Bikes

Learn to Ride for Children

Bikes at the Course

Please do not worry about getting a bike for your child prior to the course as we provide all the bikes for the children at the course.

We use the best children’s bikes – lightweight with great components. The brakes in particular are excellently designed, effective and easy to use. We have also made a few adaptations to our bikes to aid the learning process.

We have bikes of all different sizes, from the very smallest pedal bikes up to small adult sized bikes.

Bike Buying Advice

If you have booked your child on to the Pedal Project course we guarantee to get them pedalling safely without stabilisers.

Once they have learnt, it is essential that they are able to practise in the days and weeks immediately following their course. Forget the phrase “it’s like riding a bike” as the skill can easily be lost without practice straight away.

In order to practise, your child will need a suitable bike to ride after the course. If you don’t yet have a bike, the best thing to do is wait till the course starts as we’ll be able to give you expert advice on bikes at the end of the first session and we’ll be able to size your child to a bike in person.

We sell woom bikes new and after sizing on the first day of the course, if you would like to purchase one from us, we’ll be able to get the right woom bike ready for your child by the end of the course, fully assembled and ready to ride! We think woom is the best brand of children’s bike you can buy – more details below.

After the sizing on the first day of the course, we will also be able to give you a recommendation for a second hand option.

Here are some important things to consider before purchasing a bike for your child…

What makes a good – or bad – children’s bike?

There is a huge amount of choice when it comes to buying children’s bikes and a very wide range of quality. Here we will set out the different things to consider when looking for a children’s bike.

Weight

This is perhaps the most important factor. The best children’s bikes are lightweight, with aluminium frames rather than heavier steel. Lightweight bikes are much easier for the child to get started and for them to maintain enough speed in order to be able to balance well enough to cycle.

If a child’s bike feels heavy for you to lift, imagine what it would be like for your child to ride. Children’s bikes can be incredibly heavy – half as heavy as the rider in some cases. Most adult bikes are 9-12kg, with the very heaviest being around 15kg, or just over 2 stone. Now imagine cycling on a bike that weighs half as much as you do.

Avoid any extras on the bike that add unnecessary weight. The worst example of this for children’s bikes is suspension on so-called mountain bikes. These suspension forks, and sometimes rear suspension as well, do nothing but add considerable weight. They are never of good enough quality to actually provide proper suspension, and in any case suspension is only needed on a bike for serious off-road cycling and downhill racing. Without exception, avoid suspension on children’s bikes.

(Well ok, there are exceptions where suspension is appropriate, but these are expensive children’s mountain bikes with high quality suspension that works, to be used for serious off-road and downhill trails, such as the woom Off AIR 4, which is woom’s 20″ wheel mountain bike. A very nice bike, for sure, but not what we’d normally recommend as a first bike.)

Brakes

Good quality brakes are obviously important. With cheaper bikes the brakes are usually difficult to use and can also be ineffective. The most common problem is that the brake levers (that the child pulls to engage the brake) are too big, so the child can’t reach them easily enough to use them. If the child’s fingers have to be straight in order to just about reach the levers with their fingertips, they aren’t going to have enough strength to pull the lever effectively.

The best children’s bikes have levers with a shorter reach, designed around smaller hands. Then the child can reach it easily and pull the lever with enough strength to engage the brake well.

There are other elements to the brake such as the cabling and the brake mechanism itself, which also have a bearing on how well the brake will work, but the levers are the main thing to watch out for.

Gears

The smallest children’s pedal bikes (wheel sizes 14”, 16” and 18”) will only have one gear, so this isn’t a factor.

Children’s bikes with 20” wheels and bigger usually have gears. The better children’s bikes just have one gear (chainring) at the front and 7 or 8 gears at the back. Therefore there is only one gear shifter, usually operated by the right hand, for the gears on the back wheel.

If there are 2 or 3 chainrings at the front, this complicates things for the rider, adds weight and also means extra maintenance.

Geometry and Design

The geometry of the bike can most easily be thought of as where the three main points of contact are in relation to each other – the handlebars, the saddle and the pedals.

Let’s take the saddle as the starting point, as that has to be at a set point above the ground, depending on the inside leg measurement of the child.

If the bike is badly designed, the handlebars will be too high up and close horizontally to the saddle. This has the effect that the child is sitting too far backwards when cycling. The bike is then a lot harder to handle and steer.

On to the pedals. With a badly designed bike the cranks (which the pedals attach to) will be relatively long, making the circles the pedals describe bigger, and therefore at the top of the pedal stroke, the child’s knees are up really high. Also on a badly designed bike, the bottom bracket (where the cranks meet the frame) will be higher off the ground, exaggerating the problem of the knees being high even further. The problem is at its worst on children’s BMX style bikes.

