that would have been fine. No one would have judged me. So I was really making up as I went along. And when I left, I had absolutely no plan to spend anywhere near that long on the road knows that I have any plans to cycle all the way around the world. I am a Tura. At heart cycling at that pace is and I’ve done a lot of more, sort of a dyno extreme bikepacking. I’ve done a lot of ultralight cycling, I’ve even tried a few ultra endurance races. But touring at that kind of pace, for me is just the most kind of beautiful ratio in life. Hmm.

Carlton Reid 47:20
So notice, you’ve done the Transcontinental. So you have done these, these, these races, but your forte is basically just pootling along.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 47:30
Definitely. And if I if I continued to my cycling trajectory in between cycling around the world, and ending up doing what I’m doing currently at Komoot, when I returned home, having spent all of this time on the road, I actually worked as a bicycle courier in London for a short period, which was there’s no better way to re calibrate and reintegrate into city living having spent so much time on the road and to get paid to cycle around delivering stuff and exploring, you know, a city even if it’s your home city by bike. And I then started working at a company called Apidura. And I know that you’re familiar of a producer, because I believe you interviewed the founder of Apidura in this past few years. And I was there for a few years. And that was really, I mean, obviously made sense. I had a lot of touring experience. But that was in 2018, which was really when this hugely significant kind of shift in interest from bike touring to bikepacking. Which you can interpret in many ways. But, but this this shift was really kind of about to explode, and then get even more exaggerated through the pandemic. So I, I had learned so much about travelling by bike and then I learned so much about the benefit of ultralight cycling and these new packing systems that were so different to taking for panniers on a loaded bike. And so I spent four years at the Jura did the roller coaster that was COVID 19. And and that was sort of the segue that led me to Komoot because Komoothas been so involved with bike packing bikepacking as an established but also an emerging sport in the last few years. Because

Carlton Reid 49:19
you looking at your your bike setup. Back then with the with the Dawes Galaxy, and the bags you had on that was very much old school. And then I can completely identify with that because I’m clearly old school. And that’s where I started. So you know, for panniers at least loads of stuff and caring too much, etc, etc. And you look at that now and you think no, you would have the upward Eurostyle you know you’d have the bike packing bags, you probably wouldn’t be carrying quite as much Kip, although some of the place you went to. You know I’m thinking of you like your Australia video. and stuff where you’re obviously having to pack. I mean, when you go across the desert, you having to pack you know, an enormous amount of water, you’ve got to have all of the bug kit, you know, you’ve got to have all of the stuff that’s protecting you from the nasties. So you had some times you have gotten better how many it’s not an old school versus new school thing. It’s just you have to have a lot of kit in some places and and there’s no two ways about that. You know? Even if you’re doing a transcontinental style, you know, fast route across somewhere, you would still need a fair bit of of kit. But when you were when you started out, okay, actually good point. Did you finish on the same bike?

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 50:43
I did, I finished on the same bike and I still ride that same Dawes Galaxy as my day to day pub, one around bike.

Carlton Reid 50:51
Excellent. So it’s but it’s like Trigger’s Broom, you’ve got you know, you’ve replaced tonnes of things, or it’s still largely the same bike

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 50:58
is the same frame, the same fork. And that is nice. All That Remains of the original bike.

Carlton Reid 51:05
So that’s pretty good going well done Dawes Super Galaxy.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 51:09
Yeah, there’s a lot to be said. Having modern bike so us so reliable in general. But yeah, I’m very much of the steel fan club. That bike has a lot of battle scars, from various sort of unfortunate collisions with other vehicles or just the road or ice. But it’s still yet it’s still going strong. And, and you’re right, I’ve had the been very lucky to experience travelling by bike in very different forms from the kind of old school bike touring sense where you carry basically your entire house, to super ultra light, you know, bike travel, where you just have a bivy bag, and you sacrifice all levels of comfort. I’ve also done a lot of off road sort of mountain bike touring, I think the thing that I find so wonderful about bicycle travel in general, is that there’s always a new way to do it. And there’s absolutely no right or wrong way of doing it, I think it’s very easy to get caught up in the the idea of I must be a lightweight bike packer, or I must do it in this particular way. But really, there’s no right or wrong way of doing it. We’re all very different, we all travel for very different reasons. And there’s different ways of, of packing for it. And, and even if I refer back to commute and the way that we’re set up, we give people the tools to, to pick, you know, they can pick the fast road route, if they want, or they can pick the meandering route, they can pick the most direct one, or they can pick the most leisurely one up over the mountains. I think this whole kind of space is really set up for the user to be able to customise you know, what they’re doing, and how they’re carrying it based on what their objectives is. And I think that’s what’s really kind of charming about the whole two wheeled travel thing.

Carlton Reid 53:02
See, I’m a historian of many things, but including cycling, and Thomas Stevens, if you hadn’t if you’ve come across that name in in the past, but he was basically a big wheel rider. So what would people would call Penny farthings. And this is 1880s. And the kit he had, the amount of kit he had and how it was packed is very much like bikepacking You know, it’s the big pannier bags, that’s pretty much the 70s and 80s thing, you know, really, really old and I was calling that old school, but genuinely old school. So 1880 stuff is you know, Apidura-style, incredibly lightweight, hard to carrying anything at all kind of touring. So that’s that’s kind of where cycle touring started. And we’ve kind of come full circle in many ways. And so people are going out there with incredibly minimal bits of of kit and somehow surviving. So when you did your your your your cirumnavigation, and you had all this enormous kit, where you jettison bits as you’re going along. And just in case you didn’t you don’t really need this you pick it up basically you became an expert. Just cook you’re having to carry this stuff. And because you haven’t to carry it, you quickly learn I don’t need that Chuck it

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 54:30
Yeah, and I did get rid of an awful lot of stuff. I had some some very questionable belongings with me. Like I had my my, I mean, I was on quite a budget when I left and and while I was going so it’s sort of just what am I sacrificing a bit of weight for a cheaper option, but I had like my, my mother’s old coat which was this like not anything resembling a down jacket, this monstrous thing that took up half a pannier. I had a pair of jeans with me to wear like when I was off the bike. So much unpractical. kind of clothing thing, I even had like a sort of smart casual shirt, I thought I would like to dress up like a non bike person when I was in town for a weekend, or things that I would never do now. And I did get rid of a lot of this stuff slowly. And as time went on out kind of improved things a bit as they broke. But then there was a lot of things that I wouldn’t change, like I travelled with, I mean, I had like a cutting board with me so that I could chop vegetables up when I was camping, and had little film canisters, filmed of spices and a proper source bird. And so I could like, eat well, and, and I wouldn’t, again, a lot of bikepackers could turn a nose up at that and think God’s this person’s just sort of like a moving kitchen. But I you know, for such a long period of the bike, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t change that at all. And on and I know that the sort of, especially at the moment with the sort of influences bikepacking has had on on taking existing cyclists and making them realise what they can achieve on the bike. I still am a big believer in taking a bit more stuff if your legs can handle it. And if you’re not in a hurry, you know, riding up a mountain with the extra weight on your bag, it’s not going to do your fitness any any disservice. If you can get up it. I think a bit of both comfort is quite okay. And while in general, I’m a minimalist these days, I think there’s plenty of space for carrying a few extra luxury items whenever you’re travelling.

Carlton Reid 56:30
But did you come back? Not you but did the bike and the kit come back a lot lighter. So by the time you’d finish, because I know you you’d have to badmouth the bags that you had. But you certainly changed your your your bags halfway around because of various reasons. And other notes on your blog, you do kind of, say a few choice words about the brand you had. But did you come back with? Did you come out with a lot more lightweight than you went? On much more lightweight?

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 57:00
I would say I might have shaved off like a kilo. Like in general, I pretty much had the same amount of stuff with me. And yeah, it couldn’t have bothered me that much. Because otherwise I would have gotten rid of an awful lot of stuff. So no, I actually, I actually think I returned with a fairly similar amount of weight on my bike. That’s

Carlton Reid 57:22
interesting, because that’s totally opposite to the way I did it. So when I started out, I had so much kit, I had like a wooden hammer for hammering in the tent pegs I had, like, we just get a rock, you know, I had so many things that I just I was chucking stuff you know, from the very, very start and you’ve kind of quickly got used to you know, what was necessary and what wasn’t. And you don’t know that until you’re actually on the road. So I was ended up with with a lot less kit. So I taught myself minimalism, just because, cuz, whereas you’re saying you don’t, it doesn’t matter, you can just pedal up a hill, I was the opposite as like, No, I’m not the crane brothers. Famously, when they went up Kilimanjaro and their stuff, they they would, you know, drill holes in toothbrushes, I was never that extreme. But I would definitely want to be lightweight, as much as possible. And so I am kind of interested in taking a chopping board. So I wouldn’t have done that. This is interesting about how different people approach these things. And like, I have come down to the minimalist and caring such a little like I wouldn’t, personally I wouldn’t, not even going on like a camping trip. Now. I won’t take cooking equipment, for instance, I will generally buy what I need, and eat that and then have to then scrambled to get, you know, fresh supplies. And I know it’s much more efficient to take rice and what have you and then be able to boil this up. But to me just carrying any amount of cooking equipment to me in my head, just that’s too much weight, I can do this much lighter. And clearly you’re you’re not you’re a different each to their own, isn’t it? It’s just different people want to do different things. And that’s fine. Definitely.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 59:22
And we need to make sure that we always sort of accommodate that. Because people are so different. And and I think it’s difficult, you know, in life, for example, in the cycling industry, it’s a consumer driven industry, we need to convince people we brands need to convince people that they need to do things in a different way or a better way or an improved way. But really all of it comes down to like giving people options so they can do things in the way that they want to do it. And you know, there is absolutely no reason why one type of bike travelling is superior than another. They are yeah complete The different ways of doing things for different people. So ever people navigate in one particular way, if they choose one kind of route, it’s not about that it’s about giving people the options. And the same, like if someone wants to go on a road bike really fast with nothing on their bike, that’s totally fine. And if someone wants to chuck for massive panniers on their bike, they’ll probably be a bit slower. But that’s, but that’s totally okay.

Carlton Reid 1:00:26
And so what are you doing now? During what what? How would you describe your riding, and your adventuring now,

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:00:33
my, I still try. And when I travel, I always want to be on a bike. If I’m not on a bike, I’ve fully compromised a little bit. But I also like spending time walking around being a normal person, especially if I’m on holiday with my with my girlfriend. But I do try and have one or two bike trips, big bike trips a year. Over the last few years, I’ve developed a sort of real love for exploring, I guess, capturing the essence of a big adventure closer to home. But in general, I’m sort of a casual cyclist I like to get out for provides every once a week if I can. I think working at QMU is quite is wonderful, but a bit dangerous for someone like me who enjoys spending time looking at maps, because the list of places to visit is evergrowing. But commute has this amazing interface. We have this route planner, which is wonderful gives people all these advanced tools to make informed decisions about where they’re going and how they get there. But we also have this discovery interface where you can have these these created routes for you based on your sort of parameters, the smart, this kind of smart solutions, and does have a really big impact on me, since we launched it last year, I’m much more inclined to take a train out from London to a random station and say, load it up on commute and say, Hey, I’m in a new area. I’ve got three hours, give me something. So while I’m going on less epic adventures, and finding new kind of creative ways of exploring familiar places. I’m doing that a lot at the moment. And I’m extremely excited about doing more of that as the weather improves.

Carlton Reid 1:02:19
And is that a curated thing? Or is that an algorithm thing. So

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:02:24
it’s a kind of a combination of stuff. commute, we have so much user data, because we have millions and billions and billions of of users, the number of recorded tours is kind of such a big number. It’s it’s kind of hard to get your head around. So we’re able to give people these. These like personalised suggestions so I can take the train out if I’m with a no fun with friends go out for a walk at the weekend, I can look at which train line takes me to a village that looks somewhere Scenic. I don’t own a car. So I can just say I’m at this station, it will see where the people who use Komoot are heading when they record their tours. So it’s very easy to get a feel for where people actually walk. Where do people go for their recreational weekend straws. And it will give me a clever or suitable solution to get kind of onto that, navigate the route and then return to the train station. And it’s incredibly clever how it works. If I go on where I live now and say I want to go for a four hour cycle, starting for I live. I’ve lived in London for a long time and I’ve cycled in London for a long time. I know what all of the common roadie routes are that people take wherever they’re going off to Windsor or Kent or sorry, Essex and, and if I let Komoot do this for me automatically. It’s kind of amazing how it basically gives me the routes that people most commonly do. But it won’t just give me three or four options, it will give me hundreds of options, which means I can go out for a new ride. And I can always find something that’s slightly different to what I’ve done in the past. And I find that really inspiring for my, like motivation to explore.

