'Believe it or not, the choice of bamboo as a building material is less about appealing to Guardian readers than about making a superstrong yet light bicycle'

Taking a bike on a train in Britain is never a life-affirming experience, especially when travelling with Virgin. All those carriages, all those empty first-class seats, and still they can find space for only two piddling bicycles. And bagging one of those spots is needlessly complicated, too. You can't book online, your bike needs more tickets than you do, and if you get a seat at the opposite end of the train from the bike compartment, you'll spend the journey worrying that someone's nicked your ride along the way.

The separation anxiety is all the more acute when the bike isn't yours and is worth £1,799. I borrowed a Bamboo Bike from Blue Door Bicycles in Crystal Palace, and signed a scary disclaimer that would leave me liable if I didn't get it back in one piece. Fretting in coach A a full 10 minutes' walk from my steed in coach J, I eventually decided a bike thief would surely be deterred from nicking anything apparently held together with brown parcel tape. It isn't, of course: the lugs are made of flax, wrapped around with hemp twine and set with resin, but it gives off a very homemade vibe.

I know what you're thinking: a bike frame made from bamboo, held together by hemp. Just add a saddle filled with quinoa, brake cables made from air-dried seaweed and a pair of SPD-compatible vegan sandals, and you'd have the Guardian in velocipede form. But the choice of bamboo in this case is less about appealing to the sort of people who are happy to shell out £2.30 for a newspaper each Saturday than about making a superstrong yet light bicycle.

Apparently, bamboo is stronger than steel, and it doesn't shatter like carbon fibre or dent like aluminium. It also makes for a responsive yet comfortable ride, the stiff frame absorbing vibration the way a hunk of bread mops up gravy. Riding around Manchester city centre, my energies are usually spent slaloming around potholes, but on the Bamboo Bike I ploughed straight on and barely blinked. The ample suspension on the front forks kicked in when I tapped the hyper-sensitive disc brakes, leaving me boinging like Zebedee each time I stopped at the lights: rather more useful when off-roading, which is, of course, where this bike comes into its element.

The prototype was developed at Oxford Brookes University and gained the all-important BS EN safety mark before going into small-scale commercial production. Each bike is built to order and by hand in Scarborough, which partly explains the hefty price tag, though it's actually at the cheap end of the bamboo bike market. Yep, there is such a thing. You read it here first.

Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

Price £1,799

Frame Bamboo

Group set SRAM X5

Forks X-fusion