Wheels of fortune

Cycling has a great future - and not just at FutureCycles, a company which supplies state-of-the-art Human Powered Vehicles to discerning pedallers. Coming eventually to a street near you will be one of those aerodynamic recumbent cycles which are pedalled from a comfortable, laid-back position. Others, such as Clive Sinclair, have seen the future and it is folding: (deliberately) collapsible bikes which implode like an umbrella to be carried under the arm onto a train or into an office.

Cycling has a great past and people keep investing in it. An 1882 cycle has just been knocked down - at a Phillips auction, not on the road - for a record pounds 25,000. The oddest means of transport in any century, this "sociable" or "side-by-side" is a tricycle or quadricycle; it is either a three-wheeler or, if an extra wheel and saddle is clipped on, a sort of compressed four-wheel tandem.

As for the present tense of cycling, the next few days will see some of the fastest, and slowest, folk on two wheels. The world track-racing championships will be burning rubber at the Manchester Velodrome, and sponsored rides will include a leisurely posse taking the moral high road from Glasgow to Loch Lomond. For the everyday commuting cyclist, this is the best time of the pedalling year: becoming slightly cooler, but lacking the winter wind that whistles past your crash helmet.

Yet bicycles remain an absurdly underused resource. Many are kept in sheds instead of on the road where they belong. Cycling is considered dangerous by drivers who will tailgate on the M1 at 90mph, inches from the exhaust of the car in front. It is dismissed as too much effort by passengers who will stand for hours in the rain by a lonely bus-stop or on a windy platform.

Any number of disabled people can shoot down this canard. I have often seen a one-legged cyclist steaming along on a two-wheeled bike; he held a stick on the leg-free side to keep stable on take-off and landing. A correspondent to The Folder writes: "I am 86 years old and can only walk (with the aid of a walking-stick) about 100 yards, but I can cycle up to 15 miles if it isn't too hilly."

The cycling world has wheels within wheels. There are folk who play bicycle polo, which is the same as the equine type but less snobby. Unicycle hockey is wobbling ahead in a big way. Barn-dancing on folding bikes is also increasing in popularity,

"There are people who just collect old bicycle gears," says Nicholas Oddy, who organised the Phillips sale which included the pounds 25,000 velocipede. He himself owns about 40 examples of late 19th-century models. You can, he explains, ride around on a 100-year-old "sit-up-and-beg" picked up for pounds 20 or pounds 30.

On the other hand, members of the chain gang attracted by expensive two- wheeled technology can easily make a four-figure hole in their wallets. An electric-powered machine is not cheap - nor, at present, particularly efficient. Prices of folding bikes range from pounds 100 for a Universal Unisport to pounds 3,171 for a Moulton GT. A cheaper Moulton which I once borrowed had, as an optional extra, a transparent fairing on the front which alone cost as much as an ordinary new bike.

Yet an aerodynamic addition, though costly, is enormously effective. At a high speed on a conventional bike, most of the effort goes towards overcoming air resistance. With a recumbent design that puts the feet first and the head last, the wind slides smoothly along and over the body. Add some streamlining and you're laughing at anyone trying to keep up on a conventional roadster.

Proof of this aerodynamic pudding comes from the wonderful Windcheetah, a recumbent with two wheels at the front and a drive wheel behind. In 1990, the Land's End to John O'Groats record was broken by Andy Wilkinson on a conventional racer. This year he did it again - on a fully-enclosed version of the super-trike. Despite being six years older, he was faster in 1996.

So it is downhill all the way for new gizmos in this old form of transport that benefits both health and environment. But have we forgotten how to incorporate the bicycle in our lives? It is worrying that the London Cycling Campaign, which is organising a conference on transport entitled The Missing Link, thinks it necessary to include a workshop on "Cycling to the Shops". If we're not careful, the Pedestrians' Association will have to issue instruction leaflets on "Strolling to the Newsagents" and "Walking up the Garden".