A well designed children’s bike will have a similar geometry to a standard adult hybrid bike (just smaller) which means the child has a comfortable cycling position on the bike and they will find it a lot easier to handle.

If it has a cartoon design it isn’t likely to be very fun to ride. Think Hello Kitty, Bat or Spiderman, princess (various), cupcake, firechief… Very little investment is given to the design of the bike compared to the decals stuck on to it. 

The price of a good quality children’s bike – expensive, but worth the investment

Good quality children’s bikes are expensive – unfortunately there is no getting around that. The smallest pedal bikes in the good brands are £300 to £400 and the prices go up as the bikes get bigger.

Obviously this is a lot of money, however they are good investments because good quality children’s bikes hold their value really well. When the time comes to sell it on, you should expect to sell a good children’s bike second hand for half its price new, and sometimes significantly more than that. (Although of course we aren’t able to guarantee what you will get for it second hand.)

A cheap children’s bike can cost less than £200 new; some are sold for less than £100 new. However, when you come to sell it on, you will probably get hardly anything for it, and it will have been a really bad bike to ride in the meantime!

If you can’t justify the price of a good quality bike new, our advice is to look second hand. It is much better to get a better quality bike second hand than spend the same amount on a poorer quality bike new.

The best brand if buying new – woom

At Pedal Project we think woom bikes are the best children’s bikes you can buy. woom are less well known in the UK than some other brands (they are an Austrian company) but they are gaining popularity fast.

woom bikes are incredibly light. The smaller ones especially (14″, 16″ and 20″ wheels) are significantly lighter than the equivalent sized bikes in other leading brands such as Frog or Squish.

There are loads of other clever design features to woom that we could tell you about, but the main one is how it can be adjusted as your child grows. Obviously you raise the saddle as they grow, but usually you can’t do much with the position of the handlebars. woom bikes have handlebars that can pivot forwards, to lengthen the reach of the bike as the child grows, whereas with other brands all that can usually be done is raise the handlebars vertically by 2 to 3cm.

If you are interested in buying a woom bike for your child, please wait till the start of their course, as we will be able to size them up accurately after the first session. You will be able to buy the bike from us as we are an approved dealer. After sizing on the first day of the course, if you decide to buy the bike, we will have it ready for you to take away on the third session of the course, fully assembled and checked over by us. We’ll be able to add any extras you may want, such as a kickstand and mudguards.

If looking second hand – Islabikes

Islabikes started making bikes in 2006 and certainly blazed the trail for good quality lightweight children’s bikes. However in 2023 Islabikes stopped making bikes, so you won’t be able to find one new. There is a good second hand market in Islabikes as they were around for so long and very popular in that time.

If you would rather spend less than the price of a new woom bike then we’d recommend a second hand Islabikes as the next best option.

Like woom bikes, they were expensive when they were sold new, and they still go for a lot second hand. Obviously prices vary, but £250-£350 seems to be the sort of range they sell for second hand. You’ll find them in the usual places such as ebay, Gumtree, Facebook Marketplace etc.

It is worth finding out the year of original purchase. Since the first bikes in 2006 there were many generations of Islabikes and they improved over the years and became lighter. Bikes from before 2012 are a bit heavier and their sizing may be different, so we would recommend buying a bike from 2012 onwards.

The best of the rest

Frog bikes started in 2013 and are still going strong. Although we don’t think they are quite as good as woom, for a number of reasons, they are still great bikes. As with Islabikes, there is also a good second hand market in Frog bikes if you want to save a bit of money.

Other good brands include Squish and Boardman.

There are some good brands that no longer make bikes, but you could look for second hand – Forme, Hoy and Wiggins amongst them.

Hiring

Another alternative that is cheaper in the short term is hiring a bike, via The Bike Club. They have a wide selection of bikes, all of which are good quality. Just bear in mind that over time, it may end up more expensive than buying a good quality bike, as that way you should get a lot of your money back on resale. But The Bike Club is a great option if you don’t want to spend lots of money up front. 

Sizing

Children’s bikes are sized according to their wheel size. 14″, 16″, 18″ (rare), 20″, 22″ (rare), 24″ or 26″ in diameter.

However, this isn’t a universal measurement. So if your child fits a particular wheel size in one brand, that doesn’t mean they will fit the same wheel size in another brand. If you are checking sizing online, make sure you check for each brand separately.

If you are buying from a shop, our rule is that when your child is sitting on the saddle, both their heels should be able to touch the ground. Shop assistants always try to sell bikes that are bigger than this, saying that the child should be on tiptoes. This is completely the wrong advice for a new cyclist who is still gaining confidence – their heels should be touching the ground, or at the very most 1cm off the ground. If you buy a bike where they are on tiptoes, they will really struggle to start and stop it safely and it will make the bike near impossible to ride.

