The UK’s first ’home grown’ bicycle has returned to its roots – a clump of golden bamboo outside the Rainforest Biome at the Eden Project – on the eve of an epic adventure. 

Environmental champion Dr Kate Rawles was due to set sail this week for South America and then plans to pedal her newly-made bamboo bike the length of the continent over the next year.  

Along the way she will be exploring biodiversity - what it is, what’s happening to it, why it matters and above all, what can and is being done to protect it. 

Kate, from Ulverston, Cumbria,  is to sail by freight ship for Cartagena, Colombia and explore Costa Rica and Panama by bus and boat, and then cycle from Cartagena to Cape Horn, following the spine of the Andes. 

She will be cycling up to 6,000 miles in total. 

The canes which make up her bike frame were cut from the clump thriving at the Eden Project in Cornwall. They were dispatched to the Bamboo Bicycle Club, a social enterprise in Bow, East London, where owner James Marr schooled Kate in the art of making a frame from a fast-growing plant considered the most versatile in the world. 

Kate’s latest ride is an ‘adventure plus’ follow up to The Carbon Cycle in which she rode from Texas to Alaska, with a focus on climate change. Her book based on that journey was shortlisted for the 2012 Banff Mountain Festival Adventure Travel Book Award and was a runner up in the UK People’s Book Prize. 

A short film of the bamboo bicycle build, made by Lizzie Gilson, can be viewed at https://youtu.be/ByggVZb0iV4. 

To follow Kate on The Life Cycle journey, go to www.outdoorphilosophy.co.uk and @CarbonCycleKate (twitter and instagram)