Carlton Reid 1:04:12
And then if you were in Iran, would it do the same? Or was it does it need that you know, lots and lots of people have done this before or kind of just glower three people who’ve done this, okay, that’ll be the route we curate for this. This person has just ended up in Iran, for instance, such as yourself a few years ago. Yeah, you

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:04:28
need to have the use of data because it’s based on what people actually do. So if we didn’t have that it wouldn’t we only want to do it when we’re confident we give people a good experience. Otherwise, no one benefits from it. You can obviously still use the route panoramic, your own tool in Iran. The what I would say in certain regions where there is less user data, we have an editorial team that make it they’re the the we create the content so we’ll find what are the classic like walking routes based on like variety of sources, we have an extensive editorial team that will add this content. And they will add suitable highlights, which is what we call the contributions that the community creates to add on to the map. So that this is an amazing viewpoint, this is a great cafe to stop out if you’re a cyclist, this is a really beautiful, rich line stroll. So we will help to populate the map so that the people who are used to kind of a circular thing, the better the map data is, the better that the attributions are on commute, the more local people will find, have a good user experience. And then the more they use it, the more they’ll contributes. And that’s how we kind of launch in in new places where there’s less of an active community, if that makes sense.

Carlton Reid 1:05:48
Yes, your heat mapping then, in effect, so you’re you’re working out where people are going, and you see you perhaps, you know, and your your fellow app. This this ecosystem we talked about before, you know, where people are cycling, you know, like the Strava, type heatmap.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:06:06
Exactly. So we can I mean, it’s all obviously, like, it’s only when people choose to share stuff publicly. It’s all like completely anonymized. But you know, we have so much data, we’re just trying to harness it. And yes, we do know where people cycle we have that information that’s great is quite hard to sort of digest. But if you can take that and turn it into something actionable, the end result for the user is that they can say, I’m a beginner, I’ve got two hours, I’ve got a new phone mount to go on my handlebars, I can select this tool, I can just press go. And I can head off and have an amazing bike ride for two hours. And we can be really confident that it’s going to be suitable because that’s what other people are doing when they, for example, select bike touring as a sport type. And the same for hiking, we won’t have people won’t be walking down the road, because we’ll only be looking at data that’s come from hikers. It’s a very Yeah, it’s an incredible solution is very clever. And I think it’s just a great way of mobilising people, whether they’re like really experienced cyclists who are just looking for something new and and bored of doing the same kind of loop over and over again, or newbies who need their handheld a little bit. And once I have a solution that they can just go off and do with five minutes of planning instead of an hour of planning for a two hour excursion.

Carlton Reid 1:07:33
Now right now the bike and I don’t know how much you know, this, but the bike industry, certainly in the UK, and in many other places in the world is is suffering just incredibly bad. It’s just it is it is dire out there at retail. It’s dire out there for suppliers, you know, post COVID, we basically just got a huge, huge, low a complete slump. You know, I did a story on Forbes of the day talking about how to 40 year low in the UK. You know, the last time we were as low as this in bike sales was in 1985. So 39 years. And that’s that’s that’s pretty poor. Do. Do you recognise that? Is that something you can look at and say, oh, people aren’t writing as much? Or is that just purely at retail and people still riding that is not buying?

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:08:24
Is a good? It’s a good question. I actually saw that Forbes article and is it’s definitely bleak reading. But I’ve worked in the bike industry for a number of years. It’s like, I know many people who share the same kind of anecdotal experiences that things are changing. It is a problem with retail and definitely like have these hangover kind of effects from the pandemic that still making it really hard for people to forecast well. And, and it’s just been so unpredictable for a few years now. Komoot is lucky because we don’t deal with a physical product. But we are subject to the same the same kind of you know, these kind of cultural shifts, whether people are collectively interested in exploring or cycling, we’re not immune to that we might not have the same issues that a bike manufacturer has, but we still get impacted by the same changes. And it’s hard for us to predict these major shifts in usage in the same way that it’s hard for anyone in the cycling industry. One thing that I think is is great for Komoot. Well, I think partly compared to a lot of physical stuff in the cycling space. It’s quite an affordable price point and you can do an awful lot for free. So that’s less of a barrier when people have less disposable income. We are international so if one you know we have we’re active in plenty of markets, but we are, I guess subject to like, international shifts in usage. rather than, you know, locked in and reliant on one particular place, and also, we have a product that is set up for different sport types. So we can, you know, we can we’re not sort of reliant on we’re not just a road cycling company. So if people overnight decided not interested in road cycling, that would be very unfortunate, it would be a very sad thing. But we have plenty of other you know, markets and user types. And even within road cycling, for example, there’s people who’ve been, you know, the people who’ve been road cycling for many years in Italy decide to stop Well, there’s an entire, you know, there’s there’s millions of people who are maybe new to the sport, or could become interested in the sport, if you approach them in the right way. So yeah, it’s particularly in the UK is quite a bleak landscape at the moment, but I think it’s quite lucky in in where we are positioned, we’re not completely Yeah, stuck in the middle of that.

Carlton Reid 1:11:03
So tell us how much it costs to go for the pro version. And what you get with the pro version, better than just going for the free version.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:11:16
So I will try and do a concise summary of our pricing, you can do an awful lot on commute for free, you can find these routes that I referred to in our discover section, you can build our own routes, a lot of the functionality is there for free users. And when you sign up, you get free region bundle, so that you can explore a particular region and these region bundles, you can either purchase like an individual region, so like London, perhaps would be one that’s gonna be like a one those all like one time purchases. So you can buy region for £3.99 and region bundle a collection of them for 8.99. Or you can get the whole world pack for 29.99. Same whether it’s pound sterling, euros or or USD. And when you have a region unlocked you, you can then use offline maps. So you can take the download the map, or you can follow the tour without needing internet, you also get voice navigation. And you also get turn by turn navigation, whether you’re doing on your phone or more on your cycling computer or smartwatch. So those are all one time purchases. And then we also have a premium, like pricing tier, which is 4.99 a month 59.99 for the year. And then we premium, you get a whole host of extra features and functionality, you get the whole world available offline. So those features I mentioned earlier, you get all of that included, you also are able to make collections, which means you can group together, either your planned tours. By that I mean that your plan routes, so you want to do hiking or cycling, or once you’ve completed so like if I cycled around the world, I could add all of the daily bits into one nice collection to show that my car five, I’ve cycled while I was away. You also get sports specific overlays, which I referred to earlier. So you can overlay the light, long distance hiking or cycling routes, you get on tour weather, which is really cool, you can see where you’re estimated to be when the sunsets or when the rain arrives, or the winds looking like you get live tracking, you get the multi day planner, which I also refer to earlier. If you have a really long route, you can divide it into like segments. And as accommodation stops for each, you know, each daily part. And finally, you get 3D maps. So they’re all a bunch of features that are really amazing, really cool. I guess we pitch it as for people who wants to go further, so people who who require a little bit of extra extra features, and we’re constantly trying to add new features to enrich that.

Carlton Reid 1:14:07
Great. So to wrap up, give us a URL. I mean, it’s reasonably obvious. I agree. I’ll even spelled out during that during the recording now, however, give us the URL, and then the URL for for where people can have now obviously put in the show notes. But where people can can follow your your adventures in 2015 through 2017. And then you’ve done subsequent rides and you’re updating your blog for a while so so to basically give us your URL for the blog and for Komoot.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:14:39
We can spell out one more time for luck. It’s just Komoot.com. On the web browser. You can also find the app on both iOS and Android. If you want to give it a go and get started myself You can find me on LinkedIn. If you can manage to spell my surname, you can add it into the podcast notes. I have a link there to my Komoot profile, should you be interested in following my adventures there? My blog is called JKB’s bike ride, which is Jk B. S, my initials. If you want to read some of my, my rambling thoughts from a long time ago, all my photography from the many bike trips I’ve been on. And if you find me there, you can, you can find me on other social media platforms. And I would just say if you have any, if anyone listening has any questions about the things that we’ve discussed today, or any questions about commute, or bike touring travel in general, you’re very welcome to send me an email at jonathan@komoot.com Always happy to hear from people and talk about adventures

Carlton Reid 1:15:55
during this time. Excellent. Thank you very much. Now, as expected, this was meant to be about Komoot. It was it was Komoot. And Jonathan it was like this afternoon to measure exactly how much is is how much was Komoot and how much was Jonathan. But I kind of expected that as soon as you know that. I want to interview you then it’s like, Okay, we’re gonna be talking about bike touring. And we’re bringing Komoot here and there. So that hopefully I mean, you are very clever, you are dragging commute back in as much as possible, which is absolutely fine. And good, because that’s what ostensibly what we’re meant to be talking about. Anyway, that’s been fascinating. And thank you ever so much for for well, we recorded this and it was an hour and 16 minutes, and it flew by. So Jonathan, thank you ever so much.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:16:41
That was a real pleasure. I really enjoyed. Yeah, I really enjoyed going through whole range of subjects with you.

Carlton Reid 1:16:48
And we could have I mean, I could have gone blog by blog posts and blog posting and tell me about the flies here in Australia and stuff. But we didn’t but I do recommend people go read your blog, look at your videos, and work out whether Do you really want to cycle around the world. Or maybe Jonathan’s bug experiences and farting monks and stuff will will actually inspire you to go and do your own stuff. So anyway, thank you very much.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:17:10
It was a good teaser. Yeah, thank you very much for your time.

Carlton Reid 1:17:13
Thanks for listening to Episode 348 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast brought to you in association with Tern Bicycles. Show notes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com. The next episode will be a chat with Tom Knights of Strava Metro. That show will be out next weekend. But meanwhile, get out there and ride.

Episode Details

Status: Published
Release Date: Mar 10, 2024
Author: Carlton Reid
Episode Type: Full
Episode: 348
Rating: Clean
File Info: audio/mpeg | mp3 | 63MB
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Episode Description
10th March 2024

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 348: Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett of Komoot

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett

LINKS:

TRANSCRIPT
Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 348 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Sunday 10th of MARCH(!) 2024.

David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:03
I’m Carlton Reid. And this is the fourth in a five part series digging into bike navigation apps. There have been shows with folks from Ride With GPS, Bikemap, Cycle.travel, and today it’s the turn of Komoot.

although as you’ll soon hear, in this nearly 90 minute chat with Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett, we also talk a great deal about travelling the world by bike. And that’s before, of course, there were smartphone apps to guide you.

Jonathan,

welcome to the show. And presumably you’re you’re in London,

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:51
thank you very much for having me. It’s a real pleasure. And yeah, I’m in London, South London to be precise on a very beautiful sunny February morning.

Carlton Reid 2:01
It’s kind of nice in Newcastle as well. So we’re blessed. Now the reason I said that was because a your name. So we can get looking we can discuss that in a second and you can show me how you’re you can tell me how to pronounce your, the Danish part of your name correctly. But also because cuz because we’re talking here about Komoot and Komoot is a German company. But first of all, how do i pronounce your name correctly?

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 2:29
My name is pronounced Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett.

And it’s actually not a Danish surname. It’s a Faroese surname from the Faroe Islands. So I am I a half British, my father’s English my mother is Danish, but my mother is half Faroese, her grandma, my grandmother’s from the Faroe Islands, and the Faroe Islands for anyone listening who isn’t sure exactly where they are, is a bunch of islands about halfway between Scotland and Iceland. And on the southern most of those islands, called Suðuroyu. There’s a kind of like a mountain ridge, behind the village where like my gran and her family are from called CamScanner. And that’s where that name is from. So yeah, it’s it’s ferries surname via Denmark. Wow. Okay, good explanation.

