Softly carved wooden wheels hang under a thick plywood frame, wrapped in a thin layer of rubber, and with holes gouged out in place of spokes. It is, to the joyful disbelief of the people Kidus Tesera bumps into on his travels from John o’ Groats to Dover, a bike made nearly entirely out of wood.
And, to everyone’s continued disbelief, it’s actually bearable to ride, too. “I’ve been on it for a long time,” he tells Cycling Weekly. “I feel like I’m riding a normal bike.” Though Tesera – a mere mortal after all – ultimately concedes: “It was horrible [to ride] at the start.”
At the time, he says, he was looking for something different, a way to escape the high-energy buzz of London for something he still can’t put his finger on entirely.
“It just boils down everything I believe in,” he says. “I’m a biochemistry student, and I’m interested in sustainable production. I’m also Ethiopian, so I believe in accessible production, which is using materials that are around you to innovate and create things.”
“The biggest problem I had was creating the wheels, more than the frame,” he says, momentarily back in the happy collaborative chatter of the workshop.
“When you look at the bike, you can see the shortcuts I’ve taken, the simple mechanisms I’ve tried to use. For example, I don’t have any air in the tyres, I can’t change gears, and then the way I designed the wheels was, like, the easiest way to design a wooden wheel. Normally you would have to create spokes around the middle hub, like a normal metal wheel, but when I tried that, it was too complicated for my mind, because I’ve never done woodworking before.
“I remember leaving the workshop after trying to make a spoke and failing. I left the workshop for an hour or two, and I was thinking, what is the most caveman way of making a wheel? And then I thought: I’m going to create a circular shape, and I’m going to cut three holes to reduce the weight of it. I’m going to sculpt away and create a wheel. This was the simplest solution I could come up with, because I don’t have any engineering knowledge.”
As the last piece was fitted onto Tesera’s wooden masterpiece, a workshop member floated the idea of cycling it the length of the UK. Tesera promptly booked a train ticket to Scotland and started out on his trip south.
As the journey progressed, the bike collected new objects, too. At one point, the blunt handlebars were replaced by softly curling horns, additions that caught the attention of passers by, already fascinated by the wooden spectacle.
“People were so lovely,” he tells me. “They were so intrigued by what I was doing.”
“Is that bloody wood?” One man said in a video on Tesera’s Instagram, mouth open in disbelief. “Get that on Dragons’ Den, bro!” another passer-by shouted.
Once the journey from Scotland had begun, Tesera relied on the kindness of strangers to propel him south, staying in the homes or gardens of people he met along the way.
“In Dalwhinnie, there was a storm. At that time, I didn’t have anywhere to stay. I’d arrived late, and they offered me the community hall, and invited me into their homes. I just felt like I was part of their family.”
Teserea met more people as he moved on from the Scottish Highlands, and his experiences of everyday kindness multiplied. Still, as he travelled through rural areas, with only sporadic shops to gather food from, he had to resort to asking locals for provisions. “Many people that I met were living alone most of the time,” he remembers. “I’ll be the only person they would have spoken to maybe in a week or so.”
It was then, on leaving Scotland, that Tesera decided he would dedicate his ride to charity.
The two organisations he chose are Age UK and Mekedonia, a charity based in Ethiopia that provides housing, food and medical care to the elderly, homeless and disabled across the country.
“Age UK works towards giving people companionship, and a good social life. I was hoping that something good could happen if I did that,” he says.
One thing about Tesera, obvious to his many Instagram followers and even in our short phone call, is that he cares, deeply. He cares about the people he meets, about the people he’s yet to meet, and about the way we move through the world we share.
In one video from June 2024, a studious Tesera escapes the library to deliver a letter through a local’s door after seeing their garden unused. Musing on the dislocation many of us feel with the natural world, and the neighbours we share it with, he invites the homeowner to join him and their neighbours for a walk the following week, a chance to connect. “If you don’t know people you can deeply interact with, the outdoors don’t have the power to keep you out for long,” he penned.
Tesera operates under another name on Instagram: King Raphael, a character invented at the creation of his “steed”. He is making his way through Scotland and England, “conquering” as he goes, occasionally dressed up in cape and crown – made of wood, of course.
I ask Tesera what the pillars of the Kingdom of Raphael would be. “I was hoping you could tell me,” he replies, still unable to articulate what exactly is powering his two-wheeled quest south.
Trawling back through his Instagram posts, the kernel of his beginnings sings out, loudly. It’s Tesera, riding his wooden bike, videos of the people he’s met so far on his journey flashing at intervals across the screen, and his mission here is clear.
“I’m riding a protest made of wood, against a world made of plastic and steel,” he recites in his signature eloquence.
“Every mile I ride is a rejection of comfort, speed and the normal way of doing things. This wooden bike isn’t practical, it’s proof that imagination is stronger than industry and that we don’t have to accept the world we were handed. The storms, the cold, the stares from strangers, none of it really matters. What matters is showing that one person, with their hands and a vision can challenge an entire system.
“This isn’t just a journey, it’s a rebellion on wheels. It’s a question: what kind of future do we want to build?”
For Tesera, at least, that future is one of resourcefulness and companionship. He sees something many only glimpse on two-wheeled adventures – the good nature of people, the ability to build things from scratch and to simply see how far, with our hands and a vision, we can get.
