Comment & Analysis
Last Saturday I went to my local church fete. This was no ordinary church fete – it was held in the grounds of Lambeth Palace, home of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Rowan Williams has a splendid oasis in the heart of central London, with flowers and shrubs, a pond and even a few bee hives.
The fete was held on a big grassy field, and there were all the usual stalls and games – tombola, white elephant, and even a nice lady offering reflexology and Indian head massage – an experience I can thoroughly recommend.
But what really caught my eye was a girl pedalling furiously on what looked like an exercise bike parked alongside the Brownies' stall. She was moving fast but going nowhere. It turned out that she was powering a smoothie-making machine.
A little while later I was enjoying a cuppa outside the tea tent when a loudspeaker boomed out behind me, with an announcement about the result of the guess the weight of the cake competition. I turned to see two other static bikes being ridden by willing volunteers to power the PA system.
The bikes were provided by an outfit called Electric Pedals which hires out the machines for use at events where there is no mains supply. The team once powered a whole house using 80 cyclists for a programme on the BBC.
It's all a lot of fun but of course there is a serious message here too about energy efficiency, the environment and climate change. Electric Pedals are big on education and sometimes send their people and bespoke machines into schools.
For instance, they visited Hollydale Primary School in Nunhead, south London to run a pedal-powered workshop as part of Science Week last month. That smoothie-making machine made another appearance, along with Scalextric cars racing around a track to teach the kids about control – how to race without going fast. The cars only need a watt or so of power so the racers had to make sure they didn't pedal too rapidly. The children were also given a lesson about how much energy household appliances use.
So if you go to any outdoor events this summer you might come across the entertaining team from Electric Pedals. They might be recharging mobile phones, providing lighting or even powering a cinema.