Carlton Reid 3:26
And because I didn’t know any of that, I then didn’t go back and check on your, your global world. Crossing cyclist. So I noticed that you went from Iceland? Did you go via the Faroe Islands at all? Yeah.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 3:45
So many, many years ago. Now, I spent three years cycling around the world, which was a whole kind of story in episode in itself. And at the very end of that, I wanted to go and seek because my great grandmother was still alive at the time, and she was alive and kicking the pharaohs. So towards the end of this, this, this free journey, I really wanted to go to Iceland cycle there wasn’t particularly advisable in the depths of winter, but had a wonderful time nonetheless. And from there, you can take a ferry to the pharaohs. So I did go. I did after sort of not really seeing any family for about three years. I did go and see my great grandmother, which was amazing. It’s an incredibly beautiful place. By that point, I had seen an awful lot of devote the world and the pharaohs. You know, just like truly spectacular. And it was really wonderful that I got to go and see my great grandma because she passed away a few months later. So it was all kind of perfect. A really nice kind of like final stop before I returned to the UK. So

Carlton Reid 4:52
I will admit I haven’t read every single one of your blog posts from back then but I’ll go backwards and I’ll go back and read that one because I’m sure that Under brilliant because I hadn’t spotted the Faroese part.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 5:04
Yeah, it was a really lovely thing that I got to and then at the very beginning of my, the very beginning of this huge cycle, I left home said goodbye to my dad, my mum lives in Copenhagen. So I started that cycle around the world. I mean, at the time I had, I had no idea. It would be that big a cycle. I was just trying to see how far east I could get. But I wanted to go and visit my mum in Copenhagen. So that was kind of the beginning of the journey. So it was quite nice that I had like pitstop early on, you know, visiting family and it was quite nice that again, towards the very end, I also had a pit stop visiting fan for going home.

Carlton Reid 5:42
That’s your mum also came out and visited you like you as your beach bumming whether that was in somewhere in Indonesia or was in Thailand. Yeah, that’s

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 5:50
right. She came and visited me in. I guess I was in in Thailand, often having seen her for probably a year and a half at that point. So we had a little, very nice, relaxing beach holiday, catching up, and most importantly, not doing any cycling at the time.

Carlton Reid 6:07
And I’m sure she’s treating you as well. It was, yeah, yeah. Know that for a fact, because we treated our son when he was doing stuff like that. Right. So let’s get back to what we’re meant to be talking about here, Jonathan, that is Komoot. So before we do that, I mean, give us the history of Komoot, because, you know, would you have used it on your? So yeah, this is 2015 to 2017. Yeah, yep.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 6:37
So I think I was unfortunately, I was a little bit too early. Cuz it’s been around the apps been around for about a decade now. Set up by six, six friends from Germany and Austria. They have, I guess they will kind of united by a love of both tech. And also nature, they will come from the fringes of like, beautiful parts of Europe. But a very clever bunch. Yeah, excited about like the future of tech and where it intersects with, like, you know, all aspects of reality in our day to day lives. So Komoot is a German company. But going back to your your opening comment is a German company, but we consider ourselves very much a global or at least a European company, people, the people who work for Komoot are spread out across all of Europe. So we have quite an international outlook on the world, I would say.

Carlton Reid 7:39
Was that right from beginning? Or was it very localised to begin with, and then only gradually did become international?

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 7:45
Definitely, it was a gradual thing. I think Komoot I can’t quite was before my time, the point because Komoot’s fully remote. So one point switched and thought, Well, why not sort of recruit from across the entire continent instead of one country. And for a good number of years Komoot has been conscience consciously, international. So like had the app, the product translated to English a long time ago, we now have it available in half a dozen languages. So like, that obviously takes time and resources, but it’s quite important for us to allow as many people as possible around the world to like, understand and interact with and interact with the app. So in terms of my own journey in cycling, I was kind of a bit too early on in the process is quite, it’s quite funny actually, when I, when I first left, I really was not a cyclist. In 2015, when I left home, it all came together very quickly. And this was sort of the blogging, end of those blogging, glory years, I think around 2010 to the mid teens. So anyway, I found some resources online, and people were saying, Oh, you can buy a cycling computer and use that. I didn’t really have much cash at the time. So I picked the cheapest cycling computer that looked like it might do the job. And it was this. This Garmin device, I can’t quite recall what it was called. But you couldn’t load base maps onto it, you could create a route somewhere and export a GPX file and then you could have this line to follow it. And I I was just following the North Sea coast coastline, on the way up to Scandinavia. And I spent a lot of time getting very lost. And after about three weeks on the road, I met someone who was was like, you know, you can just use your phone for this. And I didn’t have mobile data across Europe. It was like before, it was quite so easy to connect to everywhere. But it hadn’t even occurred to me that I could use my phone as a GPS device that it had this functionality, which feels a bit silly in hindsight, but why would I have I lived a sort of normal city life where I was always online at the time. And I hadn’t realised that I could download load these map files from Open Street Map. And so I could kind of work out where I was at all times. So when I had that revelation, it was kind of blew my mind and things became a lot easier. And as we might discuss later, fast forward almost 10 years, it’s now even easier than ever to have this these good quality maps offline and also to sync them with devices. But it’s funny to look at where computers now, compared to my very rudimentary experiences, yeah, almost a decade ago.

Carlton Reid 10:30
So the first time I came across, Komoot in certainly, you know, seared into my consciousness when my son was cycling back from China. Yeah. And I had all sorts of other ways of doing routes. But he was insistent that he was using Komoot. So all the way back from from China in some pretty hairy paid places, but parts of the world some of which I can see that you’ve cycled through as well. He was using Komoot and I need to ask him why he was he was using it but he did found it find it very valuable and certainly very valuable in those hairy parts of the world because it was drawing down some pretty ok maps. And it was giving him obviously really good information. So here’s the pitch. Jonathan, why why use komoot? Why Why would world tourists use Komoot and why would that non well tourists want to use Komoot just you know, bumbling around the the Yorkshire lanes or the Norfolk coast towards why those two users might might wait. They want to use Komoot.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 11:41
It’s really that’s really cool to hear that just used Komoot for that. I’ve watched his like video of that long journey. It’s so amazing. And they’re very nice to Komoot was able to help that little bit. And I know that you’ve travelled a lot by bike as well, I think is funny. You know, especially with bikes, and especially with bike touring, it’s been around, you know, it’s been a thing for a very long time. It wasn’t really that long ago that people were relying on paper maps. But that’s in the same way that people used to, you know, drive around with British people with A to Z you know, in the car. And that already feels like such a such an outdated thing. I think a lot of very young people will this is probably a fact that a lot of young people don’t know how to read maps in the same way that older generations do. So I would say for bike touring, it’s, it’s kind of like I sometimes why would you not embrace the technology that we have now, when I was cycling around the world, I did not really do any complex route planning on my phone. But now, we have commute and some similar apps and products. It’s incredibly easy. The commute app is really intuitive, the algorithms are very sophisticated, it’s very easy to find multiple options, but to find very suitable options, from A to B, even in parts of the world, where some of the map data is, is less comprehensive. And you can do all of this from your phone really easily. You don’t have to drag paper maps around, you can very easily forecast how long it will take to get from A to B, you can very easily find out where might be a nice detour to take. There’s just a lot less guesswork involved. So for the bike tour, it’s a really powerful tool. But I would also say for the recreational user popping around the local lanes in the British countryside, for example, or a beginner, we have, we have a lot of tools that make it really easy to find a suitable route based on your ability. So while we have the route planner, which is great for finding ATV rides, whether that’s like 100 miles, or whether that’s 2000 miles across a continent, for the casual users who are doing like, you know, regular recreational loops. On our discover interface, we have, within just a few clicks, you can find routes that are based on your preferred sport type, whether you’re gravel riding or road cycling, if you like hilly, hilly routes or flatter routes, or whether you’re a hiker as well, because we accommodate for, you know, hiking as well. So you have these options that are tailor made for your needs within just a couple of clicks. And you can go and someone who’s cycling across a continent probably understands how maps work probably enjoys looking at them, probably enjoys the process of, of stitching a route together. But for a lot of other users. That’s not a priority for them. They just want to spend the time outside, having a good time without anything to worry about.

Carlton Reid 14:55
There are a number of navigation apps some some of which seem to you know, be very popular in North America. Akka and some that are more popular in, in Europe. So that ecosystem seems to be very, very healthy. There are a number of apps going for the same kind of thing you know, from, you know, including one man bands like Cycle.travel. So, all of these different apps that are out there, how are people choosing? Do you think people are going through a list? And they’re gonna go, Oh, I’ve tried that one, try that we’re all like this one? Or do you think they just find one? And then they just keep on using that one come? What may? How do you think this ecosystem works?

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 15:39
Gosh, that’s a very good question. And a very big question. I think for a lot of people, it’s probably a question of what they used first. And that’s, that goes beyond just these, like app based kind of routing platforms, if someone is very used to using was successful, use paper maps for decades, or if someone in the UK is, you know, swears by Ordnance Survey. And they’ve always had, you know, good experience doing that, there’ll be unlikely to change unless you give them a very compelling argument or a good example. So I think a lot of people, what they first start using, becomes the thing that they become familiar, familiarity is so important, same of a lot of like tech or products that we use day to day, we’re quite hesitant to change our routines. I also think within that ecosystem, people’s preferences probably change quite a lot based on if they have a bad experience as well. Same with all types of different, you know, products that we consume, you know, there’s probably many things that you’ve used day to day for years, and suddenly when it breaks or something goes wrong, you decide I want to try something different. And then I would also say the local element probably plays a significant part in it. You mentioned in like other regions, or for example, North America, the market is in a different, like perhaps different status for us or you know, different other products that are available for people, I think a lot of it depends on the local side of it has to do with your peers. So like who you explore with you trusting your your recommendation of those you go out with, or the people who give you a great experience outdoors. But also whether or not the product is is localised and translated into your language that also makes a big difference people find rightly so it’s reassuring when the product is as easy to understand gives a different level of trust. So I think those are a few of the factors, that that kind of changed the state of play. But overall, I would say that it’s really, it’s a good thing. There are a lot of incredible, incredibly bright minds and have great innovative companies in a kind of overlapping space, often with a slightly different objective. And, you know, that’s, that’s just great for the consumer, because it means that we’re all kept on our toes, constantly looking for ways to improve those

Carlton Reid 18:08
variety of companies out there, some are chosen by for instance, you know, cycle travel companies. So when you go on a on a cycle holiday, they will, they will choose to partner with a navigation app company, and then they will send you all the routes on that. So you’re basically you’re almost tied in on that particular holiday to that particular navigation app. Good thing, bad thing. So is that something that it’s incredibly important to discover who are actually giving these links out and and calm them? Because you know, you go on a North American owned psychology company in say, Italy. And even though you’re in Europe, you’re using in effect and American app, because it’s an American company that’s leading those tours. So is that something that you are you as in Komoot? Or your your, your your colleagues and commute are actively trying to partner with these key companies? Yeah,

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 19:15
there are. I mean, there are a lot of ways that we might sort of acquire new users. And by that, I mean, like reaching people and giving them their first experience on commute, those kinds of partnerships. I guess they probably represent like a smaller percentage of the ways to reach people. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not important. Particularly because if that partner whether it’s a tour operator, or you know, a hotel or someone who’s running a hotel, or even an event organiser, if they trust in Khumbu, and you know, I would say in Europe is you’re far more likely to find that stuff that information presented to you via commitment than anyone else. That’s great. because it’s just reassures the, you know, the user that people look for that kind of reassurance from those those kind of places of authority. So those partnerships are really important to us. And we do work with a lot of tourism organisations, maybe even like hotels, tour operators, we do have quite a lot of active partnerships. And it’s great for us because we reach that audience. But it’s really good for us, we put a lot of effort into the people that do choose to work with us on educational tools, so that they understand it coming inside out, and can then give their users good experience. And that remains like super important for any of those types of partnerships

Carlton Reid 20:39
can notice. If you get a bradt guidebook, a cycling guidebook, and it’s you know, to the lanes of East Anglia, or whatever have you Yeah. Well, you’re flicking through this, this book. And there’s a little QR code. You open that up, I know, there’s your route in Komoot via the Bradt guidebook. So what else have you got? Who else are you apart from Bradt, what else you out there in like a published terms?

