Bike hire - with a twist!

Hot on the heels of OxonBike, Oxford's small but welcome cycle hire scheme, today I tested out another option…

At Oxford station (and a growing number of others, including Manchester, Bristol and several in London) there's a compact crate of lockers. Inside are a score of brightly-liveried, highly-fashionable folding bikes - available for hire!

I'd never used a Brompton before, and I have to say I was impressed. They are surprisingly solid, although at 10kg you wouldn't want to lug them far.

The folding is an impressive feat of engineering - they really do get a whole bike to fold into the size of a small suitcase - and once you've figured out which bits to turn, twist and tweek into place, assembling and packing up takes less than a minute.

Best of all, they're quite a bargain: to buy one of these beauties will set you back over a grand, but for hire they're just £2.50 for a full day (though you do have to pay a one-off membership fee, which through an offer at work was halved to £10).

So well done Brompton Dock - I think this might be the first of many journeys, with a twist.