Bike belles

CYCLING is a forgotten subject in the cinema – although one of the film world’s most iconic moments features pedal power, the silhouette of a bike carrying ET in the basket in front of the moon.

Then there was Paul Newman’s romantic bike ride with Katherine Ross on the front in Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. And movie buffs might just recall Kevin Costner riding tall in the saddle in American Flyers.

By and large, film-makers have no inclination to get on their bikes. Nor, suggests a documentary partly shot and premiered in Darlington tonight, do young ladies. Cycling is neither fashionable nor cool.

Beauty And The Bike, produced by Darlington Media Group, aims to spread the word that cycling is good for both you and the environment.

Director Richard Grassick – who made the film with his German-born wife, Dr Beatrix Wupperman – points out that cycling can be “positively attractive as an everyday means of transport”, but only if the right urban development and transport policies are in place.

That’s the nub of the 55-minute film, shot in Darlington and Bremen, in Germany, as it contrasts attitudes among young women and the authorities in making roads a nicer, safer place to ride.

Bremen girls cycle, Darlington girls do not.

Why, asks the film. The reasons become clear watching the English and German girls experiencing life on the road in each other’s towns.

Even finding Darlington girls who cycle proves difficult. They rely on lifts from parents, regarding cycling as “a little kids’ thing”.

They should listen to Darlington Cycling Campaign’s Tim Stahl, a retired surgeon, as he lists the reasons to cycle. “It’s helping your pocket, helping the environment and helping your own health,” he says.

The Darlington girls buy a ticket to ride in Bremen. Ricarda, 17, and Dina, 16, send them a video message: “When you come here, we can cycle together and have fun.”

Before that, the local lasses – “trailblazing, courageous young women who want to change it here in Darlington” – go shopping for something nice to wear on their bikes. Cycling doesn’t mean backpedalling on fashion.

Northern Echo reporter and cycling ambassador Lauren Pyrah promotes wearing high heels while cycling. For women, not men. And the sight of a pair of leopardskin patterned high heels on the pedals may ring your bell.

The Northern Echo building in Priestgate looks great on film as Lauren mounts her bike and cycles off into the sunset – a lone figure amid the traffic-clogged roads with only the occasional cycle lane for protection.

How much more pleasant in Bremen, a cycling city where a significant proportion of people use bikes as their means of transport.

A judge, Ellen Best, tells of cycling to work.

Can you imagine legal eagles here arriving at crown court with trousers in cycle clips?

What emerges strongly is that cyclists aren’t an afterthought, but part of the transport pattern, in Bremen. They have their own cycle paths to make them more confident and safer.

The Bremen girls have a tougher time in Darlington, amazed at the lack of cycle paths and the aggressive drivers. Cyclists are treated “like thin air”, says one. Another is verbally abused by a driver.

We have no one but ourselves to blame for planning our towns “through the windscreen”

and creating car-dominated communities, says the film. There’s a need to alter people’s attitudes about cycling and get them to enjoy the ride, not just see it as a mode of transport.

Whether Beauty And The Bike can change people’s attitudes remains, like the film, to be seen.

It will be touring the UK next year with requests for screenings already received from cycling advocates, schools, transport planners and the transport minister himself.

■ A DVD and accompanying book about the project can be bought via the Media Group.

See also bikebeauty.org

Let’s blaze a trail for cycling in Darlington

WHEN I signed up to be part of the Beauty And The Bike project, I never contemplated that it would be shown for the first time in a German city centre cinema to hundreds of people, writes Lauren Pyrah, left.

Nor did I think its trailer would gain 20,000 hits on YouTube in two weeks, just like I didn’t imagine it would be nominated for a European award and the director would be inundated with requests for it be screened in Australia, the US and Europe.

But I found myself on Thursday wearing a black cocktail dress in a Bremen cinema, glass of champagne in hand, watching the first screening.

To put it mildly, the experience was completely surreal, and not least because every flaw on my on-screen face was magnified to epic proportions and my accent sounded a lot more Teesside than it does in my head.

When the credits rolled, the audience reaction was generally positive. Some, inevitably, could only see the most superficial denominator, with one young man requesting all the girls’ phone numbers.

Others could not understand that people do not cycle here. But the consensus was that we were “brave” to cycle on the roads in England.

Beatrix Wupperman, the film’s co-director, put it most succinctly in her address to the audience.

“These girls are cycling, without cycle paths, on busy roads, with inhospitable drivers, and they are getting laughed at for it,” she said. “They are incredibly courageous.”

As for me, I was shocked at how vulnerable I looked when I was cycling in North Road, Darlington.

Although the reception we got in Germany was heartwarming, in a sense it doesn’t matter what they think. For them, it is an interesting sociological documentary. They already have wonderful cycle paths.

What really matters is what the people – and the politicians – of Darlington think when they see the film tonight. Hopefully, it will encourage them to take the same brave leap as the girls and blaze a trail for cycling in the town.