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 21:10
Well, it’s just a good question off the top of my head. And when I struggle to think of them, but quite a lot of I mean, of course, is difficult because we are so you know, across the whole of the continent. There are some amazing publications and magazines that we’ve partnered with across Germany, France, Italy, Spain. And I think one thing that’s really nice at the stage that commutes that is, particularly within certain segments, in Europe, we are, it would almost be strange for the user to have the route presented to them in a different way. Because they’re so familiar with commute. That’s what they use for their group rides. That’s what they use for the events they sign up to. That’s what they do for their day to day riding. And so a lot of those partners like they will present stuff on Komoot, regardless, like we’d always like to help them present the stuff in the best kind of best way possible. But they’re still going to be reaching out and using Komoot, simply because it’s a really nice, easy way to share and present routes with your kind of users or participants.

Carlton Reid 22:16
And what do you do for Komoot? So what is the community part of your job title? What is what is? What does that involve? Yes, so

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 22:25
I’m the global community manager komoot. The global part is, well, global, but it’s in particular, it’s about the gaps between. So we have a team of community managers spread out. In some of the markets where we have more kind of community oriented stuff going on, we have more people. So there’s, there’s a couple of two or three people in Germany, we have a couple of community managers in the UK, I’m kind of filling in the gaps between a lot of the markets that are growing for us, but aren’t quite at the same same kind of stage just yet. And then the community, part of it is kind of two things. One thing is our external partnerships. So that could be with events and event organisers that could be with the kind of inspiring individuals that we work with, because they have, you know, a great platform, or they have a very inspiring story to tell, or they’re great at motivating people that that follow them. And then on the other side of that, I have a lot of focus, particularly these days on our core community. So Komoot is, while we’re really lucky that we have such a huge audience, audience, we’ve got about 37 million users. So there’s a lot of people. And not all of those people are, you know, active every day or using commute to connect with other people and share their stories within the community. But we have millions of people who are and I spend a lot of time, as do my colleagues on how do we give these people? Like how do we reward them for their contributions? How do we motivate them to share more? How do we make sure that people are getting fed the right inspirational content based on their preferences? So elevating our kind of, and looking after our core community is also a significant part of my role.

Carlton Reid 24:22
So can you is it gonna kind of go slightly backwards into your background as well, if you if you are going to set out on a kind of track that you started in 2015? Are you going to do that now? For instance, could you open up Komoot and say, you know, do me a route from London all around the world back again? Or do you have to do it in stages? How would you use if you’re going to be doing it again? How would you use commute?

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 24:55
I think I think doing a route around the world probably possible but That’s an awful lot of information for for one file. So I will probably break it down into smaller segments, which is to be fair, exactly what I did when I cycled around the world, and what most people probably would. And so when I when I left home, and sometimes thinking about cycling around the world is quite kind of overwhelmingly big kind of concept to navigate. But I would break it down into really small parts. So I knew that I wanted to cycle from London to Copenhagen. I knew that I wanted to visit a friend in Amsterdam, for example. So to begin with, I would focus on how do I get from London to Amsterdam, that’s a kind of more sensible, you know, if you break it down to blocks, the whole thing becomes a lot more manageable, both in terms of logistics, but also mentally. So I will do the same on Komoot. One thing that sets you apart from some similar, some similar platforms is that we have a variety of different sport types you can choose from. So if you go on the route planner, you’ll see that even for cycling, there’s a few variations. There’s like road cycling, gravel riding, bike touring, mountain biking. And that’s really important because well, even even within bike tours, people have different preferences. If someone wants to get to Amsterdam, in you know, two or three days, on a road bike, credit card, touring, staying in hotels, they might want to be thinking, you know, they want to have the mindset of a road cyclists, they want to choose quick, efficient routes, they’re on 25 mil tires, they don’t really want to be going down toe puffs, no matter how they’re graded. So these different algorithms think slightly differently, which I think is is really important. I would personally I would, for the way I was touring leisurely, I would be on the bike touring mode. But no, that’s it’s just important to point out there’s different types based on your kind of bike and you’re writing preferences. We have a tool called the multi day tour planner, so I could pick from London to Amsterdam. And then I could divide it up into let’s say, I want to do it in four days, or I know that I want to do about six hours of cycling a day, I can divide it up and it takes into account the elevation on the way. So it has like a kind of consistent breakdown, which is really helpful when you’re trying to forecast when you might get to a certain location. The other tool that I would definitely would be using on the route planner. One of our features is the sport specific overlays. And then you can overlay the long distance or National Cycle routes, which is super helpful. I do this and I’m always toggling between these wherever I’m out hiking or cycling, it just means at a cursory glance, I can see the long distance routes. So for example, I was at the time following loosely one of the EuroVelo. The common which number is the one that goes up along that coast. Well, I can see that overlaid on the map. And so I can compare that against the route that I’m plotting, I can make sure that I’m like loosely following it that that makes a real big difference. Both when I’m long distance touring, or if I’m even just kind of out exploring in the south of England. So those are a few of the main tools that I would use. The final thing I would add, I wouldn’t have such a rudimentary cycling computer, I would still have, I’d still have one. The Garmin that I have now is far more modern and has base maps. And we actually have an app designed for Garmin specifically. And with that, I can create the date the routes on my phone. And I can just press one button send to device and I can load up the IQ app on my Garmin device. And the route will just go bing. And here it is. And if I want to change my route, halfway through the day, I can now just update it on commute on the app on my phone and press updates. And I’ll get a little notification and my route will be updated. So if I wanted to cut my day short, we’ll go to a different hotel or campsite an evening. And that feature is so cool. And I think if I’d had that all those years ago, there would have been a lot less faffing involved, which would have been wonderful.

Carlton Reid 29:14
Yeah, I use that the other day, in fact. So I had a Garmin unit and I had I was navigating with Komoot hadn’t actually changed the route because I just got on my bike after 70 miles because the wind was about 50 miles an hour ahead of me. But still, I was using it and it was neat that so I agree. So the map, I’ve got the app open here now and in other apps, you have a choice of quite a few maps. But here I don’t I see the the Komoot map. I see a satellite map but then there’s no like Ordnance Survey for the UK. So because your is that because you were an international brand and that’s just what on market, yeah, there’s no point just offering an OS just for one market. I mean,

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 30:03
you could obviously you could argue for it. And in the UK, a lot of people aren’t really familiar with and put a lot of trust into Ordnance Survey, commutes sort of core foundation revolves around OpenStreetMap, we are such committed believers of the Open Street Map Project. And it’s really at the core of everything we do. And we are constantly looking for ways that, you know, we can help to enrich the data that’s there or help to facilitate improvements to it. And you’re right, I think, because we are active in so many different countries, we could protect, we could try and add all of these different national maps. But the the user experience would become quite convoluted. You know, if I travel a lot using commute, I quite like knowing that I can get my head around the commute render of OpenStreetMap, which is our like, primary map, and then we have satellite map. I like being familiar with it, I like knowing that the sort of routing algorithms will give me consistent results in different places. And that’s quite important to ask that we still give people like a quite a not simple, but like, you know, familiar user experience that doesn’t become overwhelming or confusing for them. But we really, we really, I should stress that we like, especially in the markets where we are most active in the quality of the OpenStreetMap data is is really amazing. And it’s always improving. And it always is, yeah, enough for us to give people a really good experience.

Carlton Reid 31:40
Maybe it’s it’s an age thing then because I mean, I grew up with OS maps, maybe people who are younger than me and not so hide bound, you know, as you could you have seen before, you know, people are no longer using paper maps, if I’ve grown up as a user of paper maps, and I no longer use paper maps, but I use the Ordnance Survey maps on my, my phone, it generally tends to be if I’m like trying to visualise an area, then me will as somebody who has grown up with that kind of Ordnance Survey mind map, I would I would default to Ordnance Survey as that’s how I explain, you know, my, my where I am. So to me that’s like, wow, I need I need, you know, I need iOS to know exactly where I am. It’s great to have the Open Street Map. It’s lovely. And the commute version of it. But still like, Yeah, but where am I? And I need that something’s very familiar. But that might just be you know, people have an older generation. And that that is obvious to my son to Josh, that had zero relevance. And he probably wouldn’t know his way around and OS map, but you don’t know his way around, you know, the Komoot map really well. So do you think that’s just telling me Jonathan, is this just me? Is it just me because I’m very, very old?

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 33:00
If I frame my answer, as well, to be careful, I think your Ordnance Survey specifically as a very particular place in the British sort of, well, the psyche of how we spend how we map the country, is equivalent in other countries. I’ll give you an example because I sometimes almost feel like as a outdoorsy person who likes Grim Adventures and is British and spends a lot of time exploring the British outside. I, you know, I should be more familiar with Ordnance Survey I confess, I have grown up in London. I didn’t kind of do much outdoorsy stuff at school. Honestly, I’ve never really used Ordnance Survey I am, when when I started to explore, there was sort of these phone based solutions available for me right away sort of 10 years ago, revolving around OpenStreetMap. I do spend a lot of time hiking and walking for leisure. And I’ve just never found that I that I needed it. I’m super familiar with OpenStreetMap. I’m now an expert in how Komoot works. And so it’s just funny, I think it’s like different types of people, for sure, especially in the UK, but I would say also globally, is just very different, like different generations who have grown up, especially have the sort of, you know, even for example of Google Maps is sort of omnipresent in our exploring of the world and navigating I’m talking about everything now from public transport to driving. And even like the sort of sat nav, the satnavifacation, I’m sure that’s not a word, but how we drive a car around the world has now had a massive influence on on people hiking and cycling. A lot of people would prefer to hike with turn by turn instructions on their phone and find that far more easy to get their head around than navigating from a paper map and pen The people could argue that that’s, that’s not as good. But I think if you embrace, you know, the quality of the map data and you embrace it, this actually helps a lot more people explore because there are less boundaries or sorry, less. Yeah, sort of less friction points. So less obstacles for them to to get over to outside. I’m not sure that’s necessarily such a bad thing.

Carlton Reid 35:23
And let’s go slightly backwards in that. The name Komoot is a pun on commute. So when it was originally developed, was it as an internal city thing? Or was it always, you know, this is meant to explore the world with or was that explore the world with just something that came afterwards and is the name a bit of a misnomer,

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 35:56
is actually a bit of a misnomer, partly because it’s actually like a Komoot is derived from, I think it’s called the Valsa dialect, which is the region that the founders are from and it’s just like as far as I understand it, a casual greeting means something like simple and practical. And so it’s a it’s actually slightly misleading, because that’s the origin of Komoot, obviously, was

Carlton Reid 36:22
Nothing at all to do with commute. Well,

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 36:25
I don’t, I mean, it’s not sure if it’s a good or a bad thing that they’re so similar, but that’s the origin of the name Komoot. It doesn’t, and the sort of the product and the philosophy doesn’t come from commuting at all, it’s about spending time outside. Of course, you could probably interpret that in many ways. Perhaps this is an alternative way of you know, commuting in nature. As it happens, many people use commute as part of their commute within town because they want to find a more scenic way of getting from A to B. But that’s not the that was never the objective of the company and and still that isn’t the case.

Carlton Reid 37:05
Right? Interesting. So I got that wrong that Well,

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 37:10
I also had one for a very long day if that makes you feel better.

Carlton Reid 37:15
It does Thank you very much.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 37:17
I’m afraid now that you’ll really struggle to pronounce Komoot without saying Komoot because it’s only a matter of time before for that becomes a riddle itself.

