Judith Russell and Ben Meyer both completed a John O'Groats to Lands End charity cyle ride last year

If you’re a compulsive charity ride participant have a look at this one, the second Deloitte Ride Across Britain will take place between the 11 and 19 June next year and people taking part will ride 950 miles from John O’Groats to Land’s End.

This year over £370,000 was raised for charity, and the organisers hope to raise over £1M over the next three years. Find out more: www.rideacrossbritain.com.

Danilo Di Luca, who was banned for two years after the 2008 Tour of Italy for testing positive for EPO, has had a reprieve. His two year ban has just been reduced to15 months following some collaboration with doping investigators.

Here’s a short clip of Rollapaluza taking it to the masses, or at least to the Mayflower Community School in Plymouth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsceUPdJJEI

They could be coming to a venue near you if someone could find the funding. www.rollapaluza.com

Hot on the heels of London’s Barclay Bikes is a new scheme for bike hire in Brisbane, Australia. The scheme there has started with a respectable 500 bikes spread over fifty docking stations. Melbourne has had a similar scheme running since June, and has recently addressed the compulsory helmet-wearing laws which threatened to dampen the potential uptake. Disposable helmets are now available from vending machines in various sites around the city. The helmets sell for five Australian dollars (about £3) and hirers can recoup three Australian dollars back if they return them for recycling.

Not an aero brake lever, carbon fibre frame or a deep wheel rim in sight, but  instead we see alloy drinking bottles, goggles and tubular tyres draped around mature shoulders. It must be the L’Eroica again. Over two days at the beginning of October every year, 3,000 riders are taken back in time on the gravel roads of Chianti in Italy. To join in all you need is a pre 1987 bike and a sense of adventure. Don’t forget nostalgia never goes out of fashion.

Join the pedalista : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lo-8wiJSks&feature=related

An encouraging funding settlement for London means that more Barclay’s Hire Bikes will be around the capital before long. Mayor Boris said that the scheme would move east towards Docklands, and the numbers of bikes and docking stations would increase in Zone 1. It is planned to put 350 bikes at Waterloo Station and the Cycle Superhighways will increase to a projected twelve routes running from the suburbs into the heart of the City by 2015.

Due in Europe soon, but maybe not the United Kingdom just yet, are Zixtro bike bags. These very innovative bike and leisure bags, which are made in Taiwan, are being brought into Spain, Portugal and France by BH Bikes. If you like them it will only mean a quick hop over to France to find a dealer.

See w hat you think: http://www.zixtro.com/products1.aspx?ProductsCateID=1643&CateID=1643

I love competitions! Unfortunately I missed one that took place at the recent Cycle Show. It was the classic ‘fit an inner tube test’, which thirty brave souls attempted over the four days that the show was on. The fastest man was Rob Sheppard from Emsworth Cycles in Hampshire with a time of 58 seconds. That’s jolly fast, Try it some time.

I see next year’s Tour de France route is out. It looks like a good chance for an organised local fan to see quite a bit of the Tour because it passes very close to us. In fact, the very organised can probably catch four days of early race action: Day 3-Olonne sur Mer to Redon, Day 4-Lorient to Mur de Bretagne, Day 5-Carhaix to Cap Frehel and Day 6-Dinan to Lisieux. Here’s the route video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21S_y0WH7x0
As ever it looks very exciting, but I’ll review what the event holds in a future blog.

With all this natural power about, it sometimes seems odd that wind and solar power don’t pop up more often, especially with eco warriors that ride bikes. However Frenchman Florian Bailly has recently addressed that by riding his solar-assisted bike 13,000 kilometres across Europe and Asia to Tokyo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtamrDqxRBI

American bike blogger BikeSnobNYC has just released a hardback book of his very engaging blog. This will be available in the United Kingdom from 1^st November. Put it on your Christmas list!

Click here for a taster: http://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/

Do you remember my post about a 100% wooden bike going for a Guinness World Record? Here are the latest developments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGMMDISadcw

And finally,

I’ll take the chance of fuelling the legislation furnace, and show you this clip of an air bag designed to prevent head injuries to pedestrians and cyclists. I wonder how a law making these compulsory for all pedestrians would go down?

Would you wear one?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7Oud3iGXWY&feature=player_embedded

Arthur Lamy is freelance writer and tourist guide specialising in cycling: www.cycleinjersey.com