The shop assistant no doubt has your best interests in mind as they want to sell you a bike that will last for longer, but please ignore this advice suggesting being on tiptoes – it is wrong.

If a child has been cycling for years and is very confident, then they will be able to manage a bike that is bigger, where they cannot fully touch the ground. But if they are a new cyclist they will find it very hard – if not impossible – to start and stop a bike on which they cannot touch the ground with their heels.

Please stick to our advice on this and insist that the shop assistant finds you a bike where their heels can touch the ground.

The End

A lot of information! There is quite a lot to consider when buying a bike for your child. There are an increasing number of good options out there but there are still far more bad ones. If you are unsure about bikes or have any further questions, do email info@pedalproject.co.uk or wait till the course starts and our instructors will be able to advise at the end of the first session.

Learn to Ride for Adults

Bikes at the Course

Please do not worry about getting a bike prior to the course as we provide all the bikes at the course.

We use the most suitable bikes for learning – lightweight, simple and a comfortable cycling position. We have also made a few adaptations to our bikes to aid the learning process.

We have bikes of all different sizes to fit riders of all heights.

Bike Buying Advice

If you have booked on to the Pedal Project course we guarantee to get you – or whoever you have booked on to the course – cycling safely.

Once you have learnt, it is essential that you are able to practise in the days and weeks immediately following the course. Forget the phrase “it’s like riding a bike” as the skill can easily be lost without practice straight away.

In order to practise, you will need a suitable bike to ride after the course. If you don’t yet have a bike, the best thing to do is wait till the course starts as we’ll be able to give you expert advice on bikes at the end of the first session and we’ll be able to give recommendations on sizing in person.

We sell Ridgeback bikes new and after sizing on the first day of the course, if you would like to purchase one from us, we’ll be able to get the right Ridgeback bike ready for you by the end of the course, fully assembled and ready to ride! We think Ridgeback is a great brand of bike that is good quality but also good value for a new cyclist.

What makes a good – or bad – bike for a new cyclist?

There is a huge amount of choice when it comes to buying bikes and a very wide range of quality and styles. Here we will set out the different things to consider when looking for a bike as a new cyclist.

Price

We may as well start here! It is possible to get really quite cheap bikes and you can also spend an enormous amount. We will just talk in terms of RRP here, but you will often be able to find large discounts on RRP. During COVID there was a big boom in demand for bikes and then a shortage as a result. Since then there has been an overreaction in the bike market with excess supply, leading to those discounts that are still common today.

The very cheapest bikes sell for around £200. At the upper end there isn’t really a limit – some top-end road bikes sell for more than £15k!

For someone who is new to cycling, we wouldn’t recommend either extreme!

The very cheapest bikes are often heavy and they are also poor quality, which leads to components failing and the likelihood of spending lots on repairs. We would suggest that £500 RRP is the lower end of what you should consider and you should be able to find a reasonable bike for that amount – fairly light and decent components which should be reliable and durable.

Of course you could spend a fortune on a bike if you can justify it and would like to. But for a first bike, while you are still gaining confidence and finding out what cycling you would like to do, it is probably not a wise investment. It is always an option to get another bike in future!

As a very rough guide, £500-£1000 is what we would recommend spending on a first bike. Of course, you could also look second hand to save some money. More on that below.

Bike styles

There are three basic styles of bike – road bikes, mountain bikes and hybrid bikes. There are some variations and sub-categories within those, but most bikes can be described broadly as one of these three types. We will also mention one other type to avoid (Dutch-style) and one you might consider (e-bikes).

Road bikes

As seen in the Tour de France, these are the fastest type of bike for cycling on roads. Typically with narrower tyres, drop handlebars and an aggressive cycling position to help with aerodynamics. We wouldn’t recommend a road bike as a first bike, mainly because drop handlebars are less intuitive than straight (flat) handlebars, and the aggressive cycling position is harder for balance and can be uncomfortable on rides of any distance.

Other sub-categories or variations on the road bike are gravel, touring and endurance bikes. All these variations also have drop handlebars and for that reason we wouldn’t recommend them as a first bike.

Mountain bikes

For off-road cycling, these have wider and knobbly tyres for better grip and handling off-road. The handlebars are flat and the cycling position is more upright. Mountain bikes often come with suspension for a smoother ride off-road, either just on the front (what is called a hardtail) or on both front and back (full suspension). We wouldn’t recommend a mountain bike as a first bike, mainly because you should ride on roads or light trails to start with as you gain confidence. Therefore wide, knobbly tyres and suspension are unnecessary and simply make the bike heavier and slower.

Hybrid bikes

These are bikes for cycling around town and they are a hybrid of road and mountain bikes (hence the name). They have the flat handlebars and upright cycling position of a mountain bike but the narrower tyres and lightness of a road bike. We think this is the best of both worlds, and the ideal first bike for a new cyclist. It is the type of bike that will give you a comfortable ride and help build your confidence.