Carlton Reid 37:26
Well, of course Google isn’t I think it’s a mathematical term isn’t it? So would have been familiar to some people but most people it’s not it’s not familiar terms. It’s just these unusual term. So anything that’s slightly unusual is better for a website you know name so the fact that you kind of spelling this and you people think it means there’s but doesn’t but they remember anyway so that’s that’s the trick just remembering it. So if it’s if it helps some people doing all that must be Komoot Oh, yes, he spelt with a K. And other people’s know it as a, you know, a greeting in a certain language. That’s also okay. So it’s however you get your name remembered?

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 38:03
Yeah, very much so.

Carlton Reid 38:06
So at this point, I’d like to actually cut away and let my colleague take over and we’ll be back in a few minutes. So take it away, David.

David Bernstein 38:16
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Carlton Reid 39:17
Thanks, David and we are back with with with Jonathan of Komoot we’ve discovered that it doesn’t mean commute and that’s it you want it to mean commute. It can mean whatever you want. But Jonathan is he’s the community Global Community Manager for Komoot and he’s if anybody’s going around the world on their bicycle or wandering around the world on the bicycle and they wanted to use commute then then clearly Jonathan would be a good guy to to learn from Andy certainly in a pretty good job for for the kind of company commute is because Jonathan, you went round the world well, we have touched on this but now let’s let’s explore this in in greater detail. So we’ve got the Komoot out of the way. Let’s let’s, let’s talk about what where you’ve come from and why are you working for for Komoot? So we laughed before. Could you mention the fact that when you started, you were much of a cyclist? And I was kind of thinking, Yeah, that’s right, because of what the amount of kit you took to begin with is the kind of the classic. And I made this exact same mistake when I started my cycle touring adventures many, many, many years ago, you take too much kit. So you had an enormous amount of kit. And you had a kind of an old school bike, you were you on steel, you’re on a bicycle that I would have been familiar with in the 1980s, you know, a Dawes Super Galaxy, classic touring bike of a while ago. And then you you you’ve, you’ve clearly learned a lot. In that time that you’re away, but you started reading your blog, you basically picked this bike, you didn’t seem to know much about cycling, and then like, a week later, you’re, you’re off touring the world. So describe it. Have I got that? completely correct, you were pretty much a novice, and then you went cycled around the world.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 41:18
That is, that is pretty much it. It’s almost embarrassing to admit how little preparation or knowledge I had prior to leaving, but I think I was just blessed with youthful naivety time, and I didn’t have high expectations at all, I just wanted an adventure. And there are very few simpler ways of finding one than grabbing a bike and kind of just heading off without a plan.

Carlton Reid 41:44
Or when it’s classic, absolutely classic, the way the way that kind of developed. But let’s let’s find out what were you doing at the time? How long were you expecting to do? You didn’t have any plans at all. We literally tried to go around the world, we didn’t know how long was going to take? Or were you just going to cycle and see where you got to and then just what you might give up at some point. What What were you doing? How old were you and what were you doing at the time.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 42:08
So if I rewind a little bit further, we touched upon it at the beginning of the call. I grew up I grew up in London, but my my Yeah, my father’s British, my mother’s Danish. We never cycled or I never cycled for fitness. I never cycled for leisure or for exploring. However, I did grow up riding bikes, it was just very much like a functional tool to get around. London is not bike friendly city. But it’s a very practical city to get around and manoeuvre by bicycle. So I grew up cycling. I studied music at university. And when I returned to London, I wasn’t entirely sure what to do next, like I’m sure plenty of young people. Now, early 20s have the same sort of existential crisis. I was quite fortunate that I’d been working the whole time I was studying and, and while I had an awful lot of debt, I had somehow ended up with, you know, a few grand in the bank accounts saved up so I kind of had this incredible, I was in this incredibly privileged position where I could kind of yeah, go and explore a little bit without having to take the next the next most serious steps in life. I had always travelled a lot that had been a high priority for me, I had done a bit of long distance walking, I was kind of prepared for another long hike. And then kind of had this this moment, this epiphany I suppose, where I thought well, what about cycling that could be I was really interested in human power, not human powered, rather, I was interested in overland travel. So I became kind of fixated by this idea of, of cycling and then bike touring. And, and these were, I think, a wonderful period on internet where you could find all these incredible blogs that were so relatable and so inspiring and so informative as well. And so the sort of recommendations I found online, people said, those galaxies a good bike, found one on on eBay bought it was a good pannier to take Balsam or leave panniers from Argos and got all of this around Christmas. And I left two weeks later and the plan at the time, I’d been sort of telling my peers and family I was gonna cycle to Australia, but it was it was a it was a pipe dream. But it was kind of a joke as well. It was a good way of like picking something so outlandish that people wouldn’t take it seriously at all, which was fair enough given that I had never cycled further than about 10 miles. And so I I set off as I said to go and visit my mother, and I said if if this goes well, I will continue heading east and I had a fantastic first month and I continued writing to Turkey. I became very good at living, I would say extremely cheap on the road. I realised that I could probably get quite a long way. And, and yeah, I ended up going all the way to Australia, by which point I was completely broke. But I got a job and worked for a few months there. And then at that point, I, it became very clear to me that I wanted to continue and make it around the world cycle. And so I did that. And Nick got home, just under three years after having left probably having clocked around 50,000 kilometres, which is kind of a mind boggling number when I say out loud,

Carlton Reid 45:32
huh? There’s some people kind of do that in three weeks. I’m exaggerating a little bit, but they do it fast. And, you know, some Komoot users, Markus Stitz, for instance, did on a single speed, etc, etc. But you took three years. Now, it’s not that you weren’t doing some big mileages, you know, there was there was, you know, I read on your blog, you know, some days you’re doing 145 kilometres. And then other days, clearly, you’re, you’re just doing nothing, because you’re just enjoying the location. So you never had any plan to do it in a certain amount of time, you would just basically ebb and flow. It was just whatever the live through it you you kind of did that.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 46:17
Yep. And thank goodness, I personally like that. Because otherwise, I think it would be overwhelming to think about and those people who cycle around the world planning on it or trying to break records, I think it must just require so much. That’s no fault and pressure, I really was just kind of going for a ride, there was never any pressure, no expectation. If I went home, whenever I was bored, that would have been fine. No one would have judged me. So I was really making up as I went along. And when I left, I had absolutely no plan to spend anywhere near that long on the road knows that I have any plans to cycle all the way around the world. I am a Tura. At heart cycling at that pace is and I’ve done a lot of more, sort of a dyno extreme bikepacking. I’ve done a lot of ultralight cycling, I’ve even tried a few ultra endurance races. But touring at that kind of pace, for me is just the most kind of beautiful ratio in life. Hmm.

Carlton Reid 47:20
So notice, you’ve done the Transcontinental. So you have done these, these, these races, but your forte is basically just pootling along.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 47:30
Definitely. And if I if I continued to my cycling trajectory in between cycling around the world, and ending up doing what I’m doing currently at Komoot, when I returned home, having spent all of this time on the road, I actually worked as a bicycle courier in London for a short period, which was there’s no better way to re calibrate and reintegrate into city living having spent so much time on the road and to get paid to cycle around delivering stuff and exploring, you know, a city even if it’s your home city by bike. And I then started working at a company called Apidura. And I know that you’re familiar of a producer, because I believe you interviewed the founder of Apidura in this past few years. And I was there for a few years. And that was really, I mean, obviously made sense. I had a lot of touring experience. But that was in 2018, which was really when this hugely significant kind of shift in interest from bike touring to bikepacking. Which you can interpret in many ways. But, but this this shift was really kind of about to explode, and then get even more exaggerated through the pandemic. So I, I had learned so much about travelling by bike and then I learned so much about the benefit of ultralight cycling and these new packing systems that were so different to taking for panniers on a loaded bike. And so I spent four years at the Jura did the roller coaster that was COVID 19. And and that was sort of the segue that led me to Komoot because Komoothas been so involved with bike packing bikepacking as an established but also an emerging sport in the last few years. Because

Carlton Reid 49:19
you looking at your your bike setup. Back then with the with the Dawes Galaxy, and the bags you had on that was very much old school. And then I can completely identify with that because I’m clearly old school. And that’s where I started. So you know, for panniers at least loads of stuff and caring too much, etc, etc. And you look at that now and you think no, you would have the upward Eurostyle you know you’d have the bike packing bags, you probably wouldn’t be carrying quite as much Kip, although some of the place you went to. You know I’m thinking of you like your Australia video. and stuff where you’re obviously having to pack. I mean, when you go across the desert, you having to pack you know, an enormous amount of water, you’ve got to have all of the bug kit, you know, you’ve got to have all of the stuff that’s protecting you from the nasties. So you had some times you have gotten better how many it’s not an old school versus new school thing. It’s just you have to have a lot of kit in some places and and there’s no two ways about that. You know? Even if you’re doing a transcontinental style, you know, fast route across somewhere, you would still need a fair bit of of kit. But when you were when you started out, okay, actually good point. Did you finish on the same bike?

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 50:43
I did, I finished on the same bike and I still ride that same Dawes Galaxy as my day to day pub, one around bike.

Carlton Reid 50:51
Excellent. So it’s but it’s like Trigger’s Broom, you’ve got you know, you’ve replaced tonnes of things, or it’s still largely the same bike

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 50:58
is the same frame, the same fork. And that is nice. All That Remains of the original bike.

Carlton Reid 51:05
So that’s pretty good going well done Dawes Super Galaxy.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 51:09
Yeah, there’s a lot to be said. Having modern bike so us so reliable in general. But yeah, I’m very much of the steel fan club. That bike has a lot of battle scars, from various sort of unfortunate collisions with other vehicles or just the road or ice. But it’s still yet it’s still going strong. And, and you’re right, I’ve had the been very lucky to experience travelling by bike in very different forms from the kind of old school bike touring sense where you carry basically your entire house, to super ultra light, you know, bike travel, where you just have a bivy bag, and you sacrifice all levels of comfort. I’ve also done a lot of off road sort of mountain bike touring, I think the thing that I find so wonderful about bicycle travel in general, is that there’s always a new way to do it. And there’s absolutely no right or wrong way of doing it, I think it’s very easy to get caught up in the the idea of I must be a lightweight bike packer, or I must do it in this particular way. But really, there’s no right or wrong way of doing it. We’re all very different, we all travel for very different reasons. And there’s different ways of, of packing for it. And, and even if I refer back to commute and the way that we’re set up, we give people the tools to, to pick, you know, they can pick the fast road route, if they want, or they can pick the meandering route, they can pick the most direct one, or they can pick the most leisurely one up over the mountains. I think this whole kind of space is really set up for the user to be able to customise you know, what they’re doing, and how they’re carrying it based on what their objectives is. And I think that’s what’s really kind of charming about the whole two wheeled travel thing.

Carlton Reid 53:02
See, I’m a historian of many things, but including cycling, and Thomas Stevens, if you hadn’t if you’ve come across that name in in the past, but he was basically a big wheel rider. So what would people would call Penny farthings. And this is 1880s. And the kit he had, the amount of kit he had and how it was packed is very much like bikepacking You know, it’s the big pannier bags, that’s pretty much the 70s and 80s thing, you know, really, really old and I was calling that old school, but genuinely old school. So 1880 stuff is you know, Apidura-style, incredibly lightweight, hard to carrying anything at all kind of touring. So that’s that’s kind of where cycle touring started. And we’ve kind of come full circle in many ways. And so people are going out there with incredibly minimal bits of of kit and somehow surviving. So when you did your your your your cirumnavigation, and you had all this enormous kit, where you jettison bits as you’re going along. And just in case you didn’t you don’t really need this you pick it up basically you became an expert. Just cook you’re having to carry this stuff. And because you haven’t to carry it, you quickly learn I don’t need that Chuck it

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 54:30
Yeah, and I did get rid of an awful lot of stuff. I had some some very questionable belongings with me. Like I had my my, I mean, I was on quite a budget when I left and and while I was going so it’s sort of just what am I sacrificing a bit of weight for a cheaper option, but I had like my, my mother’s old coat which was this like not anything resembling a down jacket, this monstrous thing that took up half a pannier. I had a pair of jeans with me to wear like when I was off the bike. So much unpractical. kind of clothing thing, I even had like a sort of smart casual shirt, I thought I would like to dress up like a non bike person when I was in town for a weekend, or things that I would never do now. And I did get rid of a lot of this stuff slowly. And as time went on out kind of improved things a bit as they broke. But then there was a lot of things that I wouldn’t change, like I travelled with, I mean, I had like a cutting board with me so that I could chop vegetables up when I was camping, and had little film canisters, filmed of spices and a proper source bird. And so I could like, eat well, and, and I wouldn’t, again, a lot of bikepackers could turn a nose up at that and think God’s this person’s just sort of like a moving kitchen. But I you know, for such a long period of the bike, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t change that at all. And on and I know that the sort of, especially at the moment with the sort of influences bikepacking has had on on taking existing cyclists and making them realise what they can achieve on the bike. I still am a big believer in taking a bit more stuff if your legs can handle it. And if you’re not in a hurry, you know, riding up a mountain with the extra weight on your bag, it’s not going to do your fitness any any disservice. If you can get up it. I think a bit of both comfort is quite okay. And while in general, I’m a minimalist these days, I think there’s plenty of space for carrying a few extra luxury items whenever you’re travelling.

