The Life-Sized City Blog

It's been a while since we've written about cycling to IKEA in Copenhagen . I headed out there with the kids yesterday to pick up a few things. Lulu on the Bullitt and Felix on his bike. Lulu clearly drew the long straw, especially considering the rolling terrain you meet once you leave the city. She sang the whole way. Above and below are some photos from the journey. One of the most popular articles on this blog was a few years ago. IKEA did a transport study of their customers and found out, to their surprise, that about 25% of their customers rode bicycles or took public transport. They promptly started a bike borrowing scheme to accommodate their customers who wanted to get their stuff home by bike and trailer. They were surprised, but shouldn't have been. Only 29.1% of Copenhageners own a car so other transport options are a given. You may also recall an earlier trip to IKEA that I documented a few years ago . This is a different route than the one we took...

This year I decided to ride my bicycle to christmas. The kids were already with their mum down at grandma's house in Roskilde, west of Copenhagen, so I just needed to show up on the 24th, which is christmas in Denmark. Lovely sunshine that day, so I hopped on my Velorbis, wearing my respectable christmas clothes of course, and carrying a bag of presents on the front rack. I had just downloaded the Endomondo app for the smartphone , too. I don't normally have a clue how far I ride around the city - and don't know anyone in Copenhagen who does. I know how long it takes to get to places, not how many kilometres. But this app sounded like fun so I tracked the journey to Roskilde and the journey back again . The Endomondo app has an option for 'Cycling - Transport' which is great, even though they still call everything you do a 'workout'. I figured that riding 30 kilometres and averaging 20 km/h would get me there in about an hour and a half. It takes an h...