Couple Draw Giant GPS Bike 4,500 Miles Across Europe
Faced with the threat of the climate emergency, some are recycling more, or lowering the central heating thermostat by a notch. Daniel Rayneau-Kirkhope and Arianna Casiraghi designed a 600 mile wide GPS bike across Europe. With their dog.
The couple gave up their jobs as physics researchers to embark on the 4,500-mile bicycle journey through seven countries, a carefully planned route to outline a giant bicycle on the continent.
Speaking to the Guardian from Switzerland, en route to their home in Piedmont, northern Italy, the British-Italian couple said their hope had been to draw attention to the extent of climate breakdown and persuade people to think about using bicycles rather than cars for shorter journeys.
The trip earned them three somewhat niche world records: the largest GPS drawing ever, the largest such image drawn by bicycle alone, and, perhaps, to be unsurprisingly, the biggest bike ever drawn.
While the actual cycle took about four months overall, this was a much longer quest. From the summer of 2019, they had to stop because Casiraghi, 40, suffered a knee injury. A return to the road in November had to be cut short as it was too cold to camp. A plan to complete it in March 2020 was then scuppered by Covid.
"Being able to see it on the map is mostly a relief," Casiraghi said. “We had so many obstacles. When we started this time, we thought: what can go wrong this time? We felt like we let people down by not finishing it, and our lives were kind of stuck. So we are very happy.
Rayneau-Kirkhope, 35, built the bikes himself for the trip. One of them has a cargo section in the front, in which their Italian water dog, Zola, could travel with them.
"She loved cycling cargo - she jumps in and happily and makes it clear when she wants to walk," he said. "We tried to go on small roads where possible, or off-road, also so that Zola could walk a little."
Route of a perfect bike through France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands wasn't easy, with Casiraghi's first attempt to place the design on a map leading them directly to Charles de Gaulle airport outside of Paris.
Fortunately , the image is so large that detouring a few miles to find quieter roads barely showed. It was drawn virtually, in one continuous line, with GPS only turned off to and from the destination. nce from campsites and on a forced 30-mile detour after a ferry crossing the Rhine was found not to work.
The eventual virtual drawing is huge - the couple believes that it's about 600 miles wide - and very obviously a bike.
"If people see the image, the message we want to get across is: if please remember you probably have a bike somewhere, and it would be nice if you could use it a bit more, rather than a car, for short trips,” said Casiraghi, who met his husband when they were both doing PhDs in Nottingham. "At least consider using a bicycle - it's nice, and it's great - cheaper and healthier."
Faced with the threat of the climate emergency, some are recycling more, or lowering the central heating thermostat by a notch. Daniel Rayneau-Kirkhope and Arianna Casiraghi designed a 600 mile wide GPS bike across Europe. With their dog.
The couple gave up their jobs as physics researchers to embark on the 4,500-mile bicycle journey through seven countries, a carefully planned route to outline a giant bicycle on the continent.
Speaking to the Guardian from Switzerland, en route to their home in Piedmont, northern Italy, the British-Italian couple said their hope had been to draw attention to the extent of climate breakdown and persuade people to think about using bicycles rather than cars for shorter journeys.
The trip earned them three somewhat niche world records: the largest GPS drawing ever, the largest such image drawn by bicycle alone, and, perhaps, to be unsurprisingly, the biggest bike ever drawn.
While the actual cycle took about four months overall, this was a much longer quest. From the summer of 2019, they had to stop because Casiraghi, 40, suffered a knee injury. A return to the road in November had to be cut short as it was too cold to camp. A plan to complete it in March 2020 was then scuppered by Covid.
"Being able to see it on the map is mostly a relief," Casiraghi said. “We had so many obstacles. When we started this time, we thought: what can go wrong this time? We felt like we let people down by not finishing it, and our lives were kind of stuck. So we are very happy.
Rayneau-Kirkhope, 35, built the bikes himself for the trip. One of them has a cargo section in the front, in which their Italian water dog, Zola, could travel with them.
"She loved cycling cargo - she jumps in and happily and makes it clear when she wants to walk," he said. "We tried to go on small roads where possible, or off-road, also so that Zola could walk a little."
Route of a perfect bike through France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands wasn't easy, with Casiraghi's first attempt to place the design on a map leading them directly to Charles de Gaulle airport outside of Paris.
Fortunately , the image is so large that detouring a few miles to find quieter roads barely showed. It was drawn virtually, in one continuous line, with GPS only turned off to and from the destination. nce from campsites and on a forced 30-mile detour after a ferry crossing the Rhine was found not to work.
The eventual virtual drawing is huge - the couple believes that it's about 600 miles wide - and very obviously a bike.
"If people see the image, the message we want to get across is: if please remember you probably have a bike somewhere, and it would be nice if you could use it a bit more, rather than a car, for short trips,” said Casiraghi, who met his husband when they were both doing PhDs in Nottingham. "At least consider using a bicycle - it's nice, and it's great - cheaper and healthier."
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