Carlton Reid 56:30
But did you come back? Not you but did the bike and the kit come back a lot lighter. So by the time you’d finish, because I know you you’d have to badmouth the bags that you had. But you certainly changed your your your bags halfway around because of various reasons. And other notes on your blog, you do kind of, say a few choice words about the brand you had. But did you come back with? Did you come out with a lot more lightweight than you went? On much more lightweight?

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 57:00
I would say I might have shaved off like a kilo. Like in general, I pretty much had the same amount of stuff with me. And yeah, it couldn’t have bothered me that much. Because otherwise I would have gotten rid of an awful lot of stuff. So no, I actually, I actually think I returned with a fairly similar amount of weight on my bike. That’s

Carlton Reid 57:22
interesting, because that’s totally opposite to the way I did it. So when I started out, I had so much kit, I had like a wooden hammer for hammering in the tent pegs I had, like, we just get a rock, you know, I had so many things that I just I was chucking stuff you know, from the very, very start and you’ve kind of quickly got used to you know, what was necessary and what wasn’t. And you don’t know that until you’re actually on the road. So I was ended up with with a lot less kit. So I taught myself minimalism, just because, cuz, whereas you’re saying you don’t, it doesn’t matter, you can just pedal up a hill, I was the opposite as like, No, I’m not the crane brothers. Famously, when they went up Kilimanjaro and their stuff, they they would, you know, drill holes in toothbrushes, I was never that extreme. But I would definitely want to be lightweight, as much as possible. And so I am kind of interested in taking a chopping board. So I wouldn’t have done that. This is interesting about how different people approach these things. And like, I have come down to the minimalist and caring such a little like I wouldn’t, personally I wouldn’t, not even going on like a camping trip. Now. I won’t take cooking equipment, for instance, I will generally buy what I need, and eat that and then have to then scrambled to get, you know, fresh supplies. And I know it’s much more efficient to take rice and what have you and then be able to boil this up. But to me just carrying any amount of cooking equipment to me in my head, just that’s too much weight, I can do this much lighter. And clearly you’re you’re not you’re a different each to their own, isn’t it? It’s just different people want to do different things. And that’s fine. Definitely.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 59:22
And we need to make sure that we always sort of accommodate that. Because people are so different. And and I think it’s difficult, you know, in life, for example, in the cycling industry, it’s a consumer driven industry, we need to convince people we brands need to convince people that they need to do things in a different way or a better way or an improved way. But really all of it comes down to like giving people options so they can do things in the way that they want to do it. And you know, there is absolutely no reason why one type of bike travelling is superior than another. They are yeah complete The different ways of doing things for different people. So ever people navigate in one particular way, if they choose one kind of route, it’s not about that it’s about giving people the options. And the same, like if someone wants to go on a road bike really fast with nothing on their bike, that’s totally fine. And if someone wants to chuck for massive panniers on their bike, they’ll probably be a bit slower. But that’s, but that’s totally okay.

Carlton Reid 1:00:26
And so what are you doing now? During what what? How would you describe your riding, and your adventuring now,

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:00:33
my, I still try. And when I travel, I always want to be on a bike. If I’m not on a bike, I’ve fully compromised a little bit. But I also like spending time walking around being a normal person, especially if I’m on holiday with my with my girlfriend. But I do try and have one or two bike trips, big bike trips a year. Over the last few years, I’ve developed a sort of real love for exploring, I guess, capturing the essence of a big adventure closer to home. But in general, I’m sort of a casual cyclist I like to get out for provides every once a week if I can. I think working at QMU is quite is wonderful, but a bit dangerous for someone like me who enjoys spending time looking at maps, because the list of places to visit is evergrowing. But commute has this amazing interface. We have this route planner, which is wonderful gives people all these advanced tools to make informed decisions about where they’re going and how they get there. But we also have this discovery interface where you can have these these created routes for you based on your sort of parameters, the smart, this kind of smart solutions, and does have a really big impact on me, since we launched it last year, I’m much more inclined to take a train out from London to a random station and say, load it up on commute and say, Hey, I’m in a new area. I’ve got three hours, give me something. So while I’m going on less epic adventures, and finding new kind of creative ways of exploring familiar places. I’m doing that a lot at the moment. And I’m extremely excited about doing more of that as the weather improves.

Carlton Reid 1:02:19
And is that a curated thing? Or is that an algorithm thing. So

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:02:24
it’s a kind of a combination of stuff. commute, we have so much user data, because we have millions and billions and billions of of users, the number of recorded tours is kind of such a big number. It’s it’s kind of hard to get your head around. So we’re able to give people these. These like personalised suggestions so I can take the train out if I’m with a no fun with friends go out for a walk at the weekend, I can look at which train line takes me to a village that looks somewhere Scenic. I don’t own a car. So I can just say I’m at this station, it will see where the people who use Komoot are heading when they record their tours. So it’s very easy to get a feel for where people actually walk. Where do people go for their recreational weekend straws. And it will give me a clever or suitable solution to get kind of onto that, navigate the route and then return to the train station. And it’s incredibly clever how it works. If I go on where I live now and say I want to go for a four hour cycle, starting for I live. I’ve lived in London for a long time and I’ve cycled in London for a long time. I know what all of the common roadie routes are that people take wherever they’re going off to Windsor or Kent or sorry, Essex and, and if I let Komoot do this for me automatically. It’s kind of amazing how it basically gives me the routes that people most commonly do. But it won’t just give me three or four options, it will give me hundreds of options, which means I can go out for a new ride. And I can always find something that’s slightly different to what I’ve done in the past. And I find that really inspiring for my, like motivation to explore.

Carlton Reid 1:04:12
And then if you were in Iran, would it do the same? Or was it does it need that you know, lots and lots of people have done this before or kind of just glower three people who’ve done this, okay, that’ll be the route we curate for this. This person has just ended up in Iran, for instance, such as yourself a few years ago. Yeah, you

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:04:28
need to have the use of data because it’s based on what people actually do. So if we didn’t have that it wouldn’t we only want to do it when we’re confident we give people a good experience. Otherwise, no one benefits from it. You can obviously still use the route panoramic, your own tool in Iran. The what I would say in certain regions where there is less user data, we have an editorial team that make it they’re the the we create the content so we’ll find what are the classic like walking routes based on like variety of sources, we have an extensive editorial team that will add this content. And they will add suitable highlights, which is what we call the contributions that the community creates to add on to the map. So that this is an amazing viewpoint, this is a great cafe to stop out if you’re a cyclist, this is a really beautiful, rich line stroll. So we will help to populate the map so that the people who are used to kind of a circular thing, the better the map data is, the better that the attributions are on commute, the more local people will find, have a good user experience. And then the more they use it, the more they’ll contributes. And that’s how we kind of launch in in new places where there’s less of an active community, if that makes sense.

Carlton Reid 1:05:48
Yes, your heat mapping then, in effect, so you’re you’re working out where people are going, and you see you perhaps, you know, and your your fellow app. This this ecosystem we talked about before, you know, where people are cycling, you know, like the Strava, type heatmap.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:06:06
Exactly. So we can I mean, it’s all obviously, like, it’s only when people choose to share stuff publicly. It’s all like completely anonymized. But you know, we have so much data, we’re just trying to harness it. And yes, we do know where people cycle we have that information that’s great is quite hard to sort of digest. But if you can take that and turn it into something actionable, the end result for the user is that they can say, I’m a beginner, I’ve got two hours, I’ve got a new phone mount to go on my handlebars, I can select this tool, I can just press go. And I can head off and have an amazing bike ride for two hours. And we can be really confident that it’s going to be suitable because that’s what other people are doing when they, for example, select bike touring as a sport type. And the same for hiking, we won’t have people won’t be walking down the road, because we’ll only be looking at data that’s come from hikers. It’s a very Yeah, it’s an incredible solution is very clever. And I think it’s just a great way of mobilising people, whether they’re like really experienced cyclists who are just looking for something new and and bored of doing the same kind of loop over and over again, or newbies who need their handheld a little bit. And once I have a solution that they can just go off and do with five minutes of planning instead of an hour of planning for a two hour excursion.

Carlton Reid 1:07:33
Now right now the bike and I don’t know how much you know, this, but the bike industry, certainly in the UK, and in many other places in the world is is suffering just incredibly bad. It’s just it is it is dire out there at retail. It’s dire out there for suppliers, you know, post COVID, we basically just got a huge, huge, low a complete slump. You know, I did a story on Forbes of the day talking about how to 40 year low in the UK. You know, the last time we were as low as this in bike sales was in 1985. So 39 years. And that’s that’s that’s pretty poor. Do. Do you recognise that? Is that something you can look at and say, oh, people aren’t writing as much? Or is that just purely at retail and people still riding that is not buying?

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:08:24
Is a good? It’s a good question. I actually saw that Forbes article and is it’s definitely bleak reading. But I’ve worked in the bike industry for a number of years. It’s like, I know many people who share the same kind of anecdotal experiences that things are changing. It is a problem with retail and definitely like have these hangover kind of effects from the pandemic that still making it really hard for people to forecast well. And, and it’s just been so unpredictable for a few years now. Komoot is lucky because we don’t deal with a physical product. But we are subject to the same the same kind of you know, these kind of cultural shifts, whether people are collectively interested in exploring or cycling, we’re not immune to that we might not have the same issues that a bike manufacturer has, but we still get impacted by the same changes. And it’s hard for us to predict these major shifts in usage in the same way that it’s hard for anyone in the cycling industry. One thing that I think is is great for Komoot. Well, I think partly compared to a lot of physical stuff in the cycling space. It’s quite an affordable price point and you can do an awful lot for free. So that’s less of a barrier when people have less disposable income. We are international so if one you know we have we’re active in plenty of markets, but we are, I guess subject to like, international shifts in usage. rather than, you know, locked in and reliant on one particular place, and also, we have a product that is set up for different sport types. So we can, you know, we can we’re not sort of reliant on we’re not just a road cycling company. So if people overnight decided not interested in road cycling, that would be very unfortunate, it would be a very sad thing. But we have plenty of other you know, markets and user types. And even within road cycling, for example, there’s people who’ve been, you know, the people who’ve been road cycling for many years in Italy decide to stop Well, there’s an entire, you know, there’s there’s millions of people who are maybe new to the sport, or could become interested in the sport, if you approach them in the right way. So yeah, it’s particularly in the UK is quite a bleak landscape at the moment, but I think it’s quite lucky in in where we are positioned, we’re not completely Yeah, stuck in the middle of that.

