The bicycles that grow on trees – FFA

Andy Dix was challenged to make a bike out of wood. It was smooth-riding and beautiful. Even Andy Dix was surprised by how well it turned.

Booming bicycle sales and a revived zeal for slower, less impactful travel are among the pandemic’s silver linings. Many big-name manufacturers are concerned that the surge in demand for bikes will cause a slowdown in their sprint starts. 

Not so Twmpa CyclesLocated in Hay-on-Wye near the Black Mountains, in the Welsh borderlands, is the company. Twmpa makes their bikes from wood, instead of traditional materials like steel, carbon fibre, and aluminum. Specifically, British-grown ash. 

In doing so, they’re not only creating a quirky talking point, but are also starting a conversation about the sustainability of bicycle manufacturing. 

“It’s great to push for more bikes and fewer cars on the road,” says company founder Andy Dix, “but you can’t escape the fact that the bike industry as a whole is pretty energy intensive.” 

Dix has always sought to minimize environmental impact in his work. “Rather than relying on processed metals, or layers of plastic that will one day end up in landfill, I’m building bikes from captured carbon, in a process powered by sunlight,” he explains. 

Dix, a Cardiff native, spent 17 years honing skills as a furnituremaker. In his spare time, the weather-beaten moors of the Brecon Beacons and shattered Sandstone bridleways of Brecon Beacons were the perfect setting for mountain biking adventures starting from Hay.

The idea for Twmpa Cycles – named after one of the Black Mountains peaks – was sown in conversation with author Rob Penn, also an avid cyclist, at the Hay Festival. Penn had been commissioning craftspeople for items made from a felled oak tree for his book: The Man Who Makes Things Out of Trees. Dix’s restless inventive streak dovetailed perfectly. 

Dix examines a frame at his Black Mountains workshop. Image by Mark Griffiths

“We talked about what I might build, and I suggested a bike,” Dix explains. “It seemed like a good fit, but actually I had no experience in bike building, and Rob had a publishing deadline. In the end, I built him a writing desk instead.” 

But the seed was already planted. “The more I thought about it, the more I knew I had to make it happen – purely to see if I could,” says Dix.

His first prototype took him 2 years to construct. Seeking out the roughest roads for test rides, he found the bike strikingly comfortable, and – with a little research – discovered what manufacturers of wooden-handled tools have known for centuries. 

“Ash is a kind of underdog: relatively cheap and fairly easy to process,” Dix says. “It’s a very utilitarian material, but it turns out it’s also brilliant at absorbing vibration. I was gliding on roads that were rocky and would have shaken me to my core on a carbon bicycle. The penny dropped: not only could I make a bike out of wood, but it had inherent advantages over other materials.” 

Bicycles

‘Stand out, ride hard, and turn heads,’ goes Twmpa’s mantra. Image by Mark Griffiths

Interest in Dix’s prototype from other cyclists prompted him to explore ways of streamlining the production process. He joined forces with Cardiff Metropolitan University’s FabLabTo combine his digital design and manufacturing skills. 

Now he selects ash planks at a local sawmill and joins them by hand. Planks are shaped and hollowed by computer-controlled machinery to create the bicycle’s familiar front triangle. Dix then adds the frame elements to his workshop. 

Dix will quickly point out that wood is more durable than steel or aluminum to any doubters. He’s clocked up more than 3,000 miles on his own wooden bike, “riding it hard in the mountains and on routes it’s really not designed for”, and has had a frame subjected to fatigue tests, which simulate high impact crashes and a decade of riding. 

“It passed with flying colours,” he notes. 

At £3,000 a frame, Twmpa bikes are beyond most budgets. Image by Mark Griffiths

Bicycle manufacturing has struggled to reconcile its energy-hungry production techniques and large carbon footprints with its often green, sustainable goals. 

One of the world’s largest brands, Specialized, partnered with Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, to develop an in-depth study into the environmental impact of the bike industry. They found that a year’s production of its Allez aluminium road bike frame generated as much CO2 as driving a petrol SUV for 15 million miles. 

The industry is making progress in carbon fibre recycling. However, as much as a quarter of the material is lost in bike production processes. Some facilities are reported to have dumped offcuts in waterways. 

Says Dix: “The emissions figures are astonishing. Producing a tonne of planked wood emits minus 457kg of CO2 – in other words, wood locks carbon up. Manufacturing a tonne of aluminium emits 4,532kg.”

Dix believes that wood has many advantages over other materials. Image by Mark Griffiths

Cost is another consideration: a standard Twmpa frame starts at £3,000, placing it well beyond many people’s budgets. 

Dix is realistic about the contribution his fledgling company can make to reducing global carbon emission, but believes that the example set by Twmpa will be a positive step in the right direction. 

Although Twmpa’s focus is currently on building gravel bikes – blurring the lines between on- and off-road adventures – Dix has plans for a city commuter, and is developing a wooden e-bike with Scottish startup FreeFlow Technologies. 

“Our ancestors built amazing things out of wood, but it’s been usurped by more modern materials,” he says. “We have this incredibly sophisticated engineering material growing naturally all around us. It’s time people started to think about it in the same way as novel materials like carbon fibre.” 

Wooden bicycles

Dix is setting the wheels in motion to a wooden Renaissance. Image by Mark Griffiths

On the other side of the Black Mountains, in Abergavenny, Rob Penn has already taken one of Twmpa’s bikes for a test ride.

“I was dubious,” admits the author, who wrote and presented the TV documentary Ride of my Life: The Story of the Bicycle. “But having ridden one, I’m going to steal food from my children’s mouths until I can afford one.”

Penn is patron to the Small Woods Association. He has also been a vocal supporter of the Stump Up For Trees campaign that aims to plant a quarter of a million trees within the Brecon Beacons.

“There’s a global swing back towards tree planting as a means of mitigating climate change,” he says. “But there’s no point in planting trees if we’re not going to use the wood to lock up carbon for a very long time.

“Making better use of wood at the back end of a tree’s life is totally fundamental to mitigating climate change – and what better way to do that than in a bicycle?”

Main image by Mark Griffiths