Dutch-style bikes

These are popular mainly because of their aesthetic. We are not fans of Dutch-style bikes for a number of reasons. We mentioned road bikes above as being too aggressive in their riding position. Dutch-style bikes are the other extreme – they typically have high handlebars that are swept back, giving a very upright riding position and the handling can be quite unusual as a result. They are also usually much heavier than hybrid bikes and that, combined with the cumbersome handlebars, can make them very difficult to store or to get in and out of the house or bike shed at the beginning or end of a ride.

E-bikes

These have become much more popular in recent years. You have probably seen takeaway delivery drivers on very fast e-bikes, but these are typically not road legal in the UK. In order to be UK road legal, an e-bike must be pedal-assisted and limited to 15.5 mph (25 kph). I.e. the battery power should cut out if the rider is not pedalling or if the bike is travelling at more than 15.5 mph. You have probably also seen e-bikes for hire – Lime Bikes or Human Forest for example. These are road legal but they are very heavy, and not great quality, perhaps to make them less desirable to steal. Don’t be put off e-bikes just because of a bad experience on one of these as they are some of the hardest bikes to ride!

Good quality road legal e-bikes are worth looking at, especially if you live somewhere hilly, but as before, we would recommend getting one in a hybrid style. Be aware that an e-bike will be heavier than its standard equivalent, and could be considerably more expensive.

Frame and components – what to look for

Hopefully we have convinced you to get a hybrid bike! Possibly an e-bike version. Here are some more things to consider to narrow it down.

Frame material

For an entry level bike, we’d recommend aluminium for the frame. Aluminium bikes are typically light but not too expensive. Carbon bikes can be lighter still and a bit smoother to ride, but typically much more expensive. At the entry level, steel bikes are typically cheaper but a lot heavier.

Brakes

Disc brakes are much more common on all types of bike now. They are typically better at braking, especially in the wet, but rim brakes are also fine, so don’t be put off a bike just because it doesn’t have disc brakes.

Gears

As you spend more money, the componentry of the bike gets better. Componentry includes brakes but also gears. With better (more expensive) gears, the shifting will be more reliable and the parts are less likely to need fixing or replacing. One of the main reasons we don’t recommend the very cheapest bikes on the market is that it can be very frustrating and ultimately expensive to have bad quality components.

1x (or “one-by”) gear systems are more popular now. This is where there is just one chainring for the chain to go round by the pedals and all the gears are at the rear wheel of the bike. This is a simpler and lighter system than also having gears to change at the front (by the pedals). We would recommend this option, although it isn’t a dealbreaker.

Brands / colour / design

As the bike market is so competitive, once you have decided on what you are looking for based on everything above – price, bike type, frame material etc. – there will probably be several brands offering a similar solution and all of these are likely to be equally good. You’re not going to find a bike by Brand A that is half the price of another very similar bike by Brand B.

So once you have decided what you are looking for, it would be good to choose one that you like the look of! Ignore anyone that teases you for choosing a bike based on its colour, as long as you’ve considered the things above. It is important that you like the look of the bike, as that will make you enjoy getting out on it more!

Buying new

As we mentioned above, we sell Ridgeback bikes as we think they have a great choice of bikes, including hybrid bikes at a range of price points. If you are interested in getting a Ridgeback bike from us, just wait till the first session of the course and we can advise you on sizing and options at that point. We would then get the bike ready for you to collect at the third session of the course, assuming stock is available.

If you want to look for another brand we will do our best to help as much as we can with that as well. Just be aware that sizing can be a bit tricky from brand to brand as there isn’t a universal metric for sizing.

Buying second hand

We mentioned that £500 is a good starting point for a decent first bike. However we realise that this is still a lot of money.

If you would rather spend less than that, it would be definitely worth considering buying second hand. That COVID boom we mentioned has also meant there are a lot of good bikes being sold second hand, by those who discovered they weren’t as interested in cycling as COVID made them think!

It is much better to get a better bike second hand than a less good bike new.

There are some things to bear in mind with buying second hand. It is hard to establish the condition of the bike from an advert on ebay, Gumtree, Facebook Marketplace etc. In particular it is hard to know how well the gears are shifting or the brakes are working. So you should factor in that you may need to get the bike serviced after you pick it up. Also delivery of bikes is difficult, so that may be expensive or problematic. Consider a local pick-up. Lastly there are stolen bikes being sold second hand, so watch out for that.

The End

A lot of information! There is quite a lot to consider when buying a first bike. If you are unsure about bikes or have any further questions, do email info@pedalproject.co.uk or wait till the course starts and our instructors will be able to advise at the end of the first session.