Carlton Reid 1:11:03
So tell us how much it costs to go for the pro version. And what you get with the pro version, better than just going for the free version.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:11:16
So I will try and do a concise summary of our pricing, you can do an awful lot on commute for free, you can find these routes that I referred to in our discover section, you can build our own routes, a lot of the functionality is there for free users. And when you sign up, you get free region bundle, so that you can explore a particular region and these region bundles, you can either purchase like an individual region, so like London, perhaps would be one that’s gonna be like a one those all like one time purchases. So you can buy region for £3.99 and region bundle a collection of them for 8.99. Or you can get the whole world pack for 29.99. Same whether it’s pound sterling, euros or or USD. And when you have a region unlocked you, you can then use offline maps. So you can take the download the map, or you can follow the tour without needing internet, you also get voice navigation. And you also get turn by turn navigation, whether you’re doing on your phone or more on your cycling computer or smartwatch. So those are all one time purchases. And then we also have a premium, like pricing tier, which is 4.99 a month 59.99 for the year. And then we premium, you get a whole host of extra features and functionality, you get the whole world available offline. So those features I mentioned earlier, you get all of that included, you also are able to make collections, which means you can group together, either your planned tours. By that I mean that your plan routes, so you want to do hiking or cycling, or once you’ve completed so like if I cycled around the world, I could add all of the daily bits into one nice collection to show that my car five, I’ve cycled while I was away. You also get sports specific overlays, which I referred to earlier. So you can overlay the light, long distance hiking or cycling routes, you get on tour weather, which is really cool, you can see where you’re estimated to be when the sunsets or when the rain arrives, or the winds looking like you get live tracking, you get the multi day planner, which I also refer to earlier. If you have a really long route, you can divide it into like segments. And as accommodation stops for each, you know, each daily part. And finally, you get 3D maps. So they’re all a bunch of features that are really amazing, really cool. I guess we pitch it as for people who wants to go further, so people who who require a little bit of extra extra features, and we’re constantly trying to add new features to enrich that.

Carlton Reid 1:14:07
Great. So to wrap up, give us a URL. I mean, it’s reasonably obvious. I agree. I’ll even spelled out during that during the recording now, however, give us the URL, and then the URL for for where people can have now obviously put in the show notes. But where people can can follow your your adventures in 2015 through 2017. And then you’ve done subsequent rides and you’re updating your blog for a while so so to basically give us your URL for the blog and for Komoot.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:14:39
We can spell out one more time for luck. It’s just Komoot.com. On the web browser. You can also find the app on both iOS and Android. If you want to give it a go and get started myself You can find me on LinkedIn. If you can manage to spell my surname, you can add it into the podcast notes. I have a link there to my Komoot profile, should you be interested in following my adventures there? My blog is called JKB’s bike ride, which is Jk B. S, my initials. If you want to read some of my, my rambling thoughts from a long time ago, all my photography from the many bike trips I’ve been on. And if you find me there, you can, you can find me on other social media platforms. And I would just say if you have any, if anyone listening has any questions about the things that we’ve discussed today, or any questions about commute, or bike touring travel in general, you’re very welcome to send me an email at jonathan@komoot.com Always happy to hear from people and talk about adventures

Carlton Reid 1:15:55
during this time. Excellent. Thank you very much. Now, as expected, this was meant to be about Komoot. It was it was Komoot. And Jonathan it was like this afternoon to measure exactly how much is is how much was Komoot and how much was Jonathan. But I kind of expected that as soon as you know that. I want to interview you then it’s like, Okay, we’re gonna be talking about bike touring. And we’re bringing Komoot here and there. So that hopefully I mean, you are very clever, you are dragging commute back in as much as possible, which is absolutely fine. And good, because that’s what ostensibly what we’re meant to be talking about. Anyway, that’s been fascinating. And thank you ever so much for for well, we recorded this and it was an hour and 16 minutes, and it flew by. So Jonathan, thank you ever so much.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:16:41
That was a real pleasure. I really enjoyed. Yeah, I really enjoyed going through whole range of subjects with you.

Carlton Reid 1:16:48
And we could have I mean, I could have gone blog by blog posts and blog posting and tell me about the flies here in Australia and stuff. But we didn’t but I do recommend people go read your blog, look at your videos, and work out whether Do you really want to cycle around the world. Or maybe Jonathan’s bug experiences and farting monks and stuff will will actually inspire you to go and do your own stuff. So anyway, thank you very much.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:17:10
It was a good teaser. Yeah, thank you very much for your time.

Carlton Reid 1:17:13
Thanks for listening to Episode 348 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast brought to you in association with Tern Bicycles. Show notes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com. The next episode will be a chat with Tom Knights of Strava Metro. That show will be out next weekend. But meanwhile, get out there and ride.

20th February 2024

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 346: Monica Garrison

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike

20th February 2024

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 346: Monica Garrison

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike

TOPICS:

LINKS:

TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 346 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Tuesday 20th of February 2024.

David Bernstein 0:29
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:03
I’m Carlton Reid and today’s episode is a half hour chat with Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike a Pennsylvania nonprofit now in its 11th year of group rides and more for black women and girls. And yeah, I should have checked out the weather map before I asked the first stupid question. Have you been riding today?

Monica Garrison 1:28
Oh, no! There’s snow everywhere. We had a big storm yesterday. Yeah, yesterday.

Carlton Reid 1:35
I should have checked your weather. Okay. So how much of the year can you not cycle in Pittsburgh?

Monica Garrison 1:43
Pretty much November to March is pretty snowy and rainy, and cold. So we have a nice big offseason here, though some folks ride through the winter. I’m not one of those people.

Carlton Reid 1:57
So you kind of come say March, April, you’re kind of really desperate to get out on your bike, that kind of thing.

Monica Garrison 2:05
Oh, yeah, the mid March The weather seems to shift and and cyclists return full force and and then we’re good. I mean, we get pretty hot in August and July, you know, it’s a bit unbearable and humid. So there’s some time there where it’s not so pleasant to be out on the bike, but pretty much yeah, the rest of the year we’re riding.

Carlton Reid 2:27
So I really should have checked the weather. Because that was such a stupid question, wasn’t it if you’re deep in snow, and of course. That’s okay. So the rest of the year. tell me about the rest of the year in Pittsburgh. What’s it like riding in Pittsburgh?

Monica Garrison 2:43
So Pittsburgh is notorious for its hills. It’s a very hilly city. So it’s not for the faint of heart. Literally. I think over the last 10 years, we’ve had a really good programme, Bike Pittsburgh is our local Bike Ped organisation. And they’ve done a really good job of creating infrastructure that connects. So there are large parts of the city that are interconnected for commuters and everyone else on bikes. So that’s nice. We have what we call the gap trail here, which is a Great Allegheny Passage. And it starts here in Pittsburgh, and you can ride it all the way to Washington, DC. So a lot of local cyclists put that on their list of things to do in the spring and summer, before it gets too hot. And our we have Port Authority, which is our local bus transportation here. And they made an effort a few years ago to outfit all of the buses with bike racks on the front. So no matter where you’re headed, you can take your bike with you

Carlton Reid 3:52
Now, we’re very jealous. When when we see Americans with, with buses with that on the front, we get very jealous, we’ve got very few services that will will do that. So I’ve seen photographs on your, on your website, where it’s like the media images where you can get these the photographs you’re allowed to use. And there’s you and your kids, and there’s a bike lane in Pittsburgh. So I can visualise extremely well, the bike lane that you were talking about there, but your kids. So not only are you getting women of colour, and you’re getting people just generally onto bikes. You’re we’ll talk about your chapters in a minute, but you’re getting your kids onto bikes. That’s something that you wanted to do. That’s something that just happened what so how have you managed to get your kids on bikes?

Monica Garrison 4:46
I mean, when I was a kid, I loved riding my bike, so I just assumed that they would too. And I you know happened to me correct. But what I did was honestly I started them riding really early like my son and daughter for probably pedaling bikes at the age of four. And so the earlier you get them in, The more consistent you are with them wearing helmets, then it just becomes a part of their life. And so you know, when, when Black Girls Do Bike started, it was a time where I was riding my bike a lot more than I had in the past. And so I just invited them to come along, and they they kind of got bitten by the bug. I will say my, my daughter, my son is probably the one who goes with me the most these days, we’ll load up the bikes and drive to like our downtown area and spend a couple hours riding around when the weather’s nice. And that’s really fun to do. So yeah, it’s just a no, no, it’s, it’s a fun thing to do as a family. Cycling is great for me as a solo sport. But I also like bringing folks along and you know, showing them how fun it can be.

Carlton Reid 5:55
So you have all these chapters across I mean, this one is the one that’s in London, is that still going?

Monica Garrison 6:01
it’s still going but we have, we have a leadership vacuum, there we are our leaders who started the group stepped down to do another project. So we’re actually looking for someone to kind of step in and, you know, rejuvenate the chapter.

Carlton Reid 6:17
Tell me about the chapters in in the US than them and how big did they get? Which are the biggest ones? What’s the chapter story?

Monica Garrison 6:25
Sure, we have 103 chapters here in the US. So as you can imagine, pretty much every major city here has a chapter every almost every state has has at least one chapter. The smallest chapters are, you know, a few 100 ladies and our largest chapters have anywhere from 1500 to 2000 members. I will honestly say that I we’ve never gotten 2000 out on a bike at once. But generally our rides are, you know, anywhere from five ladies to maybe 40 to 50 ladies.

Carlton Reid 7:04
Is it a kind of Facebook private group organised is that? Is that how you get in touch with everybody?

Monica Garrison 7:10
Yeah, I think Facebook’s been the easiest way. I mean, we’re 10 years into this journey. So Facebook was a lot more robust 10 years ago, but it’s still the best way to kind of organise people. And yeah, so each each chapter has its own Facebook, private Facebook group. And then so folks who are interested can go to BlackGirlsDoBike.org and then they can click on chapters, and then they can find the nearest chapter for them.

Carlton Reid 7:36
You’ve got very, very strong, bold graphics. Is that something that was there from the get go? Or is that something that evolved? Did you have members who are graphic artists? How have you managed to be really bold and distinctive?

Monica Garrison 7:53
That’s a good question. So it was always the intention from the beginning. Or I should say soon after, there’ll be an increase. So the plan really wasn’t to have chapters and have t shirts and jerseys and all this, these things all came organically as people began to ask for them. But, but once we started to design gear, I yeah, I think, you know, I was a business major. So I have a little bit of insight into, you know, what makes for good advertising. I’m also a photographer, so I’m visually built to, you know, built to appreciate things and design. I do most of the design myself, I usually just have an idea, and then I’ll collaborate with artists who can bring it to life. And I just, I There are a couple of reasons, I think, because as a Black woman, I know that, you know, our skin tone, generally looks really nice with bright colours, it’s kind of they complement each other. So I never shied away from bright colours and in, you know, variety in that respect, but also in terms of getting the message out, I think, you know, if someone’s wearing a shirt, and it’s visually appealing, and it catches the attention, then you’re more likely to spread your message and have people ask, what’s this about? You know, I’ve never seen this before. So I do think the the visual part of it is a huge part of our success.

Carlton Reid 9:20
And I kind of guessed why I kind of surmise that you’re a photographer because you’ve got your credit on some of the photographs. And there’s obviously a studio lights going on there. There’s some serious photography going on behind the scenes there. That’s like some pretty impressive stuff.

Monica Garrison 9:36
Thank you. Yeah, I think that’s been one of my favourite parts of this process is I’ve been able to flex my photography and video videography muscles a little bit. And, you know, in terms of like posting on our social media, that’s that’s it’s a nice way for me to be creative and not get too caught up in the day to day things.

Carlton Reid 10:01
So before that 2013 You’ve been going now this is your 11th 11th. Yeah, yeah. So So back, it was 2016 There was an article in bicycling it was by Elly Blue. Elly was the person who had the idea for bikenomics. So that’s me and Elly have spoken a lot over the years. So I know who Elly is. But there’s, there’s a quote in there, which I’d like to quote back to you. I mean, it is 2016. I’m not expecting you to remember this. But I just want you to riff on this really. And that is, so this is a quote and this is from you “know that my journey to riding may be completely different than yours. Know that my experience while riding, and even how I am perceived, while riding will be different to yours.” So Monica, clearly I cannot even start to imagine what it must be like for you as a Black woman on a bicycle because it bicyclists famously kind of like we’re out there sometimes when we’re not the most favourite people have lots and lots of what can I outcasts in many respects, even now. So you kind of take that, and then you take the fact that you’re a woman. And then you add on you’re Black. So you’re, you’re really stacking it against yourself here. So so kind of riff on what you said there about how the perception, your perception of you when you’re riding is going to be so so?

Monica Garrison 11:44
Yeah. Yeah, thanks for kind of breaking that down. It’s, so I do remember the quote, now that you read it, it’s, it comes back to me, I still believe it to be true. So you have a couple of things. So most women who are women of colour even plus size women, which is a category I fit into, we’re not expected to be cyclist, right. No one expects us to pull up on a bike. So you the first thing you overcome is the expectation of from the outside world, like, where did you come from? And what are you doing on the bicycle? And we could also have those internalised things just from our community. When folks say, Well, you know, why, why do you own a bike? Or how’d you get how’d you get into that? So there’s expectation. And you mentioned drivers on the road. That’s a big thing. For me, I prefer not to ride on the road, I try to ride on the trails as much as possible. But that’s just it’s a comfort level thing. And I think it varies from city to city and because all cities aren’t the same, but you know, as a woman cyclist you have, you might have men catcalling you, drawing attention to you physically when you’re on the bike from from a car, as a cyclist of colour. I know some cyclist, I can’t speak for all but some cyclists of colour feel less safe on their bikes. Because you know, the person behind the will, could have ill intentions for you. And, you know, an automobile always wins that contest, right? So if someone does want to do your do you harm or at least intimidate you, you know, you could be in a vulnerable, a more vulnerable position if someone doesn’t appreciate you being on the road as a cyclist, but then also has a problem with the colour of your skin. So I feel like I feel like most cyclists of colour feel that pressure as well.

Carlton Reid 13:46
Sorry, sorry. If you’re in a car and you experience racism, you’re in a car, you’ve got locked windows, you can you can kind of hide. But if you’re on a bicycle, you can’t hide, your skin is out there, you’re really like making sure that people know you’re there and that must be very vulnerable.

Monica Garrison 14:06
It does feel very vulnerable. It’s almost like you feel like a sitting duck, right? So if you put yourself in that position, I imagine you want to feel like you are equipped maybe to escape right? So physically, you may want to make sure that you have the strength, the stamina to get out of a tough situation. But yeah, when it comes down to it, as I said, the automobile is always going to win. So if someone does want to do you harm, not a whole lot you can do and that’s the scary part, as a cyclist and a cyclist of colour.

Carlton Reid 14:46
And then nothing all that I’m going to assume here that that’s one of the reasons why you would want to ride in a bunch of women, Black women together because you are not going to you want to get like there’s a group of you? You’re no longer alone?

Monica Garrison 15:03
Yeah, sure, safety in numbers. If you’re on the road, and they’re, you know, 10, 15 of you, then you’re drawing attention in the way of all the cars are going to see me. Right. So safety, but also there’s strength in numbers. So if something does happen, then you have folks there who are witnesses to report it. Hopefully, the the fact that there are multiple women, or people will deter someone from doing something, you know, negative. But yeah, certainly that I mean, there are many reasons why riding together is great and there are positives, but I think that’s definitely one of them.

Carlton Reid 15:40
At this point, we’ll cut from Monica to a short ad break. Take it away, David.

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Carlton Reid 16:46
Thanks, David. And we are back with Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike. So tell me about your Sheroes. Who are they?

Monica Garrison 16:56
Yes, Sheroes are women across the country who have volunteered their time to organise at least one monthly ride. They moderate the Facebook pages that we talked about earlier. And they keep you know, they keep it exciting. They also are plugged in, I’m plugged into the sheroes. So they let me know what folks are asking for or what things we need as an organisation or even get their opinions on, you know, designs, for instance, for cycling gear. But they’re just really enthusiastic women who who our boots on the ground, they’re doing the work that keeps the organisation moving forward. And they are really amazing. They’re like super fans of Black Girls Do Bike for the most part. And I’m very grateful to have them working on our side.

Carlton Reid 17:48
Now, how’s the industry been with you? Because famously, the industry is pretty white, is generally male. It’s kind of tech bro, but for bikes. So how has the industry? How does the industry perceive you? How is the industry maybe funded? You supported you? How have you done with the industry?

Monica Garrison 18:13
Sure. The I think in general, the statement would be that the industry has been very supportive. I was my first like introduction to the cycling community was the National Bike Conference in Washington DC many years ago. And I was really well received there. And then over the years, we’ve managed to have partnerships with probably Trek Bike was our first like manufacturer that would that partner with us for a couple of years. And they you know, they help support our national meet up one year and we all went to trek headquarters and participate in the Trek 100 we’ve been partners with REI, who’s a big outdoor supplier store here in the US. I don’t know if they’re overseas, but they’ve been a really nice strategic partner, not in terms of monetary support, absolutely. But also, you know, behind the scenes, finding out where our pain points are as an organisation and also connecting us with other orgs who are operating in the outdoors for minority groups. And, you know, for other activities like hiking and running and things like that. And then just along the way we we’ve had a number of other just companies who have stepped up from year to year to support us in different ways. But so yeah, overall, I think it’s been amazing. I’ve been in rooms that I never imagined I would be, you know, answering questions and helping with things like plus sizing for women in merchandise. You know, even even with designing bikes, I’ve given input with that. Notoriously women have Black women have issues getting cycling helmets that fit over their natural hairstyles. And I’ve been involved in, you know, some folks who want to change that. So I think overall, it’s been great. I’ve done lots of interviews through the years. And I think our message has, at least within the cycling community, I think our message has gotten out there. I think a lot of people are aware that we exist and know that we need support.

Carlton Reid 20:28
So imagine, you know, go back to 2013, when when this first kicked off, and now, have you seen any systemic changes? So you see, have you seen anything like, oh, wow, that’s so different to 10 years ago? Or is it this is going to be an uphill struggle? How do you how do you think it’s gone up? There’s 10 years? And how much of a difference maybe have you made?

Monica Garrison 20:52
Yeah, I think we’ve made really good strides. I think, when you when you show up to a bike event, now versus 10 years ago, there are a lot more women and people of colour at those events. I think I think obviously, we have a long way to go. But I definitely want to acknowledge the progress that we’ve made. And I hope that Black Girls Do Bike has been central and you know, letting people know of the concerns and issues that face our community, uniquely. But beyond that, I think, the most important thing, if you know, if we’re here, 10 years from now, still doing this work, is kind of the pain point has always been having people of colour in the decision decision making chairs, right, working at companies working in the industry, whether it be racing, whether it be you know, even other types of cycling, BMX, all of all the genres of cycling, I think we don’t have enough people of colour, who are working in those jobs, who can affect change from the inside. And as always, we’d love to see more bike shops that are owned by people of colour, which is a rare thing here in the US.

Carlton Reid 22:09
Monica, it’s gonna be a tough one to answer but but why is that? What Why? Why do you have to do what you do? Why Why isn’t it just normal for a black person to get out of bicycle? What’s what’s, what stopped black people from doing this?

Monica Garrison 22:27
That’s a good one, I think, well, I’ll speak for myself, but then I’ll go a little bit more broadly into it. So when I was a young person, I didn’t, there were no women in my family who rode bikes, I’ve never seen other than in my adult life, as a young person never saw my mom, you know, just casually get on a bike and ride it. So there’s that there is just not a norm in our community. Beyond that, I think you won’t really ride regularly, unless you have a bike that you enjoy riding that’s comfortable. And to get to that point, you have to spend some money, right to get a bicycle that is, you know, essentially fit to your body and, and is comfortable to ride. And so it could be just a matter of making the investment, there are a lot of sports that black people aren’t in because the barrier to entry be economic. And so here in the US, that’s, you know, the, there are a lot of black people below the poverty poverty line, who will never be able to enter some of these sports. And, and I think some people are just intimidated to walk into a room where they’re the only person that looks like them. Not everyone but but I think that is that can be a characteristic of people of colour, Black people. So you know, if you you may not want to show up to a ride, when you aren’t going to know anybody you anticipate it’s going to be all white guys who you may or may not have anything in common with, you don’t know how competitive the rides gonna be. So there are a lot of unknowns. And I think that alone is enough to keep you from trying something new. So that’s kind of where we come in, right? We we are pushing cycling as an activity that everyone can enjoy. But we’re also giving you a safe space, for lack of a better word, to to enter into it and to try it and see if you like it. You may try it and not like it never come back. But for some people, they show up they ride and they find that it’s you know, enjoyable and they and they continue to come and they discover something new. So we try to get that image intimidation factor out of the equation.

Carlton Reid 24:47
trying I’m trying to think if I have know the answer here, but in the Netherlands, where it’s a societal norm to ride a bike, Black people ride bikes. Asian people ride bikes, you know, Muslim women in their hijab ride bikes. It’s because it’s a cultural norm to ride a bike, because you were saying there before about, you know, you didn’t see your mom ride a bike. Well, in the Netherlands, all people will see their mom, their Auntie’s, their grandmother, the bank managers, everyone on bicycles. So there’s no real huge split in, in like a colour thing at all. It’s just it’s a cultural thing. And so, on the one hand, I’m asking you a question about being Black on a bicycle. But that question could be just as easily have asked of white people, generally, white people generally in the cultures, you know, in Britain, and in America and not in the Netherlands, but where we were out, it’s not a cultural norm to be on a bicycle. So that’s why people are on bicycles. And there is the colour aspect to it, of course, but it’s just generally, people aren’t on bikes. At the end of the day, and we are Monica, we are kind of weird.

Monica Garrison 26:03
No, you’re right, you’re right. It’s, it’s not a cultural norm to ride a bicycle in the United States, maybe with the exception of a few cities. I think, and I’ve heard this argument made, and I, for now, I agree with it until I hear a better one, which is, and I don’t know if this is true in the UK, as well. But here the infrastructure here is built around cars, right? So it’s car centric. So there is really a safety concern with being on a bicycle and on a lot of major roads in the US. And secondly, we value as a culture, individualism and we lead tie status to our car. So it’s the bicycle is secondary. The funny part is there was a time when bicycles were the main form of transportation here, right, and, and roadways were actually built a many of our fundamental roadways were built so that cyclists could get around and then at some point that that shifted, but I honestly don’t think we’ll ever move away from that maybe in 100 years, when, you know, cars are self driving, and it’s a lot more safe. And, you know, folks, their, their definition of success has changed. But for now, with a car centric society, I think cycling will always be a second class citizen,

Carlton Reid 27:29
just to end really, and that there’s a quote, another quote, I’m going to pick up from the Elly Blue article again, this is this is Monica by you. And I’d like you to riff on this a bit if you if you can. So, you said the cycling spectrum is a beautiful one. So what do you mean by the cycling spectrum?

Monica Garrison 27:46
I mean, the spectrum of personalities, and literally the types of people who ride bikes, I find as a as a general bunch, cyclists are extremely kind, gentle people. And, you know, anyone who appreciates the, you know, the value of getting on a bike and in finding that relaxing, I’m willing to be a friend to that person. But yeah, and even just a cycling in general, there are many types of cycling. So you can kind of there’s a phrase here you get in where you fit in. So once you decide that you like riding a bike, there’s so many things open to you in terms of the kind of cycling that you do, whether it’s long distance like cross country rides or cyclocross, gravel, BMX. You know, there’s so many things that you can get into.

Carlton Reid 28:40
Monica, it’s been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. Can you please tell people where they can? I’m definitely going to plug the fact that you’re looking for London people, but just where can people get more information? About Black Girls Do Bike, I’m kind of giving it away back is going to be a bit anyway, just give us the URL?

Monica Garrison 29:02
Sure. Blackgirlsdobike.org is the best way to find us. And from there you can link to as it’s pretty easy to navigate so you can link to our shops, check out our gear, you can link to our chapter page and see all the cities that we’re in.

Carlton Reid 29:18
Thanks for listening to Episode 346 of the spokesmen podcast brought to you in association with Tern Bicycles. Shownotes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com The next episode will be a fireside chat on the Isle of Man with Richard Fletcher. That’s out at the weekend. But meanwhile, get out there and ride …